The Lord’s Supper, More Often

But in the following instructions, I do not commend you, because when you come together,

it is not for the better, but for the worse.

For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions

among you, and I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you, in order that

those who are genuine among you may be recognised.

When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat.

For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal.

One goes hungry, another gets drunk.

What?

Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?

Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?

What shall I say to you?

Shall I commend you in this?

No, I will not.

For I have received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus Christ

on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it

and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also, he took the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant

in my blood.

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

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

he comes.

Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner

will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

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

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

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

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

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

along with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not

be for judgment.

About the other things, I will give you directions when I come.

May the Lord bless to us the reading of his word.

We just finished a series on Genesis chapter 1 and 2, and if there was one big thing from

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

that series we talked about most.

We learned that God made us for himself, and he made us because he wants to know us and

wants to have a deep and abiding relationship with us.

And so we finished that last week.

We'll come back to Genesis 3 in the new year, and next week Advent starts.

So we'll be looking from next week at Jesus, the wonderful counselor.

So we have one week, a standalone, and I wanted to come this week and talk about the fact

that we have increased the Lord's Supper here, so many of you will have noticed that we've

gone from once a month to twice a month in the Lord's Supper.

And so why?

Why did we do that?

Why have the elders decided to do that?

Another reason for coming this week to talk about the Lord's Supper is because Genesis

1 and 2 says we were made for a relationship with God, and when it comes to the Lord's

Supper, we call it communion.

So the Lord's Supper is this meal whereby we actually enter into a relationship with

God.

And so we're in a communing meal with God.

And so it's all about relationship from top to bottom.

If you struggle with bringing the confession you may have intellectually, that you believe

in God, that you believe in Christianity, in Jesus, that you follow Jesus, from your

head down into your heart.

If you struggle, do any of you struggle with experiencing in your life the emotional change

that belief in Jesus should bring?

If Jesus really does have you everlastingly, then what are we afraid of?

Do you struggle to bring the knowledge of God in your head down into your heart?

Do you struggle to see the deep change in your life that you want to see and you think,

you know, I've been a Christian for ever long and I've not really changed very much.

I don't feel like I have.

You need the Lord's Supper.

The Lord's Supper is the climactic event in Christian worship where you commune, you

have communion with the living God.

And it's so important for Christian spiritual formation.

It's one of the key pathways to change in your life from moving Christianity from the

head down into the heart.

And so we need it for all sorts of reasons.

In this passage that Donald read for us five times, the verb to come together is used.

It's translated in a couple different ways, so it doesn't always look like that.

And from that, we learn that the Lord's Supper, there's a coming together in it.

There's what other people have said is a union and a communion that takes place in the Lord's

Supper.

And so I want to think about that with you.

There are three ways that you have union and communion with God in the Lord's Supper.

And there's one way that you have union and communion with each other in the Lord's Supper.

Now before I jump into it, it would be, maybe you've looked at the bulletin already, you've

seen what's ahead.

And the answer is there is no Lord's Supper coming today.

Now it would have been incredibly sensible to have the Lord's Supper right after this.

But alas, the way the schedule has landed was out of my control, sort of.

We can't have the Lord's Supper today, we will have it next week.

So there's an opportunity to think about this passage and what we're going to talk about

today and come back, come back next week for the Lord's Supper.

This passage tells us first that when you come to the Lord's Table, it is because you

are being told by Jesus that you are united to His past.

That's the first thing.

Now Paul the apostle wrote this letter to the Corinthians and he was with the Corinthians

in the year 50 and 51 for 18 months, first century.

He's writing this in 54, a few years later, from the city of Ephesus.

And when he first went to Corinth, we learn in Acts, he was afraid of the Corinthians.

When he writes this letter, he's angry at the Corinthians and he's afraid of them and

angry at them for pretty much the same reason.

And that's because in Corinth, this city in Greece on the coast, it was incredibly commercial

in the first century, incredibly cosmopolitan.

And if you could describe it in one way, it would be today's stag do central.

It would be today what we call Las Vegas in the United States.

Okay, this is the place that you go to forget about everything else in your life.

It's a place to go and party.

It was absolute party central in the ancient world in the first century, Greco-Roman Empire.

There was a verb that was floating about in Greek, Corinth design, which means to live

like a Corinthian.

So you would use it as an insult.

You know, you would say, you're such a Corinth design.

It means you are not a saint.

That's what that verb means.

You are living in a way that is the opposite of saintly.

At the same time, in Corinth, there was a hill with a pagan temple, a temple to Aphrodite

at the very top.

And that temple to Aphrodite was one of the pinnacle places of worship to the Pantheon

in the Greco-Roman Empire.

And typically at that temple, we're told by tradition, extra biblical writers, that they

maintained 1000 cult prostitutes as part of the worship at that temple.

This city was a place of free sexuality.

And it would be what we would call today progressive, for lack of a better word, in every way.

And so people came here to essentially party.

It was a cosmopolitan center for the Greco-Roman Empire.

Now Paul says in this letter, the Corinthian church looked like the Corinthians.

That's what this letter is all about.

He says, you've been called out by Jesus, and yet the Corinthians look like Corinthians.

And in this letter, he says that they were pursuing idols.

This is the church pursuing idols.

There was public sexual scandals of all kinds within the bounds of God's people that weren't

being dealt with.

There was factions.

There was all sorts of extreme mess in the life of the church.

And the shock of this letter, as you open it up to chapter one, and Paul says, to the

church of God in Corinth, and then he calls them saints, called by God saints.

And then he lists all the mess that they were a part of.

And the first thing that we learned from that, especially as it pertains to the Lord's Supper,

is this.

Paul is not writing this letter condoning scandalous behavior or something like that.

No, he's writing to treat it and to deal with it in the context.

But the first thing we learned is that being a Christian, becoming a Christian, is not

merited by good behavior.

And that means also that being a Christian is not de-merited by bad behavior.

And if it was, the first people who would no longer be Christians are these people in

Corinth.

They were living current design lives.

And that's very important.

You see, all that it means to be a Christian is to come humbly and confess that you need

Jesus, faith in Christ.

That's it.

It's not merited by good behavior.

It's not de-merited by bad behavior.

And when you come to the Lord's Supper, that means, by way of preface, do not let your

bad behavior, your struggles with sin, keep you from the Lord's table.

Come to the Lord's table, sinner, people struggling.

And so you've got to understand 1 Corinthians 11 in the context of that reality.

And so the first thing that Paul says to us here is the Lord's Supper is for anybody,

anybody who believes, rests, trusts in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and

hope for eternal life.

Anybody, no matter what you've done.

And that leads us to what he says in verse 23.

So in verse 23, Jesus, Paul, I should say, says, I give to you what I first received,

what's of most importance.

And then in verse 24, he says, on the night, it says on the night that Jesus was betrayed,

he took bread, he broke it, and he gave it to his disciples and said, this is my body.

And then verse 25, on the same night, he took the cup, he poured the wine, and he said,

this cup is the new covenant in my blood poured for the forgiveness of your sins.

Jesus says, I give to you in this table, this Lord's Supper, this meal, what I received.

And that means that Paul is coming, not inventing anything.

He's coming and giving a tradition that Jesus established.

And that means that the first, one of the reasons we celebrate it more often and want

to is because Jesus gave this to us.

And that means it's mission critical.

It's ministry critical.

It's not something that the church created.

It's what Jesus gave to the church.

And then Paul says, on that night, he broke the bread, he poured the cup, and he said,

this is my body, this is my blood.

And so in that moment, when he says that, Jesus was connecting.

If you're a believer today, Jesus was pronouncing something over you.

When you come to the Lord's table, he is saying to you, you are connected, united to Jesus's

own past.

And you see what it says, he says, on the night he was betrayed, the night he was betrayed

was the Passover meal, the night of celebrating the Jewish Passover from the Old Testament.

And in that meal, it's a memory, a memorial of the fact that Israel were slaves in Egypt

for 400 years.

And God said to them, I am going to deliver you across the Red Sea.

I'm going to save you from your bondage.

And the Passover night was the night where he said, the angel of death is coming into

Egypt to bring death to every single household that deserves it, every single person that

is rebelled against God.

And that was everybody, Israel and Egypt both, everybody included.

And he said, and what you need to do to be saved is take the lamb, a lamb, and slay it

and pour the blood, cast the blood over the doorpost of your house.

And if you do that, death will pass by you, you will be covered.

And so that night, they had a meal together.

They broke bread.

They ate lamb.

Their doorposts were covered with the blood of the lamb.

And every single Israelite, that next day that passed through the Red Sea in the deliverance

that God brought would have said, last night I deserved death.

I'm a sinner deserving death, but I took shelter under the blood of the lamb.

And because of that, I was able to pass through and I've been freed from my bondage.

That's what they would have said.

And so every year they commemorated that with the Passover meal.

This moment that Jesus gave us was the Passover meal.

But on this night, he does something in the first century, quite frankly, that was actually

scandalous because every single year since then they had taken the bread.

The host would take the bread and said, this is the bread of affliction that reminds us

of our ancestors' bodies broken under the yoke of slavery in Egypt.

And Jesus says, no, this is not the bread of affliction of your ancestors.

This is my body.

And he took the cup and they would have said, and this is the cup, this wine, the cup of

festival joy because God has brought us across the Red Sea and delivered us.

And that night he said, no, this is not the cup of the Red Sea, not only this is the cup

of my blood.

He did something.

The third element in the Lord's Supper, the Passover meal, I should say, would be the

presenting of the lamb.

This is the lamb that was slain over the doorpost so that we could pass through death, that

we could pass through the waters of judgment.

But in this scenario when Jesus celebrated this meal, there was no lamb because the host

himself, Jesus Christ, standing there holding the bread, holding the wine, he was the lamb.

And he was saying that tomorrow when I go to the cross, my body will be broken.

My body will become the afflicted one, the lamb slain.

My blood will be poured to cover over what you deserve.

I am the lamb.

He is the fulfillment of the Passover.

He is the new Passover.

His very body became the lamb and his sacrifice were covered.

And so that means for you today, when you come to the Lord's table, what is the Lord's

table?

Very important.

The Lord's Supper is not first, is not first your pronouncement to God.

It's not first your pronouncement to God that you are worthy to come.

The Lord's Supper is not you coming and saying, because I have really, really, really, really

repented, and I really meant it.

I'm able to come today.

No, the Lord's Supper is God's meal.

He's the host where he pronounces over you, I have connected you to my past.

I have included you under the shelter of the blood of the lamb.

You see, the Lord's Supper is God's pronouncement over you, of what he's already done for you.

And so that means that if you follow Jesus, don't stay away wondering if you really, really,

really, really meant your repentance.

No, not at all.

Why more often?

Here's one reason why more often and I've got to move on.

We come every week and we pray, we sing, we read scripture, somebody gets up and talks

about it, usually me.

God speaks to us through his word, through hearing, but you're a human and you've got

four other senses, maybe more, I don't know.

And you not only need to hear the gospel preach, you need to see it, you need to taste it,

you need to touch it, you need to smell it.

And God says in the Lord's Supper, I want to give your entire body the experience of

the gospel.

And you say, when you come, think about the wine.

When you drink the wine in the Lord's Supper, at first it's bitter.

And the first touch at the taste, you know, I'm a real wine connoisseur.

I'm kidding, I'm not at all.

But I know that when we drink the wine here, some wine connoisseur will tell me I'm wrong

about this.

At first it's bitter.

And then it's because it's that you would taste the weight of your sin, but then it

becomes sweet so that you taste the victory that's been pronounced over you and Jesus.

Through spiritual formation, deep change, you need a full body experience of the Lord's

Supper, of the gospel.

And that's why we need the Lord's Supper more often.

Secondly, and I have to be fast today, not only are you united to Jesus in the past,

but you also, we're being told here, get to commune with Jesus in the present.

So when you come to the Lord's table, there's a promise here that you actually are meeting

with Jesus Christ in the present.

What does he say?

He says, this is my body.

Let me just camp out on that phrase for a moment.

There are different views about what that sentence means.

This is my body.

And there's really a spectrum with two extremes.

On the one side of the spectrum, the Roman Catholic Church comes and says that when the

minister, the priest in the church says this is my body and holds it up and breaks it,

the bread actually becomes the physical body of Jesus Christ broken.

Very literally the physical body of Jesus Christ.

And the question here is all about where's the power in the Lord's Supper?

And so for Roman Catholicism, the power is found in you actually eating the flesh of

Jesus Christ.

The book of Hebrews says that when Jesus Christ in the past went to the cross, he died the

once for all sacrifice for the forgiveness of all sins.

And that means that when you come to the Lord's table, Jesus does not need to be re-sacrificed

over and over again.

You know, if you're saying that the bread is his physical body broken every single time,

then all you're saying is that we actually kill Jesus over and over and over again.

But Hebrews says, no, Jesus was sacrificed once for all in the middle of history.

Where's the power in the Lord's Supper?

It's in what Jesus already did in the past.

It doesn't have to be done again here today.

Just think about it.

The night he was betrayed, Jesus stood up and he said, this is my body.

Did he mean that the bread was his literal physical body?

Where was his body that night?

It was standing right there.

Jesus physical body was in the room.

How could he have possibly meant that the bread was his physical body?

No, of course.

You see, if you locate the power in the physicality of the bread, then all you've done is said

that you need to sacrifice Jesus over and over again and you've turned the gospel into

the Old Testament Levitical system.

But on the flip side, some come and it says, do this in remembrance of me.

And they say, well, when Jesus says this is my body, do it in remembrance of me.

He's saying this is just about your memory.

It's just a memorial.

So this is an event where all we do is call you to remember the past through the bread

and the wine.

And if that's the case, if that's all it is, a mere memorial, let me ask you, where now

is the power of the Lord's Supper?

If you say that, where's the power?

It's in your ability to remember.

So if you're going to experience power in the Lord's Supper, then I just, it would simply

be to ask, did you really, really, really, really remember what Jesus is to you that

day?

See, instead you've located entirely in you.

And that means that neither of those options can be true.

It is a memory.

It is a memorial.

But in the chapter just before this, 1 Corinthians 10, 16, Paul says, when you come to the Lord's

Table, it is a participation in the body and blood of Jesus.

And that word there means communion.

And the church for centuries has said something that to our modern ears might sound extreme,

that when you come to the Lord's Supper and you come by faith in Jesus, you feed upon

Christ's body and blood.

That's what the Westminster Confession says.

How?

Not physically, no, not at all, but spiritually, because Jesus promises to be present here

in this place, in the act of the Lord's Supper, by the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is

omnipresent.

There's a unique, in other words, meeting with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit in

the Lord's Supper.

And we really do come and commune with God in a unique way in the moment that we celebrate

the Lord's Supper.

Now that means just a couple things, and we'll move to the third thing.

That means that the reason we need the Lord's Supper more often is because it trains us

to not be functional naturalists.

You know, if you're a Christian today, you come and you believe in the ubiquitous, the

omnipresent power of God, God everywhere.

God with you, the Holy Spirit with you, God's ability to come and meet with you uniquely

at worship.

But I think most of the time we function as functional naturalists.

We don't, do we really believe that?

That when you come to the Lord's table, you actually meet with God uniquely.

And so we could ask, if it's true that you have the opportunity in that climactic moment

of worship to meet with the living God, why wouldn't we do it more often?

What reason, what good reason could there be for not celebrating the Lord's Supper more

often?

So much of the New Testament scholars will say that when you come to this passage or

Acts chapter two, when it says in Acts two that the Christians, the first church were

meeting weekly and they were experiencing the breaking of bread, it means that they were

celebrating the Lord's Supper weekly at that time.

And we know from church history studies that celebrating less frequently did not happen

until after the year approximately about 300 AD.

The first several hundred years, it was almost definitely a weekly celebration.

And in that, John Calvin, one of the great reformers in his famous book, The Institutes,

in book four, he said at the end of the Reformation, it is time to recover the weekly practice

of the Lord's Supper.

And the only reason that the church in Geneva in France where he was, in Switzerland where

he was, did not celebrate it weekly was because the city council barred him from doing it,

the government actually told him he couldn't.

And so at the end of his life, he writes this, I hope those who come after me recover what

we've missed out on.

That's what he said.

Now, there's no chapter and verse prescription at all in the Bible for how often we celebrate

the Lord's Supper.

And so we've simply decided here to increase it monthly so that because we can commune

with the living God.

Thirdly, not only do we have union with Jesus in the past, communion with Jesus in the present,

but we're told here that we have union and communion with one another when we come to

the Lord's table.

So in context, 1 Corinthians 11, if you back up to verse 19 and 20, it says here, there

are factions among you, verse 20.

And when you come together because of those factions, it's not even the Lord's Supper

that you're eating.

Now, what's going on here is this.

Verse 18 uses the word in Greek schisma, that when they gather together, there is schism,

there's schismatics, they're divided between them.

They are eating the Lord's Supper clearly here weekly.

They're doing it in the context of a whole meal.

They're doing it in somebody's home, a patron who's clearly supporting the church somehow

and somebody that's wealthy.

And in the 1980s, archeologists went and uncovered a number of first century villas in Corinth,

in present day Corinth, and helped us understand a little bit more of what's going on here.

And that's in a first century villa in the Roman Empire, the dining room could typically

seat about nine to 12 people.

The table would have been low to the ground, 12, maybe a foot from the ground.

There would have been pillows all around.

So you reclined at the table.

If you can only get 12 people around the table, and the Lord's Supper was being celebrated

in a whole meal, what's happening here is the patron of the house is inviting the wealthiest

Christians in the church to come early to get a seat at the table.

And when the rest of the church comes, they come later, they are pushed out into the margins

of the house.

So they're in other rooms, not even getting to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

And he says here, what's happening is the wealthy Christians are getting there, the

patron supplying the food, they're getting drunk.

And so by the time church starts, everybody's drunk already, Corinth design, living like Corinthians.

And he says, there is such faction and schism among you that some of you wealthy people

are suppressing and oppressing the poor amongst you by pushing them to the margins in the

Lord's Supper, not even inviting them to the Lord's table.

There's a lawyer, a first century lawyer named Pliny the Younger.

And this is what he writes, he did a study on eating in the first century in Greco-Roman

households.

And this is what he writes.

He says, the best dishes are set in front of the host first.

And then a select few get the best dish with the host.

The cheap scraps of food are then put before the rest of the company.

The host even puts the wine into very small flask, divides the wine into three categories,

grades those categories and the people.

The top category for himself, the middle tier for the middle class, and the lesser for the

poor.

All of his friends would be graded prior to the event and the third is reserved sometimes

for the freed slaves.

Now this is what's happening.

They're taking the practices of the Greco-Roman Empire, grading people that comes to the Lord's

table and not giving any of it to the poorest people.

And in the midst of an honor and shame culture, they've turned the Lord's Supper into a status

symbol.

If you get to come sit at the table, it's because you deserve it.

It's because you're full of honor and respect.

And Paul comes and says, that is not the Lord's Supper you're eating.

It is evil.

You have desecrated the Lord's Supper.

And it's in that context that he comes and gives these warnings about judgment.

This is why some of you have even died.

You've experienced the discipline of God because you've taken what is good and you've turned

it into a status symbol and you've suppressed the poor in the midst of it.

And it's not the Lord's Supper at all that you eat.

Now look, if the Lord's Supper ever becomes a clique, a space where some are honored and

others shamed, a space where some people are told to come sit in special seating around

the table, the truly honored guest, then we've taken the Lord's Supper and we've turned

it into a merit, not a gospel.

We've taken it and we've said, the only way you can come to this meal is if you've earned

it.

If you're wealthy enough, if you're pretty enough, if you've got the status

enough, and he says it should never be that way.

If you've done that, it's not the Lord's Supper that you come and eat.

And he says instead we all need, sometimes when we celebrate the Lord's Supper in our

culture, everybody, I have a vantage point, I can see it.

Everybody tends to look down at their feet.

There's sort of this introspection happening that says, don't look at anybody.

Don't look at anybody.

Don't smile.

And actually what Paul is saying is that the Lord's Supper was originally celebrated in

a whole meal and you need to lift up your head and look around and see the people that

you're eating it with because you need them.

The rich need the poor, the poor need the rich.

Different races need one another.

We need people of different kinds all around us.

We need it at the Lord's Supper.

And so I've got to move to the close, but when it comes then therefore, when Paul says,

therefore examine yourself, what is he saying?

In the context, examine yourself lest you eat and drink judgment.

Let me say it like this.

If you are struggling with sin in your life, come to the Lord's table.

If you are struggling with doubt in your life, you need to come and eat and drink at the

Lord's table.

The Lord's table is for sinners who know they need the gospel.

The only time you don't come to the Lord's table is if as a Christian you are unrepentant

in a persistent lifestyle that is scandalizing the message of the gospel, that has turned

the message of the gospel into something that's meritorious.

If you are struggling, in other words, the Lord's Supper is not a reward for good behavior.

The Lord's Supper is not a reward for those who are really, really, really repentant and

really mean it.

Not at all.

The Lord's Supper is God's pronouncement over you, that you are united to the blood of the

Lamb, that you've taken shelter under the blood of the Lamb.

Think about it like this.

Look, this is not your meal.

It's the meal of Jesus.

And so if Jesus says to you, you are my son, you are my daughter, I have redeemed you,

who are you to refuse him?

Come to the table.

Don't let your culture stop you.

Come to the table.

Don't be so introspective, in other words.

Don't be so introspective that you treat the Lord's Supper as a meritorious work, or by

the only way you can come and eat is if you've truly become worthy.

You can never be worthy.

It's the pronouncement of the gospel over you.

Lastly, and we'll close to this.

We're told here very briefly that in verse 26, we celebrate the Lord's Supper until he

comes again.

And that means that not only in the Lord's Supper are we united to the Jesus of the past,

to his cross.

Do we commune with Christ in the present, but also that we're being pronounced united

to Jesus in the future too?

I can say this very quickly.

The Lord's Supper is part of a meal, and meals are fun.

Meals are celebratory.

In the Old Testament, the sacrifice would take place, and then there would be a celebratory

meal, a festival.

And the Lord's Supper is not an altar, it's not a sacrifice, it's not a funeral.

It's a celebration meal.

It's a pronouncement that God has already done it.

The work is already finished.

And that means that it's a shadow of Revelation 19.

So in Revelation 19, at the end of human history, we read these words, blessed are those who

are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

You can think about the wedding at Cana in the gospel, what a feast, what a time of joy.

You can think about, when the prodigal son came home, his father threw a feast for him,

and he turned to his elder brother and said, don't sulk in the corner all night.

Come and celebrate, come to the feast.

This is a time of joy and celebration.

The Lord's Supper looks forward to the moment where we will eat and feast and drink in the

marriage supper of the Lamb with Jesus Christ at the final banquet.

And that means that it is an act of celebration.

Jesus is not dead.

He's alive.

And so one writer puts it like this, when that day comes, the marriage supper of the

Lamb, the deepest longings of your heart, whatever they are, they will be completely satisfied.

And so what is this that we celebrate the Lord's Supper today?

He says, this is the hors d'oeuvres of your future bliss.

When you take the Lord's Supper, God is whispering to you, he is saying to you, I am unconditionally

committed to getting you from right now to there to the end.

So when you come to the Lord's Supper, it's the hors d'oeuvres of the marriage supper

of the Lamb that is to come, the entree one day.

And that means reverence, of course, yes.

But being overly introspective with funeral vibes, no.

Because this is the meal of resurrection.

This is the meal of celebration.

You can look up.

You can look at other people.

You can smile.

You can take joy in what God has done.

The prodigal son came home and he threw a feast.

And I'll close with this, just two thoughts and we'll finish.

A question may come up here.

I know it does quite often.

Does increasing the Lord's Supper then diminish the specialness of that meal, the celebration

of that meal?

Does it diminish that at all?

I would just simply say this, that the same could be said of the fact that we preach every

week.

We sing every week.

We pray every week.

But we never wonder if there's a diminishment in that of preaching or praying or singing

or anything like that.

But think about it like this is my favorite example that I heard in seminary.

If you're married, there are all sorts of covenant signs of love that you can show to

your spouse that reminds them, I love you and I'm for you.

One of those is you give your spouse a kiss when you leave the house in the morning to

go to work.

When you say, I love you.

Now if you say, you know, honey, I'm gonna, I've decided I'm gonna give you a kiss once

a year and tell you I love you once a year.

I'm gonna give you a kiss quarterly, you know, and tell you I love you to quarterly because

it will increase the specialness.

Try that and then you come back and you let me know.

No.

Look, there's no prescription in the Bible for how often to have the Lord's Supper.

But having the Lord's Supper more often doesn't diminish the specialness because it's God's

kiss.

It's the pronouncement.

I love you, I'm for you.

And just like with your spouse, your bride, your husband, it becomes greater the more

often.

And so we need to come and eat and drink at the table of Jesus.

And here's why.

Eating, eating was the pathway to life or death in the beginning of human history.

And Adam and Eve were put in the Garden of Eden, they were told, eat from the tree of

life but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But when they took and they ate, eating became the path of death, sin, disaster for us all.

And so it is no surprise, it is no surprise that taking, eating, and drinking have now

become the verbs of salvation to us.

But once were verbs of death have now become the verbs of life.

And in between, Jesus Christ had to taste, take, eat, and drink the poverty of utter death.

So that take, eat, and drink to you now are verbs of festival joy and salvation.

Let us pray.

Father, we thank you for the Lord's Supper and we ask, Lord, the next time we take it

and eat and drink that you would bring joy to our lives that we would hear the beautiful

pronouncement that we are your sons and daughters.

And so I pray also for those today who are not yet able to come and take the Lord's Supper

because they have not yet looked unto Christ for hope.

And I pray, Father, that you would reveal yourself, that you would show up, that you

would speak to all of us wherever we might be today and bring us ultimately into the

family of God to gather around the table of our Lord.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.