Mystery & Mercy | Part 1

Welcome to Mystery and Mercy,

our short new preaching series that starts today.

That title comes from a very important theological work

by a Puritan scholar by the name of Thomas Watson.

Watson was a remarkable man who was educated

at Cambridge University back in the 17th century

and spent most of his life teaching and writing

in and around the city of London

during the English Civil War.

He wrote a relatively short book that had a very long title.

It's called The Holy Eucharist

or The Mystery of the Lord's Supper Explained.

I like when back in the day they just gave titles

that said this is what the book is about, right?

That's what it was.

And at the outset of his book he wrote this

and this is where we get the title

of our sermon series from.

He wrote this.

There is in the institution of the Lord's Supper

a mystery of wonder and a mystery of mercy.

Now I found Watson's work in the past

very enlightening and very challenging

so I'm gonna quote him a number of times

both today and throughout this series as well.

I mentioned in my pastoral video this week

if you had a chance to watch it that in my opinion

from what I've seen in my number of years in the church

that modern day evangelicals don't really get communion.

They just really don't understand it very well.

In recent decades the trend especially in our larger

and more I guess you'd call trendy churches,

hipster churches, whatever it might be,

the trend has been to make communion less and less formal

and to make it more and more accessible

to anybody who wants to come and participate in it.

And I find both of those trends lamentable.

In fact I would say we should be doing quite the opposite.

We should be seeking to enter more deeply

into the sacred nature of the Lord's table

and doing all we can to ensure

that the communion table is guarded against improper use

and practice.

So we're gonna talk a lot about those things

over the next few weeks.

My aim in this four week series is really to do two things.

First of all to help us celebrate Reformation Sunday

which is next week, right, October 31st.

To help us celebrate that because the Reformation

is our spiritual heritage.

And to do that what we're gonna do is focus

in these four weeks on the communion table.

What exactly is it all about?

And as some of you know, if you've studied the Reformation,

you know that the reformers even amongst themselves

didn't always agree on what was transpiring

at the communion table or how we should view it.

So that's the first thing.

Let's celebrate Reformation Sunday.

Let's celebrate the season

because it is important to our heritage.

My second goal is to go really deep

into what actually happens

when a church family gathers together at the Lord's table

and participates in the bread and the cup.

What is the spiritual transaction that takes place?

Is it a memorial?

Is it more than that?

We're gonna talk about all these things.

And as we look closer at it,

my hope is to move this church family

further away from that overly casual evangelical view

of the table.

The whoever wants to take it can take it whenever you want

type of view of the table.

And to move us towards a more serious, more reformed view

of communion.

A view by the way that lines up with scripture.

And a view that lines up with the incredibly deep

and practical insights of both the early church fathers

and the reformers.

Because we have a lot of historical data to go off of.

Speaking of that,

you knew I was gonna bring a timeline today, right?

I cannot promise maps in this brief series.

Although I may be able to squeeze one of them in

when we get to a map of Europe or something like that.

But we've gotta have a timeline.

Because I'm gonna be talking about some of these eras

throughout this particular series.

So as you look at it here,

just some basic dates,

obviously 33, the year of the cross.

100 is generally what we think about

in terms of the end of the apostolic period.

Whenever John the apostle,

the last apostle, living apostle dies,

somewhere around 100.

313 is important because that's the date of

Constantine's Edict of Milan.

Where the church was basically given approval

to exist within the Roman Empire.

Generally we think of about 500

as the period of the rise of the Roman Catholic system.

And it lasts for about a thousand years as you can see there.

And it's often referred to as the Medieval period

or the Dark Ages.

But it is dominated by the rise of

the Roman Catholic system

and the hierarchy that we see there.

And then of course 1517 is the year that Luther

comes and pounds his 95 theses on the door.

Generally speaking we talk about 1648,

the Peace of Westphalia.

Nobody knows about that unless you're a real nerd.

If you know that, come talk to me afterwards.

We'll celebrate together.

That is generally considered the end

of the Reformation period.

So I'm gonna be referring to these eras a lot.

Especially as I talk about the church fathers.

And I know that can be broken up

into a number of subcategories.

But we speak of the early church fathers.

And then going forward a thousand years,

we reconnect with these folks we call the reformers.

So here's where I plan to go in this series.

Subject to of course the Holy Spirit's leading

in the coming weeks.

Today is gonna be really just about laying a foundation.

I wanna do an exposition of just a couple of verses

that come out of the New Testament

that talk about the institution of the Lord's Supper

from Matthew 26.

From that so called upper room scene, right?

We call it the upper room where Jesus sits down

with his disciples, his closest friends,

and shares a meal with them.

Next week on Reformation Sunday,

what we wanna do is dive into how the doctrine

of communion was originally understood by the apostles.

And then how it sort of evolved through the church fathers

to how the Catholic church began to pervert it.

And then how the reformers tried to bring it back,

but then disagreed on what it meant.

And we'll look at Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and others.

So that'll be, next week will be very historical,

but we'll really break down in a serious way

what the doctrine looks like from the reformer's perspective.

Then in weeks three and four,

we're gonna get super practical.

Because we're gonna talk about what does Oak Hill believe

about the Eucharist?

What do we believe about the table?

Which stream of Reformation doctrine do we ascribe to here?

How does that practically play out at Oak Hill?

And then moving forward as a body,

how can we avoid making mistakes in observing the table?

And how can we find greater unity in the body?

Something that will honor the Lord and strengthen our faith.

So that's sort of the layout as we go along.

I mentioned in my video this week,

try to be here all four Sundays.

If you miss one, make sure you go back to the YouTube page

and listen because they're gonna build on each other.

I'm not gonna have time to constantly overlap

and repeat what I said the previous week.

So make plans to be with us.

All right, today we need to start with some definitions.

We're laying a foundation,

and when it comes to theology, words matter.

Isn't that true?

In the case of our subject matter,

there have been a number of names and titles and words

that have been used to describe it.

I've already used, I think, four of them this morning.

I've talked about communion, the Lord's Supper,

the Lord's Table, and the Eucharist.

Now, those are all interchangeable terms.

They're all interchangeable terms,

but I know that that last one is hard for some of you

because if you come out of a Roman Catholic background,

that word might trigger you in some ways, some bad memories

if you're what we call a recovering Catholic.

In fact, though, we ought not be triggered by it.

We ought not to be scared of it

because it's really just the Greek word for Thanksgiving.

It's the Greek word for Thanksgiving.

In fact, it comes from a combination of two Greek words,

you, which means good, and charis, which means grace.

So the idea of the Eucharist is really just a good grace

that is given to us from the hand of God.

So we sort of need to recapture language.

When it gets misused or used improperly,

sometimes it's good in the church

that we recapture language

and make sure that we straighten it out.

Now, as far as we can tell,

the early church didn't use any fancy terminology

when it spoke of communion.

In fact, the phrase that we see in Scripture

is simply the breaking of bread.

That's what they called it.

We see that a number of times in the New Testament.

And that breaking of bread was always attached

to a simple gathering of members of the church

who came together for a regular meal,

and it was sort of attached to that.

We know that those meals that happen often

in the early church from first century writings,

we find out that they were referred to as agape feasts,

or we would say love feasts,

but I have been told I cannot use that phrase in church.

Is that true?

By some of you, I don't say love feast.

It just doesn't sound good in today's culture.

But that's literally what the church called it

back in the day, agape feasts.

But then over time, even more names began to be used.

The early church fathers, the reformers,

they consistently used that term, Eucharist,

and they did so without any reservation

because they believed it was a time of thanksgiving.

The term Lord's Supper was taken by the church even later

because of specific language that Paul uses

in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 20.

1 Corinthians 11:20

There's a phrase in the Greek

which can literally be translated Lord's Supper,

or maybe more accurately, the Lord's Banquet.

That's 1 Corinthians 11, 20.

And then the title communion.

For most of us, for me, that's what I grew up with, right?

With a little bit of a Presbyterian background,

I just learned the term communion,

and that became a favorite term

because it comes from a Latin word

that just means fellowship, right?

It means mutual sharing,

and who doesn't love fellowship and mutual sharing, right?

So all those terms, I just want you to know

that all those terms have validity,

and they're all gonna be used

throughout this series interchangeably.

Now, the other word that's gonna come up in this series,

and this one has been practically banned

in the modern evangelical church.

So I say it with great fear and trepidation.

It's been banned not because of what it actually means,

but again, because of how the Roman Catholic Church

has sort of corrupted it by improper use,

and I'm speaking of the word sacrament.

Audible gas from the audience.

Sacrament.

In the Roman Catholic system,

a sacrament is a very specific means

of acquiring God's grace by doing certain good works

assigned to us by Rome.

That is an idea that we wholeheartedly reject.

That is not a biblical concept,

and we'll delve more into that next Sunday.

But the actual word sacrament

comes down to us in English

as a word that simply means divine mystery.

That's really all the word means.

It's a transliteration of a Greek word

that means mystery, and it's come down as this word,

sacramentum in Latin, but sacrament to us.

So it's not inappropriate to refer to baptism

and the Lord's Supper as the two New Testament sacraments.

Both of them were instituted by Christ himself.

Both of them have been given to the church

as mysteries of the faith.

And even that word mystery sometimes makes us feel

a little uncomfortable, doesn't it?

Because it's not something we can really pin down,

but that is literally the meaning of the word sacrament.

Again, both the early church fathers and the reformers

referred to communion as a sacrament,

and they did it without hesitation.

So again, we shouldn't allow the Roman Catholic Church

to steal language and appropriate it incorrectly

and then deprive us of using a word

that actually has deep meaning behind it.

So where in the New Testament do we find

this idea of communion?

Well, surprisingly, it's not found

in all that many places, right?

We find it in all four gospels,

in that scene in the upper room,

the sacrament of communion being instituted by Christ.

Now John, John focuses on some different things,

not so much the table ministry, but some different things,

but all four of them refer to that evening of the Passover.

Then you'll find an allusion, again,

to this breaking of bread in Acts chapter two.

You'll find it again in Acts chapter 20,

Acts 20 · chapter mention

and then we get a treasure trove of information

from the apostle Paul, don't we?

In 1 Corinthians 10 and 11.

What's interesting about that is in chapter 11,

Paul not only recounts the story,

the narrative of the upper room,

but he also gives us a whole bunch of ways

that we can mess it up.

And that really is the theme of the first letter

of the Corinthians, right?

All the ways that we have messed up church life.

So that's really where we find stuff.

Now, what is it that we learn then from the data

that we have in the New Testament about communion?

First of all, we learn that it is a sacred

and perpetual ordinance that's been given to the church.

It's to be observed, it's to be participated in

until the time that Christ returns, amen?

Second, there's a measure of freedom given to the church

because we don't have a whole lot of details

and parameters like where should we celebrate this?

I mean, do we have to recreate an upper room?

You know, where do we do it?

When do we do it?

Does it have to be on a Sunday?

How many times?

Should it be weekly?

Some churches do it multiple times a week.

Some churches do it once or twice a year, quarterly.

There's all kinds of things.

What kind of elements should we use?

Does the bread have to be matzah, right?

So there's all these different traditions

that churches have, but they're not really prescribed

in Scripture, so there's a measure of freedom in that.

And then lastly, we learn that there's a ton of mistakes

that we can make, a ton of mistakes.

And we wanna pay close attention to those things

because it's His Supper, and we wanna make sure

that it remains undefiled when we come to the table.

So before we dive into our text now,

can I go on a little bit of a rant?

I know you guys love Jeff's.

I actually literally have like a slide,

and Grant, you could write me a little jingle.

Pastor Jeff's rant of the day.

Just a little bit of a rant to set the tone

for this preaching series.

You may have noticed this, but over my lifetime,

I've observed a few things about the church as a whole,

the church in general.

First of all, that we tend to group up

in what I like to call tribes.

Tribes based on our vision of how the Christian faith

should be understood and how the Christian faith

should be practiced and lived out.

Second is those tribes, we are very, very reactionary.

We look around at what other people are doing

and we react very strongly to it.

And so we go out of our way then to deem some things

as right and acceptable and other things

as wrong as contemptible.

And then we are very quick to dismiss anybody

who disagrees with us or who doesn't toe the line perfectly.

We will cast them out of our tribes, so to speak.

And then third, rather than being patient

and slow in the way we move and discerning

and making minor adjustments when necessary,

we prefer to declare giant convictions

and swing the pendulum from all the way over here

to all the way over there.

We just don't, we lack balance in so many ways.

So case in point, and this is why I bring this up

as we talk about communion,

the conservative Bible teaching tribe

of the evangelical church in the West,

which we have been a part of traditionally,

we tend to look with a very skeptical eye

towards church history.

That's the past.

We're modern day evangelicals.

We look skeptically, like side eye,

at some of the things that we see in church history.

And by the way, rightly so in the case

of the Roman Catholic Church because of their errors,

but the reaction has often been this.

I'm gonna use a strong word.

The reaction has been to sanitize the life of the church

in modern evangelicalism.

To sanitize the church as much as possible

so that we don't look or sound like Rome

or like anything historical at all.

Rather than save what should be saved from the past,

or cut out what shouldn't be saved,

we've swung the pendulum from one side

and swung it all the way over here and said,

let's just toss all of it out and let's appear,

let's look and sound like modern evangelicals.

So today we've done two things which I find regrettable.

First of all, we've sterilized life in the church

in many ways.

Second, we have made the Christian life

primarily an intellectual pursuit.

We've sterilized the church

and we've made it primarily intellectual.

So for example, today's evangelical church

isn't big on things like architecture

in the buildings that we build.

What do we build?

Big square boxes, right?

We just don't care that much about architecture.

We don't care so much about ancient hymns of the faith

because the lyrics are difficult.

Even though we say, oh, they might be rich and all that,

but they're so old, they're difficult to sing.

We're not interested, give us praise choruses

that we can just repeat over and over and over again.

We don't seek after the beauty of art

in our decor, in our walls anymore.

We don't speak of things like liturgy.

That's become sort of a word we don't talk about

in the modern church.

We don't like to read creeds and confessions.

Oh, that's passive.

We might have affirmed that that's good sound doctrine,

but we don't read those things in the modern day church.

Most things in today's church are viewed through the lens

of what is casual, right?

What is familiar?

What is purely functional in nature?

We would prefer to go to a coffee house type atmosphere

or a shopping mall type atmosphere

rather than enter into any type of sacred space.

We come to church looking to be visually

and intellectually entertained

rather than gathering in anticipation

that God is gonna move supernaturally among us.

We think more in terms of individuality.

My walk with Jesus and we think corporately as a body.

We don't speak much of things like affections or emotions.

We only search after things that we can sort of control

with our minds.

In fact, we're a little bit uncomfortable

even with some very biblical concepts

like abide in the vine or walk in the spirit.

What do those things really mean?

For so many modern evangelicals,

we're like, that's too intangible for me.

That's too mysterious.

Give me some new factor idea

that I can affirm with my mind that I can stand on

because as Bible-believing Christians,

that's really what we're looking for.

Now, here's the question in all that.

Are we missing anything?

Are we balanced in this thing?

Or have we just tossed all the stuff from the past?

We've tossed everything related to church history

and we've just wanted to be these modern people

who hang out in a coffee house

and throw up our hands and sing to Jesus.

Are we missing something in our Christian walk?

Something that the early Christians insisted on,

things that the reformers insisted on

was a vital part of the Christian life.

In particular, what have we done with the Lord's Supper?

That's really the key here.

Are we missing some of its true meaning?

Have we taken all the mystery out of it

and therefore emptied it of its power?

Or have we just not understood

it? Those are all valid questions

and things that we want to explore in this series.

So grab your Bibles.

That was my rant, by the way, thank you.

Let's go to Matthew 26.

By the way, my biggest challenge in a series like this

is to not say too much in the first sermon.

It's one of those things where you can't teach on community

in one sermon, but you want to get a whole bunch of stuff in,

but you can't, so you gotta wait,

you gotta save some stuff for other sermons.

But I guarantee you, some of you guys are gonna hear

words that I use or phrases that I use today

or concepts that I describe today,

and you're gonna say, hold on a second,

I have questions about that.

I guarantee it.

You can say, wait, I need that explained some more.

You gotta come back.

And that's not just a teaser

to make sure you come back next week.

I'm just telling you, I can't say everything I wanna say

in one sermon, but I guarantee you,

everything I wanna say in one Sunday.

Does that make sense?

Okay, good.

The key verses for today are really verses 26, 27, and 28,

but I wanna back up to verse 20.

Let's start with Matthew's recording

of the institution of the Lord's Supper in verse 20.

It says, when evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table

with the 12 disciples.

As they were eating, he said, truly I say to you

that one of you will betray me, being deeply grieved,

they each one began to say to him, surely not I, Lord.

And he answered, he who dipped his hand with me in the bowl

is the one who will betray me.

The son of man is to go, just as it is written of him,

but woe to that man whom the son of man is betrayed.

It would have been good for that man

if he had not been born.

And Judas, who was betraying him, said,

surely it's not I, Rabbi, not Lord, Rabbi,

Jesus said to him, you've said it yourself.

Now here we go, verse 26, key verses.

While they were eating, Jesus took some bread,

and after a blessing, he broke it and gave it

to the disciples and said, take and eat, this is my body.

And when he had taken a cup and given thanks,

he gave it to them, saying, drink from it, all of you,

for this is my blood of the covenant,

which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

But I say to you, I will not drink this fruit of the vine

from now on until that day when I drink it new with you

in my Father's kingdom.

And after singing a hymn, they went out

to the Mount of Olives.

Okay, so we're gonna spend just actually a decent amount

of time here just looking at some important insights

in those three verses, because there's actually a lot there

that we need to pull out.

Let's start with the when question.

When did Jesus institute the communion meal?

All three of the synoptic writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke,

tell us that this meal in the upper room took place

on the night of Passover, and that's true.

But there's a short phrase in Paul's description

in 1 Corinthians 11 that I find really, really important

in a thematic sense.

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul recounts the ominous nature

of that evening, and he says, it happened on the night

in which he was betrayed, the night that he was betrayed.

He's reminding us in that statement

that Jesus knew what was coming in that moment.

He knew what was coming, even as he was instituting

the supper, he knew it was coming and it was coming soon.

And imagine, imagine having in the back of your mind

knowing what's coming, knowing that you are soon

to be arrested and tortured and crucified,

and yet in the midst of all that,

Jesus is still thinking about his friends.

We would be obsessed, we'd be like trembling.

Do you not know what's happening?

I'm gonna be arrested.

We'd be in panic mode.

Jesus is thinking about his friends.

He's thinking about the distress

that they're gonna go through,

because this would not have been an easy thing

for these men who had walked with Jesus,

lived with him for years now,

to see him suddenly taken away,

to see him treated so brutally.

And so part of what we see in this intimate evening meal

is Jesus strengthening his disciples against fear,

strengthening them, encouraging them to greater faith.

And one of the ways he does that

is in this mysterious giving to them of his body and blood.

We need to figure out what that means, right?

See, at times, God gives symbols and ceremonies to his people

in order to communicate realities about who he is

and about what he's intending to do for them.

For example, just before his saving work in the Exodus,

God gave the Passover to his people, didn't he?

It was a meal that would be a constant reminder

of his faithfulness to save them,

to deliver them out of slavery in Egypt.

And following in that pattern, now we have the upper room,

just before he began his saving work on the cross,

Jesus gives a whole new meal to his disciples.

And by extension, he does that

to every future generation of worshipers,

so that we too might be reminded

that God is faithful and God is loving.

A new meal, a new Exodus.

Many people have looked at this and said,

"'Really, that's what we're talking about with the cross.

"'It's a new Exodus, a saving work of God.'"

And in each situation, he gives us a specific

memorial meal to enjoy.

That's the when.

Let's look closer now at who's leading here.

Who is the host of this meal?

I mean, that's an obvious question, right?

But look at verse 26.

"'Jesus took some bread.'"

Jesus takes the initiative.

Notice throughout this story,

the disciples don't act on their own.

They simply receive from the Lord.

He takes the initiative.

As we go further into the story,

we're gonna see he leads at every single step.

In fact, the verbs tell the whole story.

Jesus takes, Jesus blesses, Jesus breaks, Jesus gives.

He is the one who leads.

He is the one who administers.

He's the one who gives gifts to his friends.

What do his friends do?

They say, thank you very much.

They just receive good gifts from their Lord and master.

So it's the host of the supper

that is of highest importance.

Thomas Watson puts it like this.

He says, to institute sacraments belongs by right

to Christ alone.

It is the flower of his crown.

That's what Jesus did that night.

Now, much has been written about why he chose bread.

Of all things, why choose bread to represent

as a symbol of his body?

But if you've been here at Oak Hill for a while,

you know we've been studying through the Gospel of John.

So you probably already know the answer to this question,

right?

John chapter six.

What'd Jesus say?

I'm the bread of life, he said to the Jewish crowds.

He who comes to me will never be hungry.

And then likening himself to the manna that came out of heaven

that God gave to the wilderness generation

so they would survive out there,

he said, I'm the bread that has come down from heaven.

And then he dropped the bombshell.

He said, he who eats my flesh has eternal life,

and I will raise him up on that last day.

Now, I made the case back in John chapter six

and I stand by it that Jesus back in chapter six

was not actually talking about the Eucharist.

He was not.

Three reasons for that.

First of all, it would not have made any sense

to his audience to be referring to that.

Secondly, and more importantly, in that scene,

he wasn't talking to friends and disciples,

he was talking to an unbelieving crowd, right?

And third, the context of John chapter six is salvation.

It's about obtaining eternal life.

So back then I quoted Augustine,

who based on the context said this,

he said, to eat his flesh is to believe,

to have saving faith.

And I think that's right.

I think that's exactly what Jesus meant in John chapter six.

But don't forget, remember how impactful

that teaching was on his disciples?

Do you remember the story?

Jesus teaches about this whole bread of life thing

and coming down from heaven,

he says, you gotta eat my flesh and drink my blood,

and everybody panics, don't they?

They're like, this is a hard teaching.

Who can really believe it?

So that teaching made a huge impact on his disciples

back in the day.

Many people stopped following him,

but these 11 stuck with him.

Now, when Jesus comes back to that in the upper room,

do you think that it was a valuable teaching

back in John chapter six?

Do you think it quickly came back to their mind

and they said, oh, okay, I'm starting to understand

what you were saying, Lord.

So it seems to me that through that previous hard teaching,

Jesus had done the valuable and hard preparation work

of tilling the soil in the minds and hearts

of his disciples so that they could receive

this flesh and blood on that night.

Now, in addition to that, bread makes sense

as a symbol for his body for a number of reasons.

First of all, it was a staple of Jewish life

in the first century, right?

It was useful, it was simple,

and here's the key, it was necessary for life.

If you didn't have bread, you weren't gonna make it.

Secondly, bread is satisfying.

Bread lovers?

Amen, right?

If I'm hungry, man, you can give me all kinds of things,

but I want bread.

My body craves that bread, right?

Something about it getting in your stomach

and just expanding, I don't know what it is.

Is that what it is?

I don't know what it is, but bread is really satisfying.

It really fills you up, right?

So even in those very simple, practical ways,

there's a profound parallel between the bread

and the body of Christ.

It's necessary for life and it satisfies our hunger.

So it's brilliant, isn't it?

Now, let's talk about the blessing that we see here,

the Jesus praise.

It says Jesus took some bread and after a blessing.

Now, the Greek word there for blessing is eulogesos, right?

And it refers to something that is praiseworthy.

It refers to something that should be consecrated.

So through this blessing,

Jesus is sanctifying the elements, the bread and the cup.

He's setting them aside for a very sacred purpose.

Could there be a more sacred purpose

than to represent His body and blood?

Signs and a seal of His upcoming sacrifice on the cross.

And in doing that, again, Thomas Watson says this,

He opened up the nature of the sacrament to His disciples.

The blessing.

And then it says He broke the bread.

He broke it, He snapped it in two.

And looking back at that scene,

I'm not sure it would have been all that obvious

when you were there in that moment,

but looking back, it surely seems like

that had a great depth of meaning, right?

That gesture was very, very meaningful.

The host of the supper,

whose body is about to be broken in death,

holds up the loaf of bread and splits it

and dispenses it to His friends.

Because that's exactly what's about to happen

to Jesus after this gesture.

His body is gonna be broken for the eternal benefit

of not just the men in that room that night,

but for you and me, for our benefit, right?

For all who will come to the table

and partake of the body and the blood of the Lord by faith.

It pleased the Lord to crush Him, Isaiah says.

Have you ever thought carefully about that, that statement?

My body broke and it pleased the Lord to do that.

God the Father was pleased to crush His one and only Son.

Some of you guys who are parents,

fathom that for a second.

It's hard to imagine, but it pleased the Lord to do that.

To crush His one and only Son, to break Him.

Why?

Because of His redeeming purpose.

Because of His great love for those

whom He had marked out for salvation.

Our griefs Jesus bore on that cross, Isaiah says.

Our sorrows He carried.

He was pierced through for our transgressions.

He was broken for our iniquities.

And He was rendered as a guilt offering for us.

All those things are in view as Jesus breaks this loaf.

Watson says this, it was our sins that struck Him.

Our pride made Christ wear a crown of thorns.

Let that sit there and hang over you.

It was our sins that struck Him.

Our pride that made Christ wear a crown of thorns.

Yet God did not spare His Son.

God did not spare His Son.

In order that His justice would be fully satisfied.

And for the joy set before Him,

the salvation of those whom the Father would give to Him,

all those that He would not lose, including you and me.

For that joy He endured the cross and despised its shame.

He became a curse for us.

The perfect Son of God became sin.

Became a curse for us in order to redeem us

from the curse of the law,

which condemned every single one of us.

There's so much at work here.

Imagine all these things are in view in the Passover night.

Veiled in a mystery that soon is gonna come to light.

Now let's pray.

Let's pray for the Lord to come to light.

Now let's be reminded again about

who these guests are at the table.

This is a very important principle.

The text says He broke the bread and He gave it to who?

To the disciples.

This is a clear and important principle.

The supper is not a meal for general consumption.

It is for invited guests.

The supper is for true disciples.

For those who profess their love and devotion to Jesus.

Period.

Now that action word gave that you see there

is really important.

And I'm gonna camp here for just a moment

because this principle of Jesus giving the elements

is really gonna help us to understand more

about the doctrine of communion.

It says Jesus gave His supper to His disciples.

Again, He's the initiator, right?

He gave.

So at the center of communion is this principle

that Jesus gives gifts to His friends, to His followers.

We don't bring a sacrifice.

To the Lord's table.

We don't bring a sacrifice.

We don't offer anything to Him.

And that is critically important to understand.

Reformed theologians speak of the Eucharist

always having a downward direction.

Downward.

It comes from our host down to us.

In fact, Martin Luther in his very famous work,

the Babylonian Captivity of the Church,

here's how he described it.

I'll put this quote on the screen

because it's so important.

Luther says, out of the sacrament,

which ought to be a good gift received,

the papus, and by that he means Roman Catholics, right?

The papus had made for themselves a good deed performed,

which they then give to others and offer up to God.

Here's what he means.

A sacrifice ascends from the people to God,

but a sacrament is the opposite.

It descends downward from God to us.

Like salvation itself.

That's so important to understand.

Like salvation itself, a sacrament is God's work

done for his people.

We simply receive it by faith.

We receive it.

And just to be clear, Calvin actually agreed

with Luther on this, okay?

So I'm gonna put Calvin's quote up here as well.

Calvin says this, Jesus bids the disciples to take.

He is therefore the only one who offers.

When the papus pretend, I love that word,

pretend that they offer Christ in the supper,

they're starting from quite another source.

What a wonderful case of topsy-turvy

that a mortal man bidden to receive the body of Christ

should snatch to himself the role of offering.

Let that sit there for a moment.

Guys, in the evangelical church, we still do this today.

We still make this error.

We actually act very much like Roman Catholics

when we think about almost like we have to do penance

before we come to the Lord's table.

We're gonna talk more about that as we,

as we go along.

So the reformers rediscovered the downward direction

of the Lord's supple at the very same time

they rediscovered the downward direction

of the entire gospel.

That it comes from God, that it's all about what God does

in our lives, not what we do for God.

And so salvation and the sacrament come together

in the same direction.

And both Luther and Calvin agreed

that there were two extremes in their day

that made the Lord's supper a place where believers

mistakenly try to do things for God instead of receiving.

Both extremes, people doing things,

offering sacrifices to God rather than just being still

and receiving his blessings.

On the one side, again, were the Roman Catholics

offering Christ up to God through the mass,

but on the other side were the Anabaptists

who viewed the Lord's table in terms of their offering

up to God a deep devotion and a commitment to purity.

That's what they saw as the meaning of the table.

And in both cases, the direction of the table was upward.

It was an offering made by human beings to God

rather than a sacrament received downward from God to us.

And we have to get this right.

We can easily make that same mistake today.

But notice again, the disciples of that Passover meal

were not commanded to do anything for God.

Do you see Jesus saying anything to them?

Hey guys, get up and offer something to me.

Get up and do something for me.

There's nothing like that there, right?

They're simply to receive Jesus' gift

and to eat and to drink.

And that truth is gonna help us better understand

the mystery of communion and to help us understand

the spiritual transaction, if you will,

that takes place when we come to the table.

Jesus says take and eat.

By the way, notice that that's an imperative.

It's a command.

Take and eat.

It's not a suggestion, it's a command.

It's not a suggestion, it's authoritative.

Participating in the Lord's Supper is not something

that Jesus merely hopes that on occasion

you can swing by and participate in.

It's authoritative.

Take and eat.

Imagine for a moment having the king in the universe

invite you to come to his table,

then condescend to give you gifts,

and in response saying,

I'll see if I can fit it into my calendar.

Sorry Lord, I've got another commitment on that night.

This is what I mean, part of the casual nature

of the table in the evangelical world.

We've just decided that, oh, that's optional.

It's not a big deal.

Again, here's how Thomas Watson puts that.

He says, it's evil for us willfully to omit

such an ordinance wherein the trophy of mercy

is so richly displayed and our salvation

is so richly displayed.

And our salvation is so nearly concerned.

Christ may take this as an undervaluing of him.

I don't think anybody in this room

wants to undervalue Christ.

But we need to look at how we view his table

and the sacred nature,

the way the church has always seen it.

Then we get to the big one.

Take and eat, he said, this is my body.

Now, we're gonna flesh that out over weeks.

There's just too much to be said in one sermon,

but consider a couple of things.

Part of Jesus' goal here was to give the disciples

a physical, tangible sign of the incarnation.

The incarnation is key to understanding who Jesus is,

why his sacrifice is sufficient for our sins.

Something that would correspond to the reality

of this human nature that he, as God the Son,

took upon himself.

Here's bread.

It represents my body, it's a symbol of my body.

It signifies a reality.

It's about my incarnation.

Do you feel it, do you see it, do you smell it,

can you taste it, can you use your senses?

It's a physical, tangible thing.

One theologian put it this way.

Jesus didn't want to leave his disciples with just a word,

but also with a physical touch.

And that truth is often expressed in a phrase

that we don't often use, again,

in the evangelical church,

but it's a phrase that we should bring back.

Word and sacrament.

Word and sacrament.

In fact, historically, the reformers spoke

of those two things as the two true marks of a church.

Those are the true marks of a true church, they said.

A gathered body of believers where the gospel is proclaimed

through both word and sacrament.

Not just word, but word and sacrament.

To be more specific, the faithful proclamation

of the gospel of God is a word.

The gospel of God's word and the faithful administration

of the two sacraments of the New Testament,

both baptism and communion.

So first and foremost, we have this,

what we're doing right now, the pulpit ministry, right?

This is critical.

The word in all of its forms, right?

Not just the preaching of the word,

but the reading of the word, which we did today.

The singing of the word, which we've done today.

The praying of the word, and of course,

the preaching of the word.

That comes first, but the second is vitally connected to it.

We connect sacrament to the word,

confirming what the word said

through a physical, tangible sign.

And this is what we haven't understood well.

We're just like, hey, somebody broke some bread

and put it on a plate, this is cool.

Right, somebody poured some grape juice in the back room.

But there's more to it than that.

It's designed to be more powerful than we've seen it, guys.

And this is what we need to get back to.

In a sense, what happens in the sacrament

is we get a visible sermon.

A visible proclamation of the gospel.

So catch this, communion was ordained by Christ

as a physical extension of the pulpit ministry.

In the sermon, the Lord speaks through His word

by the Spirit, telling us about His love and grace,

and we hear that, and we ingest that, right?

But then at the table, in a very tactile way,

He feeds us with His love and grace

in the bread and the cup.

The two are designed to go together

for the full experience of what it means to know Christ.

So good news for you, it's been said

that even if the sermon's terrible,

the sacrament preaches the gospel.

That was too easy.

Because the two things go hand in hand.

That's what the early church believed,

that's what the reformers said,

that's what we seem to have lost

in so much of the modern day church.

Jesus then moves on to explain a second sign that says,

He took a cup, and here's what Calvin has to say about that.

Calvin says, the Lord gave two symbols

to assure us that our life is established in Him.

Our bodies need both of these things, right?

Food and drink for nourishment and sustenance.

Here's the way I see this.

First, bread is given to strengthen us.

Bread strengthens us,

but then wine makes our hearts glad, doesn't it?

That's straight from Psalm 104.

The Lord's table does both of those things.

In a mysterious way that we're gonna delve into together

as we go along, you and I are spiritually nourished

and strengthened by the bread,

and then our hearts are made glad by the cup

as we're reminded about God's love

and God's grace in our lives.

So the two work hand in hand to strengthen us

and to make our hearts glad in Him.

It's really a beautiful picture.

Now look at the phrase in verse 27, He gave thanks.

He gave thanks.

He gave thanks, guess what that word is in the Greek?

Eucharistio, the Eucharist.

It's right there.

So Jesus gives thanks to the Father

for this fruit of the vine,

but there's even more implied here.

Again, I'm gonna go to Thomas Watson who explains it.

He says this, Christ gave thanks that God the Father had

in the infinite riches of His grace given His Son

to expiate the sins of the world,

and that God had given these elements of bread and wine

as not only signs, but seals of our redemption.

Do you get a sense that these guys understood communion

in a much deeper way than we tend to see it today?

And He gave it to them saying, drink from it, all of you.

Again, we see the host of the supper.

What does He do?

He gives to His guests.

What do the guests do?

They receive and drink, right?

They receive and eat, now they receive and drink.

They enjoy the gift.

The host has the gift, he dispenses the gifts.

We simply receive.

And what reality does the sign of the cut point to?

Jesus goes on to say, this is my blood of the covenant.

That's a powerful phrase.

That's something worth meditating on.

This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out

for many for the forgiveness of sins.

By the way, I did a, Grant will love this,

I did a Google search yesterday on worship songs

that have the lyrics, the blood of Jesus in it.

I mean, it is almost inexhaustible.

Like Google gave me so many search results

I couldn't even handle it.

The blood of Jesus has been just a massive theme

in the history of worship in the church.

It's all over the place.

We are told in scripture that all things

are cleansed with blood.

That's a hard thing for us as modern people to understand,

but all things are cleansed with blood

and without the shedding of blood,

there is no forgiveness.

There's no forgiveness.

And in the blood of Jesus, we see sin both fully punished

and fully pardoned for those who trust in Him.

That's an amazing truth, right?

Both His justice and His mercy expressed through His blood.

Wow, for those who trust in Him alone,

God the Son receives the full punishment that's due to us

and we receive the righteousness,

His righteousness and a pardon.

That's what we call that the great exchange, right?

He gets all of our sin, we get all of His righteousness

through His blood.

So Jesus' blood is both a cleansing blood

and it's a reconciling blood.

It actually even goes beyond a pardon.

It washes us away, but it actually brings us

into favor with God.

That is an amazing, it's one thing for a criminal

to be absolved of a crime and say,

you know, that's been wiped away,

but then to bring you into favor before Almighty God,

that is something altogether different.

Is there anything else that could accomplish

such a miracle?

What can wash away my sin?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

This is all my hope and peace, we sing.

This is all my righteousness, we sing.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

By this I'll overcome, by this I'll reach my home.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What a statement that Jesus makes in the upper room

about his blood.

Here's what Watson has to say about the blood.

He says, like Israel passing through the Red Sea,

so through the Red Sea of Christ's blood,

we enter into the heavenly promise.

Our sins shut heaven, Christ's blood is the key

which opens the gates of paradise for us.

Notice how Jesus says the blood of my covenant.

Why does that matter?

The blood's amazing, but what about the blood of Jesus?

What does that mean?

Well, the new covenant speaks to the promises

that have been given to us by God.

Covenant is always about promise, right?

All those who trust in his son, Jesus' blood represents

for us the ultimate insecurity

because it's sealed by a covenant.

His blood serves as the solid judicial basis

for our saving relationship with God.

It's his blood that does that.

His shed blood guarantees for us eternal life.

All these things are going on in the upper room that night.

So, I gotta be quick.

Just one or two final thoughts.

Again, today was just foundational.

I just wanna go through that story

so you can see the depth of it all

and to begin to understand it more.

Now we're gonna flesh that out over the next few weeks,

but just a few last thoughts.

John Chrysostom, known as the Golden,

was it the Golden Age?

Was it the golden throated preacher of the fourth century?

The best of his day.

He said, the celebration of the Lord's Supper

is the commemoration of the greatest blessing

that the world has ever enjoyed.

Do you believe that?

Do we believe that?

Do we live, I mean, do we live like we believe that?

That it's that important, that it's that sacred?

Take a closer look and see the infinite love of God

on display in giving Christ to us in this way,

broken and bleeding.

Broken and bleeding on the cross.

There is no greater possible expression of love

that you, my King, would die for me.

That's what it's all about.

That's what it was about in the Upper Room,

2,000 years ago.

That's what it's still about as we wait for him to return.

That you, my King, would die for me.

We bring no sacrifice to the dead.

We don't have anything to bring to him

that could win his favor.

We simply receive gifts from his hand

as he spiritually feeds and nourishes us at his table,

building us up, building us up through his great promises,

strengthening our faith, which is always so weak.

Guys, did you know that the Lord's table

is for those weak in faith,

so that he might nourish us and encourage us

and strengthen us there?

We'll get more into that later.

But how can our affections not be stirred up by this?

Maybe that's the question I wanna leave you with

this morning.

How can our affections not be stirred

by what Christ has done for us?

And the memorial that he's left us,

the ordinance, the sacrament,

whatever term you feel comfortable using,

that he has left that for us

to combine the preaching of the word

with the tangible touch of the sacrament.

How can our affections not be stirred?

Not just our intellect.

Don't get it wrong.

Not just, ooh, I mentally ascend to that.

That's really great.

Our affections.

Dare I say our emotions.

Can we say that in the church?

Our emotions.

Listen one last time to Thomas Watson.

He says, was Christ's body broken for us?

Let us then be affected with the great goodness of Christ.

Who can tread upon these hot coals and his heart not burn?

He who is not affected with this has a heart

harder than the stones.

Oh, with what reverence and devotion

should we address ourselves to these holy mysteries?

Guys, make plans to be with us over the next three weeks.

We're gonna continue on this journey

into both mystery and mercy as we look at communion.

Let's pray together.

Father, it's hard after looking at all that

to come to you and even have words.

To even have words to express how humbled we are

by your great gift to us, by Christ on the cross,

by your word preached,

by your word confirmed in the sacrament.

That you've not left us alone.

You've said you'll always be with us

and then you've given us this tangible sign as well

that we can lean into and be reassured of your promises

and be strengthened in faith.

Father, thank you for the spirit that you've sent

that as your son was ascended to heaven,

the spirit would come and live not just among us,

but in us so that we would always know

that you are present with us.

Leading us into truth, guiding us along our way.

Lord, you have been so gracious to us

and sometimes Lord, we take it for granted.

Father, we repent as a church family today

for taking it for granted,

for not understanding the sacred nature

of your sacrifice for us,

for not understanding the sacred nature

of what you've left for us.

So Father, may you work in this sermon series

over the next few weeks to realign us

in a way that we see you more clearly.

May you be glorified in our thoughts even today

as we process through this,

in our emotions and our affections as well.

Lord, it's all for your glory.

So we thank you for the opportunity

to now sing praises to your name.

Amen.