Mystery & Mercy | Part 3

All right, today, oh boy, I hope you guys got lots of sleep.

Today, I know when I say that it's scary, right,

is an extension of Reformation Sunday.

That was last Sunday, right, October 31st, Reformation Sunday,

but today we're extending that

with a whole bunch of really important history.

Now, I know some of you guys don't love history,

don't check out on me,

because the second half of the message today,

we are gonna dig into the doctrine of communion,

to really try to explain what it is,

what it is that Christ has left us, what takes place,

and I think you'll be encouraged by it.

But first, let's get our historical thinking caps on,

because we're gonna move really quick this morning.

Here's my goal.

First of all, to help you guys answer these questions,

at Oak Hill, where do we come from?

And I don't just mean Castaic.

I mean, where do we come from?

What is our spiritual heritage?

In terms of the Reformation,

what is our spiritual heritage?

And then, as I said, coming back to our study, the Eucharist,

what is our position here at Oak Hill?

What do we believe about it?

How should it be lived out?

Okay, so here we go.

Let's dive into some more Reformation history.

We're gonna look at the river of Reformation today,

and we're gonna look at the four main streams

that came out of the Reformation.

This is sort of a reductionist model,

but four primary streams come out of the Reformation,

the Lutheran stream, the Anabaptist stream,

the Reform stream, and the Anglican stream.

We're gonna look at all four of those,

and we're gonna look at each one of those and say,

what is it that Oak Hill has taken from that stream?

What have we rejected?

And at the end of it, answer the question, who are we?

Sound good?

Okay, you guys know who we are, though, right?

Okay, let's look at that first one.

Let's look at the Lutheran stream.

Of course, this is where the Reformation started, right?

The year 1517, the posting of the 95 Theses

in the city of Wittenberg, Germany.

Luther was 34 years old at the time,

and like a bulldog hungry for a bone,

he would almost single-handedly push

and carry the Reformation for the next 30 years of his life.

His much quieter and more theological partner,

his right-hand man, was Philip Melanchthon.

He was the primary author

of the very original German Reformed creed.

We call it the Augsburg Confession.

After Luther died, Melanchthon carried on

the spirit, the torch of German Reformation.

And by the way, over time, began to move away from Luther

on a couple things, including the Eucharist,

and developed his own particular German theology,

a lot of it through communication with other Reformers,

including Calvin.

Now, 20 years after Melanchthon's death in 1580,

church leaders would bring together

a whole collection of creeds and confessions

that had been meaningful in the German church,

and they codified it and put it together,

and it became known as the Book of Concord.

To this day, if you walk into a Lutheran church,

they will tell you the Book of Concord

is the doctrinal backbone of the Lutheran church.

Now, in the 17th century,

Lutheranism went through a very interesting shift.

It's called German Pietism.

It was a movement away from Luther

as a doctrinal man, as a man of liturgy,

sort of moving away from formalism

to a much more individual spirit of renewal

and devotion to God, a much simpler type of faith.

And then in the next century, Lutheranism

was heavily impacted by the secular spirit

of the Enlightenment, and Lutheranism, sadly,

entered into a very, very liberal phase

that is still ongoing today.

In America today, it is hard to predict

what you're gonna find if you walk into a Lutheran church,

and that is sad.

Considering the roots, it is sad

that you don't know what you're gonna get.

You may get the wildly liberal ELCA,

the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,

very liberal, in fact, not only did they ordain

women to the ministry, but also gay men and women,

and just this year, the ELCA ordained

their first transgender bishop.

So you know where that has gone.

Luther would be spinning in his grave, true.

Now, there has been a conservative reaction to that.

It's known as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod,

and up to this point, although it's a much smaller

denomination, up to this point, they have resisted

all the social and sort of cultural trends

that the world has thrown at them,

and they are still clinging on to the theological work

of both Luther and Melanchthon.

Now, this may not surprise you,

but I found a way to bring a map in today.

Okay, so just, we're gonna plot some of the centers

of Reformation so you can see what's happening.

This is Western Europe, and that yellow dot

is Northern Germany, that is where Wittenberg is located.

That is the very heart of the Reformation,

and so you can picture that.

Some of you guys know your geography,

you're like, I know Western Europe.

Some of you guys couldn't find Switzerland on a map.

I get it, that's okay.

My hope is that you'll begin to love maps more and more

here at Oak Hill.

That's where Northern Germany is.

Okay, so what have we inherited from the Lutheran movement?

Well, two really big things.

Absolute cornerstones of Luther's Reformation, right?

Sola Scriptura, right?

The authority of Scripture,

and justification by faith alone.

Incredible cornerstones of what we would call

Reformation faith.

What have we rejected from the Lutherans?

Well, the real presence, view of the Eucharist.

We talked about it last Sunday,

we'll talk about it a little bit more today.

Also, Pato baptism.

How many of you guys have heard that term?

That's baptism of infants and children.

We reject that as well.

We reject Amillennialism.

Okay, which stands in very stark contrast

to what we teach here at Oak Hill,

which is Premillennialism.

We believe in a literal rapture of the church,

and a literal millennial kingdom.

Lutherans do not.

They believe in Amillennialism,

which tells us that the very next thing that happens

is Christ returns and we go straight into the eternal state.

Okay, so we differ on those things.

So some we've taken, some we've rejected.

Make sense?

That's one stream.

Let's look at the second one, Anabaptism.

Anabaptism.

Now, of all the four streams,

this is the one we had the least in common with,

and we should be grateful for that.

In the 16th century,

when Luther was waging his war against Rome,

the Anabaptist movement sprung up from ideas,

if you can imagine,

that were much more extreme than even Luther.

And that was stunning to Rome.

Even more radical.

In fact, even among Protestants,

they would have said,

those guys are the radical fringe.

They were the radical reformation.

They were the ones most aggressively committed

to tearing down every vestige of Roman faith and practice.

Movement started in Zurich, Switzerland

under the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli.

We've talked about him a number of times in our series.

But here's the funny thing.

Very soon, the Anabaptists grew impatient with Zwingli.

Zwingli wanted to move things slowly.

He understood that it was a journey, not a sprint,

but the Anabaptists were impatient.

So they said, Zwingli, you're too moderate for us,

and we want change right now.

So they broke with Zwingli,

and they split her into a whole bunch of different groups,

the most prominent being led by the man you see up there,

Conrad Grebel.

Now, here's a whole list of things

that marked out the Anabaptists.

First of all, they would not even have said

back in the day that they were Protestants.

They would say, we don't even want to line up

with these other guys, these Lutherans and these reformed.

We are simply Christians, they would say.

Simple Christians trying to live out the apostolic faith

that they saw in scripture.

What that caused them to do is to fall into

a very, very deep hatred of the pope,

of the Catholic Church,

and what they called magisterial religion,

the idea that church and state would be melded into one.

They abhorred that idea, especially the idea

that a secular magistrate or a king

would somehow have authority in the church.

So Anabaptists became what we call separatists.

That was their impulse, to separate from the world,

to withdraw from society, leave us alone.

We will form our tight-knit communities,

just leave us alone.

They're also completely committed

to making zero alliances with the state.

If you're an Anabaptist, you could not work

for the government, and you would have been a pacifist.

You cannot serve in the military as well.

So very much separatist and withdrawn.

Here's the thing they're most known for,

the thing that got them in the most trouble

with both Catholics and Protestants.

They rejected paedobaptism, as we do today.

And it seems weird to us that men that we look up to,

like Luther and Calvin and Zwingli,

these brilliant scholars who love scripture,

how after the Reformation,

they continued to preach infant baptism.

It makes no sense to us, right?

But back then, they're still so rooted

in Roman Catholicism that a lot of things

were sort of left over.

They believed in infant baptism.

So in the midst of the Reformation,

where things are already pretty radical,

and the boundaries are being pushed,

along comes this group, the Anabaptists.

Not only did they refuse to baptize infants,

you ready for this?

They're baptizing adults.

Right?

That is unheard of.

You have to understand, for a thousand years,

there is no other system but Roman Catholicism,

and they didn't baptize adults.

They definitely didn't rebaptize.

And that's what that word Anabaptists means.

They were called rebaptizers,

and that was meant in a derogatory way.

History tells us that wherever these people settled,

Anabaptists were literally chased out of European cities.

Many of their leaders would be arrested

and thrown in prison for the rest of their lives.

Some of them were even executed,

either burning at the stake or drowning by Catholics,

and ironically, also Protestant leaders.

In terms of their leadership,

they've been spread across Europe.

Some of these names may be familiar to you.

I'll put them on the screen here.

In Moravia, which is today Eastern Czech Republic,

you had a man named Jacob Hutter,

and his movement spread east into Hungary

and Transylvania and even Ukraine.

In the Netherlands, you had a man named Menno Simons.

In Switzerland, Jacob Amon,

and in Germany, a man named Alexander Mack.

Now, all those guys, their names make sense to us

because of what happened when their churches

came over to America, okay?

You see the names there?

The Hutterites are still around today,

mainly in Montana, in the Dakotas, and up in Minnesota,

right along the Canadian border.

Again, very separatist, they wanna be left alone.

The Mennonites come from Menno Simons in the Netherlands,

and then you got Jacob Amon's group, the Amish,

and then Mack's group became known as the German Brethren,

and so there's a whole bunch of different streams

in terms of brethren churches.

All of those groups are today still separatist in nature.

Leave us alone, we reject modern conveniences, right?

You see them in the buggies, you know,

going all over the place?

They reject all of modernity,

and they live very tight, in very tight communities.

Just leave us alone.

So, let's look at the map again.

So we got a couple different places now.

Switzerland, there's Switzerland,

in case, how many of you guys didn't know?

Okay, says the guy from Switzerland.

Literally Mark De Bae from Switzerland, okay.

Talk to Mark after church.

There's Moravia, they see the Czech Republic in blue,

and that's supposed to be orange, the Netherlands as well.

So, some more of the Reformation Center.

So, what did we inherit from the Anabaptists?

Only one thing, really, and that's that concept

of believer's baptism.

That's what we believe scripture says,

salvation, then baptism, right?

Not infant baptism, which again,

many of the Reformation teachers believe that

an infant is baptized as a welcoming into the new covenant,

just as in the old covenant, circumcision.

Welcome somebody into the community.

We reject that idea.

We believe baptism only follows saving faith.

Make sense?

Okay, so what do we have so far?

The Lutheran stream, the Anabaptist stream.

Let's look at two more important ones.

First of all, let's look at the Reform stream.

Now, the Reform stream, I'm gonna keep turning around

to make sure I've got it, actually comes in three substreams.

There's three groups within the Reform.

One is the Swiss Reformation, Mark.

There's a quiz later.

The Swiss Reformation, there is the Scottish Presbyterians,

and there is the Dutch Reformed.

All three of them have made certain theological gains

that we would connect to today.

So let's look at these.

First of all, you have the Swiss Reformation.

Again, began in Zurich, led by this man, Ulrich Zwingli,

and he is parallel, almost parallel,

with both Luther and Melanchthon.

In addition, in Zurich, to Zurich, you have Martin Boucher,

who was actually a German theologian

that was based in Strasbourg, France,

but also at work in Switzerland in the city of Basel.

Now we know that Zwingli was unable

to control the Anabaptist movement,

but one thing he was able to do was to turn Zurich

into a worshiping Protestant state.

Back then, Switzerland was not a single nation.

It was a series of what they call cantons or states,

and Zurich became a Protestant city-state under Zwingli.

Problem is, Rome was not happy with that,

and Rome, the Holy Roman Emperor, sent an army after Zwingli,

a Catholic army, went to war against Zurich,

and Zwingli was killed on the battlefield at the age of 47.

So it was left to Heinrich Bullinger to continue his work,

and then soon after, Geneva became the great hotspot

of Reformation in Switzerland,

under the leadership of a man named William Pharrell,

very important name.

It's Pharrell who was ultimately responsible

for convincing, after much hard work convincing John Calvin

to leave his home country of France in Strasbourg

and to come to Geneva.

Now, as some of you know, Calvin would turn Geneva

into a very structured Protestant city-state.

Calvin was all about basically reforming

every single part of life, both civil and religious,

so much so that Geneva under Calvin

became known as the Protestant Rome.

Now, much ink has been spilled in debate

over whether Calvin's organization of Geneva

was good or not good, biblical or not,

but the one thing you cannot deny about Calvin

is his theological work and his legacy.

His institutes of the Christian religion

are by far the most comprehensive and influential work

of the entire Reformation period.

It still stands up today.

It is brilliant.

In fact, most of the time when you hear me quoting

from Calvin, it's from his institutes.

Another key part of Calvin's work was his hospitality

towards other reformers.

Geneva became the place that if you needed protection

from Catholic authorities or you needed to be trained

in Reformation principles, Calvin would welcome you

to Geneva and train you up.

So it became the center for scholastic writing

in this period, the exposition of the scriptures,

systematic theology.

Geneva was huge into studying the early church fathers,

particularly Augustine, and of course,

of course the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

All of this was taking place in a very dynamic setting

in the city of Geneva.

When Calvin passed away at the age of 55,

he was then succeeded by a man named Theodore Beza

who in himself was a brilliant theologian

and actually wrote a beautiful biography of John Calvin.

It's why we know so much about of his life

is because of Beza.

So that's the Swiss Reformation.

Very influential and as you know,

I'm constantly quoting from Calvin today.

Okay, let's look at the second group.

Second group is the Scottish Presbyterians.

I wish I could do a good Scottish.

A broke accent, I can't do it.

I wish I could because it would be so appropriate right here.

Now the most famous reformer from Scotland,

of course, is John Knox.

Most people know that name.

The names you don't know are the ones you see up there

that preceded him.

Incredibly bold, courageous man,

both of the Patrick Hamilton and George Wishard

were burned at the stake

for simply teaching Reformation principles

in the face of the Royals of England

who were very powerful, the kings and queens of England.

Very, very powerful.

So in 1546, Knox came to the forefront.

He put his life on the line publicly challenging Mary,

Queen of Scots, who was the Catholic cousin

of Queen Elizabeth I in England.

Very powerful woman.

Not only did Knox survive,

but he successfully turned the people of Scotland

towards Calvinism in the face of Mary, a Catholic queen.

Amazing story.

By the way, Knox was one of those reformers

who at one point in his life had to flee from Scotland

because his life was under threat.

He went to Geneva, trained under Calvin,

and then came back to Scotland

to launch the Scottish Reformation.

Amazing story.

The Reformation in Scotland was eventually so successful

that the particular form of ecclesiology favored by Knox,

what we call Presbyterianism,

that was adopted by the Scottish Parliament

and became the officially nation,

a national church of Scotland.

About 120 years after Knox died,

the Presbyterian Church, it went from a Catholic nation

to a Presbyterian nation,

and it became the actual official sanctioned church

of Scotland.

That is a legacy that you can turn something around

like that.

On top of that, the Scots were also able to work

with the Puritans in England to establish

one of the great Reformation creeds of all,

the Westminster Confession,

which became the backbone

for Scottish Presbyterianism as well.

Now sadly, some of you guys know this,

the Presbyterian Church in America today

has fallen into all kinds of despair.

First of all, it was sharply divided over slavery

in the 19th century,

and then theological liberalism crept in

in the 20th century.

Today, the largest denomination in Presbyterianism,

the PCUSA, is barely recognizable.

And I know that because when I was a kid,

that was the church that we would go to in my family,

was a PCUSA church.

Socially, culturally, all of it

is barely even recognizable today, which is so sad.

The second one, and the, whoops.

Oh, do I have a back button?

I'm so excited.

Is the PCA, which they can be very confusing,

the Presbyterian Church of America,

they still believe in biblical inerrancy,

and they still teach Calvinistic doctrine.

So the Presbyterian Church

is a little bit like the Lutheran Church.

Unless you investigate that church,

when you walk in, you really don't know

what you're gonna get.

It could be wildly liberal, or it could be conservative.

Okay, that means we can add to our map.

Green dot, Scotland.

Okay, so you're beginning to see the map come together.

Good, oh, one last question,

or picture I wanna give you.

How many of you guys, anybody been to Geneva

and seen this?

Okay, oh good, you guys have.

This is the Great Reformation Wall

in the city of Geneva, which celebrates the reformers,

Feral, Calvin, Beza, and Knox.

An amazing, amazing wall.

Geneva loves its reformers.

They love their history.

So it's a pretty cool thing to go see.

Okay, so what have we looked at so far

in terms of reform?

Swiss Reformation, Scottish Presbyterians.

Let's look at the third one, the Dutch Reformed.

The Dutch Reformed, the Netherlands.

The Dutch are known as the most tenacious

of all the Reformation countries.

Why?

Because they were so committed to Calvinist doctrine,

they were willing to fight a revolution for it.

They did.

It's known as the 80 Years War.

Dutch Calvinists, led by a very wealthy nobleman,

named William of Orange, fought a lengthy war

against Catholic Spain in order to secure their independence,

and they got it in the year 1581.

And they established, in winning that war,

and getting their independence, they established,

get this, the Dutch Reformed Church

as the National Church of Holland.

Very unusual thing back in that day.

But in spite of that, some of you guys know this story.

Soon after gaining their independence,

the Dutch experienced a schism.

Followers of a theologian named Jacob Arminius suggested

in a series of polemical writings that Calvin got it wrong.

Calvin got it wrong when it came to the doctrine of election

and the doctrine of salvation.

And so what followed was the very famous drawn out debate

between the Dutch Calvinists and the Dutch Arminians,

and that was settled at the 1618 Synod of Dort.

Guys, anybody study the story?

Really important, right?

That's where the famous acronym TULIP came from.

Is it up there?

There it is, TULIP, right?

From the canons of Dort,

also known as the Five Points of Calvinism.

Came out of the Dutch Reformed Church,

out of this schism.

TULIP stands for?

Total Depravity.

Total Depravity.

Total Depravity.

Unconditional Election.

Unconditional Election.

Unconditional Election.

Limited Atonement.

Irresistible Grace.

Perseverance of the Saints.

Very good.

You guys are good Calvinists.

Well done.

Good.

Now, the Dutch Reformed Church was able to successfully

migrate over to the Americas during the colonial period.

Today you'll find two large reform denominations,

both of which trace their lineage back to the Netherlands.

You've got, first of all, the Reformed Church of America,

and secondly, the Christian Reformed Church.

Swiss, Scottish, Dutch.

All different substreams of the Reformed Church.

So what do we have in common?

What do we take from the Reformed?

Well, obviously we take Calvinistic Soteriology.

That word just means the doctrine of salvation.

Calvinistic view of salvation.

We take the Reformed view of the Eucharist,

which I'm going to talk about in just a second.

But are we a fully Reformed Church?

We are not.

I know this can be very confusing.

People are like, what is Reformed?

Reformed, if you're truly Reformed,

it comes with a whole bunch of things,

and we're not all of it.

It also comes with these things right here.

Covenant theology, which is not a bad thing,

but we are dispensational in the way

we see how God has worked through time.

So we differ on that.

You also see Amillennialism again,

versus what we believe Premillennialism.

They again are Pato-Baptists,

where we are what we call Credo-Baptists.

We believe in Believer's Baptism.

And we specifically reject the ecclesiology

of the Presbyterian Church.

If you've ever been part of a Presbyterian Church,

you know they've got multiple layers of government, right?

You've got the General Assembly,

then you've got synods,

and then you've got presbyteries,

and then you've got what they call sessions,

which are the local elders.

Essentially, there's almost no power in the local church

in a Presbyterian model.

So we reject that as well.

Okay?

So again, it's sort of a mixed bag here.

All right, last stream we're gonna look at,

the Anglicans, and this may be the most fun.

The Anglicans, and what a story this is.

I'm gonna have to move really quickly

through the English Royals.

How many of you guys like the English Royal family stuff?

Yeah, it's, I mean, it's pretty juicy.

It's pretty interesting.

Huge Reformation drama that came across the Atlantic

that affects all of us here in America.

The whole story starts with the crazy but brilliant

King Henry VIII.

If you've ever studied his life,

fascinating guy, right?

Henry VIII, and I don't have time to tell the whole story,

but it's really, really fun.

He was married to a Catholic Spanish princess

by the name of Catherine, and he got tired of her,

and he wanted his marriage annulled.

So what did he do?

As a good Catholic, he had at one point

been called the defender of the Catholic faith.

So he went to the Pope and said,

I need an annulment, and the Pope said what?

I don't think it was biblical either.

He was just like, we can't offend the Spanish.

It's just a bad thing all around.

So they said no to that, and so Henry said,

fine, I will break with Rome, I'll start my own church,

the Church of England.

He literally broke from Rome, and they said,

well, you can't do that, and he said, yes, I can.

I live on an island.

I can do what I want.

And he was just crazy enough to do it.

So here's the thing.

Henry was no actual fan of Reformation doctrine or ideas.

Everything that he did was simply to benefit himself,

and especially economically, and in terms of his power.

But he did put an actual reformer in place

in Thomas Cranmer.

He was an actual reformer, and he was given this position

of the Archbishop of Canterbury,

which is sort of the Anglican Church Pope.

It's the highest position within the Anglican Church.

And so Cranmer was able to actually start the ball rolling.

He was a fan of the Lutheran movement,

and actually started the ball rolling

with the English Reformation.

Now, the next five monarchs that come along,

the best way to describe the Reformation

under the next five monarchs are start, stop,

start again, and stall.

Okay?

Some of you guys know this story.

Edward VI was a pro-Reformation kid.

He was actually a Calvinist,

but he died at the age of 16 from TB.

And so the Reformation dream sort of stopped there.

His older half-sister then came to the throne.

Her name was Mary.

She was a staunch Catholic.

And so she began to round up as many reformers

as she could get her hands on, and executed them all.

That's why she's known as Bloody Mary.

When Bloody Mary died, her younger half-sister,

the famous Queen Elizabeth I, took the throne,

and she reigned for 45 successful years.

Amazing woman, never married, reigned for 45 years.

She became a religious moderate.

That's the best way to describe her.

She was a peacemaker.

She allowed all the reformers who had fled

from Bloody Mary to come back into England,

and she established a moderate Anglican church, stable,

but it didn't make people happy.

Those who wanted Reformation were not happy

under Elizabeth.

And so a movement started in England

called the Puritan Movement,

because they wanted to purify the Church of England.

They were happy that we had broken from Rome,

but the Church of England was still not pure,

so the Puritans came together,

and they began pushing Elizabeth to move towards Reformation

and away from Catholicism.

She did not.

When she died, after her long reign,

the Puritans were hopeful that the next guy would be

the one that would save them.

His name was James I, and he started off really well

because he went out and asked for a new English Bible,

the King James Bible, 1611.

They thought he was gonna be the answer,

but James was a massive disappointment,

and his failures to satisfy the Puritans

actually cost the next king, Charles I, his life.

Here's why.

Forces within England and Scotland

rose up to demand reforms of Charles I,

and Charles, who was an Arminian in this theology,

refused, and it caused a civil war to break out in England.

The English Civil War is a really interesting study.

At the end of it, the king was captured and executed,

and get this, a Puritan sympathizer, Oliver Cromwell,

was actually put in power.

Nope, that's not it.

We'll get to that.

A Puritan sympathizer was put in power.

Oliver Cromwell was named Lord Protector of England.

Unfortunately, his rule only lasted for 10 years.

The original monarchy, the House of Stuart,

was put in in the year 1660,

and then they went out and started persecuting Puritans,

trying to drive them out of existence.

Hold that thought.

In America, this is the Church of England, isn't it?

The Anglican Church is known as the Episcopal Church.

And like the Presbyterians,

their name comes from their ecclesiology,

the way their church is organized and governed.

An Episcopal model is also multi-layered

like the Presbyterian model.

You have a national council

that then reigns over regional diocese,

and then you have bishops, not elders,

not a plurality of elders, but single bishops

who rule in the local churches.

Okay, deep breath.

So persecution of the Puritans led to what?

Our friends, the Pilgrims.

Yay.

We're now like catching up to your sixth grade history class,

right?

The Pilgrims.

Okay, because of persecution in England,

groups of Puritans started to become separatists in nature.

They said, you know what?

We would wanna stay here in England

and purify this church.

They're not changing.

So we gotta get up and go.

We're gonna go to the New World.

And the Pilgrims set sail across the Atlantic

on the Mayflower.

In 1620, they landed at Plymouth Rock, right?

We all remember that story.

I wish I had more time for that, but I don't.

10 years later, a much better funded group

led by John Winthrop arrived and set up

what we call the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

So the Puritans came from England over to here

and began to set up their own brand of ecclesiology,

which we'll talk about in just a second.

The other separatist group that came over were the Baptists.

Yay, how many of you guys have a Baptist background?

Yay, Baptists.

Okay, where did the Baptists come from?

Well, in England, two very distinct types of Baptists

came to fruition in the 17th century.

There were general Baptists

and there were particular Baptists.

Do you feel like you should be general or particular?

They both had to do with the doctrine of salvation.

What do you believe about the atonement?

If you were a general Baptist,

you believed in an unlimited atonement.

If you were particular,

you believed in a limited atonement.

And so they didn't get along well at all.

Now later on, the Baptist Union of Great Britain

would be founded, and by the way, that produces Spurgeon.

So Spurgeon was a good Baptist in England

that came out of an agreement.

When we talk about Baptists, they're not Anabaptists,

just so that you know that.

Sometimes that mistake is made.

These are not Anabaptists.

They were not separatists

in the sense of the original Anabaptists.

They just believed in believer's baptism

and practiced that, just so that you know.

Okay, in America, the Baptist movement

was started by two former Puritans,

two guys who were part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,

thought that lifestyle and that government was too rigid,

broke away and founded Baptist churches in Rhode Island.

Roger Williams and John Clark, both in Rhode Island.

Okay, all right, now we can fill in our map.

We've got a brown dot in London.

Okay, I had to get a map in.

I mean, that's really what it is.

Okay, what do we have in common then with the Anabaptists?

What did we grab from them?

Again, Calvinistic soteriology, right?

We believe in the doctrine of sovereignty,

reformed view of the Eucharist,

which we're gonna talk about,

pre-millennialism, which was part of the Puritan Church,

and big word, congregationalism.

The first time we've seen congregationalism pop up, right?

What does that mean?

Churches could actually be independent, right?

They didn't have to be tagged to a denomination

with multi-layers of oversight.

They could be individual churches

that are ruled by elders and a congregation.

So we have taken some,

we're a modified congregationalist church.

We're an elder-led congregationalist church.

So we took that.

What did we reject?

Theonomy, how many of us know what theonomy is?

Okay, good, yeah, the mixing of church and state

where the church becomes the government.

That's really what the Puritans wanted,

was to have the church be also the civil government.

We reject that today.

Again, pedobaptism and the Armenianism of the general Baptist.

Make sense?

Four streams, four streams,

Lutheran, Anabaptist, performed, Anglican,

all kinds of stuff.

So who are we at Oak Hill?

Well, I think I have a slide for it.

Hey, there we are.

So we're theological mutts.

Which is really exciting.

So the Reformation is our spiritual heritage,

but we don't subscribe to any one particular stream.

We are an independent Bible church.

As I said, elder-led, congregationalist in nature,

guided by scripture and by the Holy Spirit.

That's it.

But we're certainly influenced by those

who have gone before us in many, many ways, right?

Scholarship breeds scholarship.

We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.

So we take a measure of Luther and the Bible,

a measure of Luther and a dash of the Anabaptist spirit,

right?

A big helping of Calvin and a sprinkling of Puritanism

and Baptist, and you have a recipe for Oak Hill Bible Church.

That's who we are.

So listen, guys, we should be really, really grateful

to the Lord for all the ways that he's worked

through these various streams, right?

He's gotten us to this point.

And as an elder team, I can tell you,

we talk about these things like who are we?

What do we believe?

This stuff matters.

And it matters that our elder team agrees on these things,

that we're of one mind in these things,

even as we look through history.

But we can be thankful to God for all this.

Okay.

Deep breath.

In light of that history, I want to turn our attention now

to our study of the Eucharist.

And I want to try to explain where we stand.

Who are we at Oak Hill in terms of the Eucharist?

So let's talk about it.

I'm gonna take a drink.

That was a lot of history.

Did you guys survive?

All right.

My wife's like.

I'll hear it later.

It's okay.

Okay, I showed you the slide last week.

If you were here, you saw the slide.

The three major position, Reformation positions

related to the Eucharist.

And you may have picked up on the fact

that of these three positions,

I am convinced that Calvin's mediating view,

the Reform view is the most faithful view to scripture,

both to Jesus's words in the Gospels

and to Paul's clarifications in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11.

Now before I explain what the Reform view is

in terms of details, let me take a moment

and just talk about the mistakes that we can fall into

if we lean either direction towards Zwingli

or towards Luther.

Let me start with Luther and the real presence position.

When we talk about the Eucharist,

it's important that we make a distinction between two things,

between the sign that Jesus gave to us,

the bread and the cup,

and the thing that the sign points to,

Jesus's body and blood.

Okay, gotta make sure we have a distinction between those.

There is a mysterious union that exists

between those two things,

between the sign and the thing that it points to.

But we shouldn't confuse them and make them the same thing.

That's what the Roman Catholic Church does.

They take a sign, they say here's the sign,

the bread and the cup,

and then the priest prays over it, and what happens?

The sign completely disappears and it becomes,

according to what they say,

the literal body and blood of Christ.

So they don't make a distinction between the sign

and the thing pointed to because the sign disappears,

it's completely eradicated.

Does that make sense?

So that's a failure in that area.

And although the Lutheran position

doesn't fall into that mistake,

the error of transubstantiation,

it does make a similar mistake.

In fact, the real presence view

was often called consubstantiation.

Very similar because in the words of Luther,

here's what he said,

the physical presence of Christ is found in,

with, and under the elements.

Can you figure that out?

It's a little murky, isn't it?

That means that the sign, the bread and the cup,

and what the sign points do get mixed together.

It becomes a third type of thing.

So the sign is no longer just bread and wine,

it's now something more than that,

and the body and blood of Christ are somehow,

and this is key, brought down from heaven,

according to Luther,

brought down to the altar

and then mixed with the physical elements

in a way that to me is not very clear.

I don't think Luther explained it very well.

So it mixes up the sign and what the sign points to,

and it jumbles it up into a third thing.

So while I appreciate Luther,

remember we talked last week about the confrontation

at Marburg was vingly,

I appreciate the fact that Luther insisted

that we not mess with Jesus' words.

He said, this is my body.

And Luther said, I'm not moving from that,

that's what he said.

And I appreciate that about Luther,

but I still think his position ends

with being too close to Rome.

So that's the Lutheran side.

Now most modern day evangelicals

don't err on the side of Luther.

They err on the side of the opposite direction,

what we call the memorialist view.

And that makes sense.

If you think about it,

the memorialist view is the most sanitized

of the three views.

It's the safest of the three views.

Now why do I say that?

Because it doesn't require any sense of mystery at all.

It doesn't require any wonder or any mystery,

it just allows us to keep the Eucharist

in an intellectual box,

maybe an emotional box if we allow ourselves to go there.

In the memorialist view,

what we do at the Lord's table is we focus on remembering.

That's the whole game, remembering.

So we remember the suffering of Christ.

We remember his sacrifice on our behalf.

And there's nothing at all wrong with that.

In fact, that's a very, very good thing.

We ought to remember what Christ has gone through

because of our sin, right?

In fact, he said that in the upper room.

He said, do this in remembrance of me.

So we should be pausing to recall the goodness

and the grace of Jesus.

That is an excellent thing to do.

In fact, I would say we should do that every day.

That's not just something we do

when we come to the Lord's table.

Every day we should be remembering.

So that's a good thing.

Here's the problem with the memorialist view.

It gets to remembering and it stops.

That's it.

It just stops there.

It stops in the mind and it stops in the emotions

and it doesn't go anywhere else.

So going back to the union between the sign,

the bread and the cup and what the sign points to,

the body and blood of Christ, the memorialist position

completely takes away the union between the two.

It says the bread and the cup have nothing to do

with the body and blood of Christ, really.

It's just a metaphor.

That's what Zwingli said.

It's a metaphor.

It's bread and it's juice

and there's really no connection

to the body and blood of Christ,

but take it and just really remember.

Strive and try to really remember.

That's it.

It's a metaphor.

It's a symbol.

Now is that supportable?

Well, Zwingli was the one who said,

he goes, look, when Jesus said this is my body,

what he meant, this is where he got in trouble with Luther,

what he meant was this bread represents my body.

This cup is a symbol of my blood.

But Luther said, ah, don't do that.

Don't inject meaning into what Jesus said

in order to maintain your Eucharist tradition.

Let's stick with what Jesus said.

That's important.

We need to do that.

We need to be careful that we don't inject meaning in there

where it's not there.

Take your mind back to our time

in John chapter six for a second.

Remember the language that Jesus used

when he talked to the crowds?

He said, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood

abides in me and I in him.

That type of language doesn't sound like just a metaphor.

Doesn't sound like mere symbolism.

It sounds mysterious for sure.

It's not easy to figure out,

but it sounds like a very real thing.

And that's important for us to understand.

It sounds like a promise that when we eat and drink,

it's gonna bring out some type of spiritual intimacy

between Christ and the believer.

And it's wrapped up in this beautiful word, abide.

Spiritual intimacy.

And don't forget that right before that,

Jesus said, my flesh is true food

and my blood is true drink.

That's the opposite of metaphor.

That's the opposite of symbolism.

That sounds like this eating and drinking

brings something true, true nourishment,

true strengthening, true refreshment.

It sounds like for the believer,

when we partake of the body and blood of Christ,

that there is some real benefit that we receive.

It's not just a metaphor.

There's some real benefit.

Now we need to pin that down.

What does that mean?

But it doesn't sound like symbolism.

It sounds like something real.

Make sense?

So let me try to outline

what I think the error is in memorialism.

And Calvin talked about this a lot.

Here's what we tend to do.

And let me just say I did this for a long time.

I am a confessing memorialist,

repenting memorialist,

because I did this for a long time

because I didn't really understand the Lord's table.

It hadn't been explained well to me.

As a memorialist, we come to the Lord's table striving.

I come to do something, to bring something to God

when I come to the table.

I strive to picture in my mind what Jesus went through.

I strive to visualize the cross and the nails

and the blood dripping down.

I do my best to remember with all of my might

and to consider the true statement

that it was my sin that put him there.

And again, I'm not condemning that.

Those are good things.

Again, that should be an everyday thing for us.

But we come to the table striving.

And then we read the words of Paul

in 1 Corinthians 11 where he says,

a man must examine himself.

And that drives us even further into this.

We strive to bring an offering to Christ.

By expressing our sorrow to him.

By telling him of our shame over our sin.

And then hopefully repenting of that sin

and then pledging, oh, we're not gonna do it again.

Right?

It's all work that we do when we come to the table.

Now again, those thoughts are not bad.

Those are good gospel thoughts.

Every day we should be doing those things.

But the error that we make at the Lord's table is this.

Are we striving in that moment to make ourselves clean enough

to come to his table?

Is that what we're trying to do?

Lord, if I just confess more,

then I'll be pure enough to come to your table.

Is that what we're doing?

Are we striving to bring an offering to God

that's gonna somehow make us worthy

to take that seat at his table?

What if we haven't confessed enough?

Have you ever thought that?

What if I miss something?

Am I eating and drinking judgment?

If I haven't brought every single possible sin

that I can think of, and what if I miss something?

What if my heart isn't pure enough to really please God

when I come to the table?

Do I get zapped?

Do I get, am I gonna get sick and die?

Doubts creep in, right?

Am I sad enough and emotional enough

about Jesus dying on the cross?

Hmm.

What if my faith is just weak in that moment?

Then what, do I not come?

Do I not take a seat?

And you start asking the question,

well, is God doing anything here

or are you just doing things?

Are you striving?

What's God doing in all this?

What's the parallel with salvation in the gospel?

Who does the work?

God does the work.

But at the sacrament, we act like we need to do all the work

to make God happy with us,

just enough so that we can sit at the table.

Friends, approaching the sacrament,

friends, approaching the Lord's table

like that turns communion into something

of a monthly rededication ceremony.

It's actually not that far off

from what a Roman Catholic would do when he does penance.

I'm proving my devotion to God by doing this

or by saying that.

That's not what God had in mind.

Here's how Calvin laments over this

and maybe this will solidify what I'm talking about here.

There we go.

He says this,

when they, the memorialists or the Svinglians,

have prepared men to eat worthily,

they have tortured and harassed pitiable consciences

in dire ways.

They have not brought forward a particle

of what would be the purpose.

They said that those who are in a state of grace

ate worthily.

Then they interpret it in a state of grace

to mean pure and purged of all sin.

Look what he says.

Such a dogma would prevent all men

who ever were or are on the earth

from the use of the sacrament.

Because none of us are pure.

We can't confess enough to be pure before God.

He goes on,

for if it is a question of our seeking worthiness

by ourselves, we are undone.

Only despair and deadly ruin remain.

He wraps up.

To heal this sore,

they have devised a way of acquiring worthiness.

That examining ourselves to the best of our ability

and requiring ourselves to account for all of our deeds,

we expiate, key word, our unworthiness.

By contrition, confession, and satisfaction,

and by their harshness,

they deprive sinners miserable and afflicted

with trembling and grief

of the consolation of this sacrament.

For it is a sacrament ordained not for the perfect,

but for the weak and feeble.

Does that change your perspective?

You and I are weak.

We're weak.

We're prone to wander as we sing.

We fall into worry and doubt.

We are worn down by life and by temptations.

And not one of us is spiritually strong enough

to say that we are worthy of being at Christ's table.

Not one of us.

We can't make ourselves worry either.

Communion is for those of us who need help.

It's for those of us who need help,

who need greater faith, who need more strength.

And when we acknowledge that in humility,

Jesus says, sit down at my table and abide with me.

Enjoy the meal that I've prepared for you.

That's the right hard attitude.

Not, I'm gonna work myself into perfection.

Listen to me now, the essence of the Lord's Supper

is God giving and believers receiving.

We saw that two weeks ago in the upper room.

Jesus did all the giving.

Take and eat, take and drink.

What did the disciples do?

Okay, okay.

They received.

It's God giving and us receiving.

So communion is a meal in which Christ

reaffirms his promises to us.

Where he reaffirms the gift of his grace

and his love for you.

And for me, as his friends, just like in the upper room,

it is a place and a time where when we come to the table,

Jesus whispers in our ear, it's finished, you are forgiven.

We receive that reaffirmation from him in the elements.

He's the giver, we don't bring a sacrifice.

The best picture is we're like a bunch of little birds

in a nest with our beaks wide open,

just waiting for mama bird to come back and feed us.

That's what we are.

That's what we are at the table.

Now am I saying we don't confess sin?

Of course not.

Am I saying we don't examine ourselves

to see if sin remains?

Of course we do.

But again, we do that not just every day, but every hour.

Moment by moment, right?

We don't wait, I'm gonna store up 30 days of sin

and then confess it all at the table.

No, that's a moment by moment process.

We know when communion is coming, do we not?

We should have already had some deep time

in meditation and prayer and confession of sin

before we even arrive.

So that when we get there, we just say,

thank you Jesus, I receive from you.

I receive from you in the elements,

this reaffirmation of your grace and your love

and forgiveness.

So what exactly happens?

What is the spiritual, is the crass way of saying it.

The spiritual transformation.

The spiritual transaction that happens

when we eat the bread and drink the cup.

That I think is important for us to understand.

Okay, so to understand it, it's built, first of all,

actually I'm not gonna click, almost did it.

It's built on two realities.

Very important, here they are.

First of all, that Christ is and always will be

the God man, right?

Forever he is the God man.

Meaning while he is fully God,

and therefore he is spiritually omnipresent,

everywhere, he's also fully man.

That means how many bodies does Jesus have as a full man?

Just one.

Just one, right?

A body that was raised from the dead in a glorified form,

a body that ascended to heaven along with his human soul

into the heavenly realms, which is a real place, by the way.

And he is currently in that body, glorified body,

seated at the right hand of the Father.

We all affirm that, correct?

So again, for his body to be fully human,

it has to be localized in one place.

It cannot be everywhere all the time,

as the Roman Catholics claim.

It can't be in every single mass.

He's got one body, it's in the heavenly realms.

We don't drag it down from there and re-sacrifice him.

That's important.

Second thing, even though Jesus resides in heaven,

listen to this now, believers on earth are united to him

through the presence of the Holy Spirit,

who's taken up residence within us.

It is the Spirit who brings us into communion with Jesus,

even though he's physically absent from us.

We are in a spiritual union.

That is such an important thing to understand.

So when we partake of the communion table,

we are truly nourished,

truly strengthened through that spiritual union.

It's not a physical thing, it's a spiritual thing.

Calvin said it, he said, we truly feed on Christ.

Did you hear me?

We truly feed on Christ, but by faith, not by the mouth.

It's a spiritual thing.

So we don't pull the body of Christ down out of heaven

to a physical altar,

as the Catholics and the Lutherans claim to do.

Here's what happens, through the Spirit,

we are lifted up to the heavenly places to be with Christ.

Now I know that's mysterious,

but that's why I brought up Ephesians 2, 5, and 6 last week.

Do you remember what it said?

That God made us alive together with Christ

and seeded us with him in the heavenly places.

Eris tense, it's already done.

We're already, in some sense, seeded in the heavenly places.

That's an amazing thing.

So metaphysically, we're already there.

We're in fellowship with him,

abiding with him in the heavenly places.

So our mouths physically receive

the consecrated bread and wine,

but our souls are nourished as we partake spiritually

in his body and blood.

And although the sign, the bread in the cup,

remains what it is, it's still bread, it's still juice,

our souls are nourished as we partake spiritually

in his body and blood.

Those earthly elements are so united

to his body and blood in the heavenly places,

that in some sense, we can look to heaven and say,

I'm truly feeding.

I am truly eating his flesh and drinking his blood

and receiving nourishment from it,

because of the union between the elements

and his physical body and blood.

I know, look, I know this is hard, right?

But I think this is the right, listen,

why are the elements given to us if they're only metaphors?

Have you thought about this?

Why would we have bread and juice if they're just metaphors?

What's the purpose?

Couldn't Jesus have looked around the room and said,

hey guys, remember me when I die.

Did he need bread and cup to do that?

No, it would have been an authoritative command

when I go to the cross, remember me.

But what did he do?

Simultaneously, he gave them these physical elements

and said, take and eat, take and drink,

simultaneously said, do this in remembrance of me.

Does that not give the elements meaning?

It has to, otherwise Jesus did the most nonsensical,

unimportant thing possible, why would he do that?

There has to be meaning there.

This bread is my body, he said,

this juice or this wine is my blood.

So there's great meaning in that, in this spiritual union.

Calvin again talked about it, he said this,

he said the sacrament consists of a visible sign

which is connected somehow to the reality.

We need to receive this promise by faith,

why would Christ command us to eat bread

if we didn't actually participate in Christ's body and blood?

Calvin's way smarter than me, I didn't come up with that.

That's a good question.

So Jesus is inviting us now, this is what's so cool,

inviting us to, in a sense, come into the Holy of Holies,

through that torn curtain which the author of Hebrew says

is his body.

Come in and what, taste and see that the Lord is good.

By faith.

It's really quiet in here.

So do we receive grace in the sacrament of communion?

Absolutely.

Not in the way that Rome wants us to believe,

it's not a grace that saves us,

it's not a grace that we can accumulate

and then present to God as if we now

have merit before him like we've earned a reward.

No, that's not it, that's not the type of grace.

It's the grace that reaffirms the truth

about our relationship with Christ.

It's the grace that reminds us of his eternal promises to us.

It's mysterious for sure, but look,

remember what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13,

he said, now we see in a mirror dimly, and only in part.

And that's so true with the Eucharist, right?

Someday we're gonna fully grasp the truth

and there is an eschatological dimension to this

because every time, members, we sit at the table

and partake of communion together,

it is foreshadowing something much greater, is it not?

The marriage supper of the Lamb that we will celebrate

in Christ's absolute presence.

Then it won't be dimly, it'll be face to face.

We're practicing for that.

But to say it's just a metaphor,

to say that it has no connection to the absolute,

to say that it has no connection to the actual body

and blood of Christ is to do violence to the whole concept.

In that day, it'll be not in part, but in full.

And that is our life and our hope, is it not?

So Oak Hill members, we have the opportunity

to come to communion tonight for our members.

Do not miss it.

The Lord hasn't provided the sacrament

as some type of optional thing,

like well, if it fits into my schedule.

Again, it's an extension of the pulpit ministry.

It is the word visible, it is the word tangible.

It's designed to strengthen you and to nourish you.

Don't make it optional.

Again, Thomas Watson, the Puritan,

he actually called it treason.

Treason, he said, to skip the Lord's table.

Here's his quote, he says this.

It is not left to our choice whether we will come or not.

It's a duty, not only permissive, but authoritative.

It is as if a king should say, let it be done.

So let it be done, friends.

Members, tonight at 5.30 p.m., come to the table

and receive from your king.

And for those of you who are here this morning,

you're like, I'm not a member, I can't come to communion.

Let this be an invitation to you to join us.

All you have to do is ask an elder,

ask our church administrator, say,

what is this membership about?

Because we believe that the communion meal

is a family meal.

We should be in covenant together.

We should come all at one time together

in purity, in brotherly love.

By the way, that's the subject of next week.

We're gonna talk about why Oak Hill teaches that,

why we teach what we call a guarded communion.

So let this, for those of you who are not members

who are saying, I can't come, let it be an invitation.

Join us, become a member at Oak Hill.

We would love, love, love, love

to welcome you at the communion table, amen?

Let's bow our heads.

Lord, we are so grateful for this gift

that you have given us, and Lord, I know that

maybe we've taken it for granted in the past,

maybe we haven't understood it completely.

It is a wonder and a mystery what you have left for us.

But we know it's important, God, because you left it

and you said, do this until I return.

This is my body, this is my blood.

Do it in remembrance of me.

You've given us physical, tangible signs

and pointed us to your body and to your blood.

Lord, help us to understand more.

Help us to process through that together.

And even tonight, Lord, prepare the way for us

to come into your presence in a unique way.

First of all, that we would be united

as brothers and sisters, that we would come as one body

and share one love together.

Prepare us for that moment, Lord.

Thank you for your love.

Prepare us for that moment, Lord.

Thank you for today, for a chance, again,

to see what you've done in history

and to see what you've left us in the Eucharist.

All of it, Lord, is a mystery and a wonder,

but this much we know, we love you, and we worship you,

and we praise you and thank you today.

Jesus, amen.