Questions Christians Ask: Why Do We Observe Communion?

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Lord Jesus, we want to uh just kind of be still for a minute and think about what the Bible says and why it says it.

We want to reorient, reorient our lives around what is deepest and most true and most unchanging in Christianity.

And that is that God loves his people.

That God loves people.

The Bible says most people, you could go up to most people in a bar and ask them, hey, what's a Bible verse?

And they would quote, For God so loved the world that he gave us one and only son, that whoever believes in him shouldn't perish but have everlasting life.

And so you come on the scene with this consequential, reorienting love.

And we've come today to taste and see that and to celebrate that.

And to do all of that in Jesus' name.

So be over this service, we pray.

We pray it in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

If you're a guest today, let me say welcome.

Thanks for being a part of our service.

And if you've never been to our church before and you thought, hey, I think I got to dress up and come to our put on a tie or whatever, and you did, just it's great.

You can wear a tie if you want.

Uh that's great.

But also if you're kind of like, hey, my wife or my girlfriend made me do this and you're uncomfortable, take your tie off and just relax, okay?

Is that fair enough?

Uh because I saw some people in the library men with a tie on, kind of like this.

I can't get a deep breath.

Uh that's not what church should be about.

So if you're a guest, let me say welcome.

We're finishing up a series today entitled Questions That Christians Ask.

We started off asking the question, what happens when we die?

Uh can you really can you really rely on and trust what the Bible says?

Uh we talked about, hey, if God already knows, then why do we pray?

Uh talked about a litany of questions.

Last week we asked the question, hey, what can I be doing around here?

Today we're going to ask a practical question.

Uh, why do we observe communion?

Why do we observe communion?

Because the danger, the inherent danger in anything that we do more than once is that it becomes rote and routine and kind of ritual.

We as human beings, we we're addicted to stimulation, and so we need a lot of change.

We need new things to hold our attention and kind of justify the expenditure of time.

And in such a stimulation-based culture, the familiar is often taken for granted.

And it's endured more than it's experienced.

Translation, it's easy to come as you look around.

If you're a guest today, this is not a normal service.

We don't usually have this stuff out.

We're going to observe communion.

I'll give you some directions in just a minute, but I want to just say, relax.

This is this is not a shower as much as it is a bath.

Does that make sense the difference?

We are a shower people.

We are in and out and we're efficient and we're like, boom, yeah.

It's almost like calf roping.

Wow.

And and the Bible invites us to kind of sit and soak in some things.

And so I want to read.

The Bible gives us directions about how to observe communion, and I want to read that, and I want to point to a few things.

If you've ever been to Disney World, you know that pointing is forbidden.

Did you know that Disney World?

They never point.

You say, Where's the bathroom?

They go like this.

Well, if you'll go right down here, and da-da-da-da-da.

And so I don't want to be that nice.

I want to be obvious.

I want to point to some things and say, Don't miss this.

Okay?

Don't just put it on cruise control.

Or as one kid said in the hall one day when he saw that we're having communion, he goes, Are we having communion, Pastor Deal?

And I said, Yeah.

He goes, Great, that means you're not going to preach long.

So I took off my belt and whipped that kid right there.

So anyway, uh, no, that's exactly right.

I'm not going to preach song because I don't want to preach long.

I just, but I do want to point.

And so let me just kind of read what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, starting in verse 23.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

He said, For I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

And in the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant, my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord.

Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.

But if we judge ourselves truly, mark that, mark that verse in your Bible.

If we judged ourselves truly, because what the Bible is saying is we have an infinite capacity to lie to ourselves, to not be honest with ourselves.

But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

Very clear, very simple instructions.

I want to point to three things in response to the question: hey, why do we observe communion in the church?

The first response to that question is simply this, because it helps us to remember Jesus.

It helps us to remember Jesus.

Jesus takes the bread, he breaks it, he says, This bread is my body that's given for you.

As often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me.

And then he takes the cup and he holds it up and he says, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

As often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me.

If you grew up in church, any of y'all grew up going to church as a kid?

Can I see your hand?

They probably had a table right here in front of the pulpit, and on the front edge of the table, it said, This do in remembrance of me.

Did it not?

Because, and that's what he was talking about.

Because when Jesus, he gives us not just this memorial, not just this ritual, but this reality to help us remember, because we are hardwired to forget Jesus and take matters into our own hands.

Let me begin with my own confession.

Most of you know that I led a men's team, a group of men from our church, to Costa Rica this past week.

We built, we doubled the size of the school we built last year up in the mountains of Costa Rica for the Guime Indians.

And it was great, and it was awesome, and it was funny because when men get together without their wives, we turn into little boys.

And it was awesome.

Our wives weren't there.

We were off the reservation for like seven, eight days.

It was beautiful, okay?

I got home, my wife said, put that backpack in the garage.

Do you not even bring it in my house?

It smells like I don't have words for what that smells like.

Smells like men.

Yes, that's what it smells like in the garage.

And so here's my confession.

I I would wake up every morning at about 5.12, not because I wanted to, in a tent on a mountain in Costa Rica outside.

By the way, there's more stars than you can see in Sugarland in the sky.

When you get where there's no street lights, you're like, whoa! Wow.

But I wake up at 5.12 in the morning to the sound of Gary Cooper with a grinder.

Was that 34 and a half or 34 and a quarter?

And I would think, I'm gonna murder these people.

And that's not good because I'm the pastor.

I get to the airport and they're like, hey, where were husbands?

I buried them all and I left them there because, or Scott O'Burden yelling out from outside of the kitchen, coffee! Who wants coffee?

And I would forget Jesus in that moment.

And I would want to take matters into my own hands.

Like, not matters, I want to take people's neck to my own hands.

I'm like, why do people that get up so early need to announce it to the world?

So Jesus says, do this in remembrance of me because see, why communion?

Because it helps us to remember.

See, remembrance is a very formative experience because we recalibrate our lives according to what's being remembered.

Let me say that again.

I'll demonstrate.

We recalibrate our lives according to what's being remembered.

Like you get around people that you went to college with and they start telling college stories, and this guy tells a story, and that guy tells a story, and pretty soon you're reliving those college days because you're recalibrating your life according to what's being remembered.

And so Jesus says, hey, do this in remembrance of me.

Translation, don't forget me.

That's why we do communion.

Because it helps us to remember Jesus.

The second response to the question is because in it, in communion, we look back as well as look forward.

So Paul says in verse 26, he says, you know, as often as you do this, you proclaim the Lord's death.

That's looking back.

That's looking back.

We look back at the crucifixion and we are reminded in no uncertain terms that we are justified by faith, not works.

We're made right with God because of what Jesus did, not because of anything that I've done.

I talk to people as a pastor uh pretty consistently, and they all kind of say the same things.

They use different words, but they all say the same thing.

Hey, I'm I'm pretty screwed up.

And I never rescue them from that thought.

So if you tell me you're pretty screwed up, I'm gonna smile and nod.

Yes, you are.

And you say, Oh, what do you mean?

That's not a bad thing, that's a great thing.

If you read Matthew, Matthew's uh account of the Last Supper, uh, Jesus says that one of you at the table is gonna betray me, and every one of the disciples said, Is it I, Lord?

Because they knew what they were capable of.

They knew.

They knew.

They just realized.

So we look back, you proclaim the Lord's death.

What you're doing by coming to one of these stations, there's three stations in the front and two in the back, and just a few minutes we'll open them up, and people in our church will be there to serve you the elements and pray with you if you'd like to be prayed with.

And but by your coming, what you're saying is I am by nature so screwed up that the only way I can get to heaven is for Jesus Christ to have died on the cross is payment for my sins.

I don't trust myself.

I don't trust anything I've done.

I don't trust that I've done more good than bad.

By your coming, you're proclaiming the Lord's death.

And so if you come to my station right here, I will look you in the eye in love and tell you, your only hope of heaven is that Jesus died for you.

You've come today to proclaim the Lord's death.

And by proclaiming his death, you're announcing the insufficiency of yourself.

So if you don't want to hear that, you should probably go to a happier, clappier station.

Because I'll look at you and tell you, you're wretches, and you should be burning in hell.

If that offends you, then you've not come to proclaim the Lord's death.

You've come just to kind of do a ritual.

But he says, why communion?

Because we look back, we proclaim the Lord's death.

If we don't believe that, in what what we refer to as justification by faith, that I'm right with God because Jesus died for me, then two things will haunt you the rest of your life.

Number one, every trial will be a double trial.

There'll be the trial that you're going through, this time of testing, and the mental trial would be you trying to figure out what God's punishing you for.

Because if you don't believe that Jesus died on the cross as payment for your sins, then how do you get right with God?

Well, here's the other thing that will that will keep you up at night.

You'll always be trying to figure out if you've done enough good to outweigh the bad.

And in the great in the words of that great theologian Liam Neeson, I would just say, good luck.

See, we look back, we proclaim the Lord's death, and then we look forward.

Here's the little phrase, until he comes.

Don't lose sight of the fact that he's gonna come one day.

He's gonna come for you.

You ever sit in a restaurant?

You give your name, you go to a restaurant, you do the cost benefit analysis, I let my wife out and send her in.

Go see how long the wait is.

And I kind of have in my mind how long I'm willing to wait based on how good the food is.

Nobody waits at McDonald's.

Have you noticed that?

If you go to Carabas on a Friday night, you're gonna wait.

It's part of it, you're just you're prepared for it.

But you're gonna wait.

Sure.

I send my wife and she comes out and she goes, it's 40 minutes.

Put our name in.

There you go.

And you wait.

And you wait.

And here's why you wait: because the experience you're going to have is justified by the amount of time that you wait.

Don't forget to think about heaven that way.

The experience that you're gonna have is justified by the amount of time you wait.

So you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Don't forget today, just simple and subtly, that he's gonna come one day.

We're not gonna talk about ISIS anymore.

Won't be a good day for those cats.

He's gonna come.

He's gonna come for his own.

So if you're a Christian today, you have great confidence until he comes.

Because if you lose sight of the fact that he's gonna come, you get ruthless and you get reckless.

Third reason we observe communion is because life is meant to be examined.

That's why Paul says down here in verse 27, therefore, who he said, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of concerning the body and the blood of the Lord.

So he says in verse 28, let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Examine yourself and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Period.

Don't come without having examined yourself.

It's not an accident that we are in the midst of Lent.

Lent started on Ash Wednesday, this past Wednesday.

And Lent is a time, it's 46 days, 40 days leading up, minus the Sundays leading up to Easter Sunday.

So tomorrow we'll start a new sermon series entitled 40 Days to the Cross.

You say tomorrow it's Monday.

Yeah.

If you start counting tomorrow, it's exactly 40 days to Good Friday when we have a Good Friday service and we celebrate Christ's crucifixion.

But Lent is a time of reflection, self-examination, fasting, self-denial.

And so before we see the elements this morning, we're gonna make some time for reflection.

Where we remember Jesus, his sufficient death, and his certain coming.

Here's what I don't want you to do.

Then I'm gonna be quiet.

I don't want you to sit there and beat yourself up for how screwed up you are or whatever.

And here and here's why.

Because God already knows that.

One of my great privileges as a pastor is to talk to people, some I know and some I don't know, some who go to this church and some who never darken the door of a church.

And when they say, Well, I've done a lot of bad things, and I just get to say back in love, none of that surprises God.

And I'm not minimizing their depravity, I'm maximizing God's grace.

And they're like, Oh.

So as you said and examine yourself and think about what you're fixing to do, we're gonna put the words of this old hymn entitled, Oh Refuge of My Weary Soul.

And here's one thing I want you to see in this that if you're weary spiritually today, that's okay.

All you've got to do is make it to the table, and there'll be sustenance for you.

If your faith is fainting today, you're just like, Ah, no more bad news.

Just make it to the table.

So let's examine ourselves as we prepare to receive the elements and let's think about what this is all about.

Hold your hands out.

Let's pick a blessing over you.

Because you've been somewhere.

You're going somewhere.

Because you've been to the cross.

Heaven is not just a possibility, it's a certainty.

Depart now and live like people who've been somewhere and who are going somewhere.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.