Matthew 26:17-20, 26-29: ”The Lord’s Supper”

and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Old Testament reading today is from the

book of Exodus

12:es

1 to 11.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the

land of Egypt, "This month shall be for

you the beginning of months. It shall be

the first month of the year for you.

Tell all the congregation of Israel that

on the 10th day of this month, every man

shall take a lamb according to their

father's houses, a lamb for the

household. And if the household is too

small for such a lamb, then he and his

nearest neighbor shall take according to

the number of persons, according to what

each can eat, you shall make your count

for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without

blemish. a male a year old. You may take

it from the sheep or from the goats, and

you shall keep it until the 14th day of

this month, when the whole assembly of

the congregation of Israel shall kill

their lambs at twilight.

Then they shall take some of the blood

and put it on the two doorposts of the

lentil of the houses in which they eat

it. They shall eat the flesh that night

roasted on the fire with unleavened

bread and bitter herbs. They shall eat

it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled

in water, but roasted its head with its

legs and its inner parts. And you shall

let none of it remain until the morning.

Anything that remains until the morning,

you shall burn. In this manner you shall

eat it with your belt fastened, your

sandals on your feet, and your staff in

your hand. And you shall eat it in

haste. It is the Lord's Passover.

Gospel reading today is from the book of

Matthew, chapter 26,

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

and uh two passages between verses 17

and 29.

Now on the first day of unleavened

bread, the disciples came to Jesus,

saying, "Where will you have us prepare

for you to eat the Passover?" He said,

"Go into the city to a certain man and

say to him, the teacher says, "My time

is at hand. I will keep the Passover at

your house with my disciples." And the

disciples did as Jesus had directed

them, and they prepared the Passover.

When it was evening, he reclined at

table with the twel.

Now as they were eating, Jesus took

bread and after blessing it, broke it

and gave it to the disciples and said,

"Take, eat. This is my body."

And he took a cup, and when he had given

thanks, he gave it to them, saying,

"Drink of it, all of you, for this is my

blood of the covenant, which is poured

out for many for the forgiveness of

sins. I tell you, I will not drink again

of the fruit of this vine until the day

when I drink it new with you in my

Father's Kingdom." This is the word of

the Lord.

Who are you?

Who are we?

At our best,

we are a community

assembled from people who would never

otherwise

belong together.

made one by mutual love for and

submission to our Lord.

We're meant to be living proof that

difference need not curdle into enmity,

but can be carried by love. Christ

himself called out this core distinctive

of his followers in John 13.

By this all people shall know you are my

disciples

if you have love for one another.

The church is to be different.

That difference is to be expressed in a

deliberate

sacrificial commitment

to the well-being of others who are also

committed to and sharing in such a

community.

just one of the expressions

of that

unifying love. One of the most important

is sharing the Lord's supper together.

Pray with me.

Father God, by your Holy Spirit living

in and among us, let this truth be found

to be living and active and celebrated

in Mountain View Church and among your

people in Colona and beyond.

Amen.

Although we're not going to be

celebrating the Lord's Supper this

morning, we're going to be looking at

it.

It's a vital topic

sometimes called communion that comes

from 1 Corinthians 10:16

1 Corinthians 10:16

the word quinineia

but you know we usually say fellowship

or community

and this is called communion sometimes

it's called the eukarist that's a good

valid name for it that comes from

another Greek word that means

thanksgiving

And sometimes it's called the Lord's

supper. And that too is from first

Corinthians.

Not going to be exhaustive, but we're

going to touch on some vital aspects

that [snorts] might be new to you

whether or not you consider yourself to

be a reformed Christian.

The supper is

covenantal.

It's part of a covenant. It's a

sacrament.

It is a gift.

It's a meal

and it is also esqueological.

Boy, there's a good big word for you.

This comes from the gospel coalition and

I think it's a very good

sort of brief statement of what we

believe

the Lord's supper of sacraments are. We

believe that baptism and the Lord's

supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus

himself.

The former baptism is connected with

entrance into the new covenant

community.

the latter, the Lord's Supper, with

ongoing covenant renewal. Together they

are simultaneously God's pledge to us,

divinely ordained means of grace, our

public vows of submission

to the once crucified and now

resurrected Christ and anticipations

of his return

and of the consummation of all things.

That's pretty good.

And we're going to be looking at that.

First of all,

when we share the Lord's supper

together, we are recalling and

celebrating a covenant.

That means God made a promise.

And the roots of that covenant go back

to what Mike read from Exodus 12. In the

final plague of Egypt, God sent the

angel of death to pass over the entire

land, killing the firstborn son of every

household and all livestock.

To escape the judgment, Israelites were

commanded to sacrifice an unblenmished

lamb for each household and to smear

blood from the sacrifice on the

doorposts of their homes.

When the angel of death saw a home with

sacrificial blood over its doorposts, he

passed over that home.

The blood turned away the judgment of

God from that home. During the Exodus,

God commanded Israel to commemorate

their flight and deliverance from Egypt

with a special meal. And they've done so

for centuries.

That's what Passover is.

For centuries, after that fearful night,

excuse me if I just read this, it keeps

me going and I don't ramble.

Faithful Jewish families ate the

Passover and explained the extraordinary

deliverance of God in the next

generation of Jewish to the next

generation of Jewish children. No doubt

Jesus' disciples had these things in

mind when Jesus instructed them to

prepare for the Passover.

During that Passover meal, Jesus recast

a centuries old Jewish religious meal,

the Passover, in terms of a new covenant

relationship with him accomplished by

his death, burial, and resurrection.

The synoptic gospels

all tell us this story.

Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22.

In 1 Corinthians 11:26,

1 Corinthians 11:26

for as often as you eat this bread and

drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's

death until he comes.

Paul warns the readers that participants

are like those who enter the witness box

to proclaim their absolute involvement

in and dependence upon the broken body

and shed blood of Christ as the basis of

salvation indeed of their salvation.

The giving of the broken body and the

blood on the one side and the receiving

of the cup and the bread on the other

side

ratify a twofold covenant pledge of

union with Christ.

This is from our confession of faith.

I'm not going to read all of it.

Sacraments are holy signs and seals of

the covenant of grace directly

instituted by God to represent Christ

and his benefits and to confirm our

connection to him.

Lord's supper is

it's it's part of a covenant.

It's sign and seal

sacraments. [snorts]

And there are two.

If we go back here for just a moment,

go down there to number two.

Whoop. Okay.

Not here. There are only two sacraments.

Baptism and the Lord's supper.

What are

these things? Well, they're signs and

they're seals.

Give you an idea of what that means.

The confession says that sacraments are

holy signs and seals of the covenant of

grace. There are only two sacraments

ordained by Christ our Lord in the

gospel, namely baptism and the Lord's

supper.

Another way of saying it

is that a sacrament is an action that

God designed

to sign or symbolize

and seal ratify a covenantal reality

God's promise that the power and grace

of God accomplished.

So, a sign and a seal are

there to remind us and assure us.

[snorts]

It symbolizes

and it puts a stamp on that promise.

It's a sign because it points to

something and it confirms it. That's a

seal. It's a gracious promise of God to

his people.

Sorry,

I did practice this. Honest.

Oh, I know where I am.

from the confession again. I'll just

read this.

Our Lord Jesus in the night in which he

was betrayed

instituted the sacrament of his body and

blood called the Lord's Supper to be

observed in his church up to the end of

the world for the purpose of the

perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice

of himself in his death. And I'll have

more to say about what remember means.

The sealing of all benefits of his death

to true believers,

their spiritual nourishment and growth

in him,

their further commitment in and to all

duties which they owe to him,

and to be a bond and pledge of their

communion with him and with each other

as members of his mystical body.

Very quickly here, I'm going to say that

we believe here at Mountain View and and

Emmery

is right in line with me on this as is

the confession.

When we celebrate the Lord's supper,

Christ is with us. He is using these

common

things. Little piece of bread,

little cup of grape juice

to symbolize something.

But not just symbolize.

He is giving himself

through this action of him giving these

things to us and us receiving them.

Taking this little bite to eat, a little

bit to drink. Jesus is saying that by my

Holy Spirit,

I'm giving you myself. You are united

with me.

Jesus is present. He is giving us

spiritual food

to nourish us, to strengthen us, to

sustain us. This is a real meal.

Yet, it points to something big

that's eventually going to come. But in

itself, we've got to get this aspect of

the spiritual reality of the Holy Spirit

giving us nourishment and strength

that keep us going

to keep us looking forward with hope.

I also want to point out very quickly,

and I'll use 1 Corinthians 11 here. I

could use a whole lot more.

Verses 27- 29.

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.

Every covenant that God makes

with his people

carries not just the blessings that the

covenant, the promise carries, it's got

another side of that coin

and that's a curse.

And I don't think I'd be faithful to the

word to the concept of covenant if I

didn't point that out.

So it's something to be aware of. We

can't take this in a just fashion and

go, "Oh, it doesn't mean anything to a

non-believer. It doesn't mean anything."

You will not get fed and nourished and

sustained.

That comes through faith. It comes

through the Holy Spirit, which a

non-believer cannot expect to happen.

And you are guilty of profaining

something that God has given that is

holy and is meant to be good for his

people.

I'm not going to dwell on that.

When we say

that we remember

the death of Christ, we remember his

life. We remember his resurrection.

We are proclaiming

something. That's the biblical word

proclaim.

Every time you do this, you proclaim

the Lord's death. You are witnessing

something.

You're preaching something.

Christ died

in eating the bread and drinking from

the cup. We're saying that Christ died

for me and I appropriate his death for

me. I take Christ as mine even as I take

and receive broken bread and wine poured

out.

God does this.

This isn't something that we discovered

and said, "Okay, God, come on in. Let's

do something together."

Very much the other way around. This is

a gift of God. Have you ever heard

somebody before celebrating the Lord's

supper say

the gifts of God

for the people of God. That's exactly

what it is.

We don't

deserve it. We don't earn it.

God gives and we receive.

This is a mystery. The whole thing.

How is that mystery accomplished?

Because of the Holy Spirit.

How

can we possibly

fit the greatness of what God's doing?

And when we think of it over such a

great distance,

not just physical distance,

but spiritual, moral distance

that we can't even begin to understand

and go, "Well, Ross, I

that's silly. What what what you're

saying is foolish."

No, it isn't.

Because this comes from God,

the Holy Spirit can cover that distance

at will,

every time, immediately,

and completely.

This is such a wonderful

truth to know.

But one of the things about this is that

it is a meal.

God takes these very common ordinary

things, bread, wine,

and says, "This is a meal.

Uh, are you kidding me? I'd starve on

this if I had to

No, it's not that kind of a meal. It's a

spiritual meal. The Holy Spirit is doing

this for us.

And it's very

real

that God nourishes and sustains and

strengthens us.

Quick comment here. A little bit of a

tangent. You're not going to get wine at

Mountain View. At least not yet.

Not until you

convince Session that we should be

having wine and not grape juice.

In case you wonder where that came from,

um

I even dug up the United Methodist Book

of Worship. I'll quote from it. Although

the historic and ecumenical Christian

practice has been to use wine, the use

of unfermented grape juice by the United

Methodist Church and its predecessors

since the late 19th century

expresses pastoral concern for

recovering alcoholics.

Legitimate concern

enables the participation of children

and youth.

weren't supposed to drink alcoholic

beverages

and they and supports the church's

witness of abstinence.

That was the Methodist church at the

time.

Dr. Thomas Welch

used fermentation to develop Dr. Welch's

unfermented wine.

We know it now as Welch's grape juice.

He was a dentist and he wasn't the one

that put it to market. He developed it,

but it was his son that made he made a

killing

by selling that grape juice.

Dr. Welch was a communion steward in a

Methodist church.

Actually, John Wesley liked wine.

He was the founder of the Methodist

church. This is from his journal of

September 9th, 1771.

He called wine one of the noblest

cordials in nature.

So if you want to start having wine,

which many reformed churches actually

do,

uh talk to your elders.

[laughter]

[gasps]

In this meal, we are nourished and

sustained and strengthened. Eating and

drinking

indicates the believer's union or

participation with Christ. Believers

appropriate the benefits of Jesus'

atoning work and rely upon the

continuing sustenance of Christ, the

bread of life.

And I will read from the institutes.

This is Papa John.

This is the wonderful exchange which out

of his measurless benevolence he has

made for us. that becoming son of man

with us, he has made us sons of God with

him. That by his descent to earth, he

has prepared an ascent to heaven for us.

That by taking on our mortality, he has

conferred his immortality upon us. that

accepting our weakness, he has

strengthened us by his power, that

receiving our poverty unto himself, he

has transferred his wealth to us, that

taking the weight of our iniquity upon

himself, which oppressed us, he has

clothed us with his righteousness.

[snorts]

the benefits of Christ and those are

renewed and transferred and strengthened

in us every time we celebrate the Lord's

supper together

individually

and as the church that is the way the

Lord's supper is to be understood

there's also the aspect of unity

when believers ers

eat the elements, bread and wine. They

signify their participation in the

crucified Christ together.

Additionally, the partaking of the

sacrament signifies the effect of

Christ's death in giving life and

strength to the soul as food and drink

sustain the body. Furthermore, just as

the sacrament

symbolizes the believer's union with

Christ, it also places a visible

difference between members of Christ's

church and the world. Did you get that?

When we celebrate the Lord's supper, we

celebrate our unity.

And that person on the other side of the

aisle that I can't stand

is my brother or my sister.

And we are one in Christ

also.

We are distinct and separate from in a

very real sense

from the world.

We are a distinct community. Sure, I'm

still a Canadian. I'm still a citizen. I

still live in Colona. I take part in

civic and political and social

activities.

But

in all those things [snorts]

I am also and I believe primarily

a citizen of the kingdom of God.

I am

not just a citizen. I am a beloved

son in that kingdom.

and you too are a son or a daughter in

that kingdom. The Lord's supper marks

that distinction

and it's something that we should take

seriously.

Okay. So, just who can take the Lord's

supper? Who's worthy?

John Kelvin describes worthy

participation in these terms.

This is the worthiness, the best and

only kind we can bring to God. To offer

our vileeness and our unworthiness to

him so that in his mercy we may be taken

as worthy. To despair in ourselves so

that we may be lifted up by him. To

accuse ourselves so that we may be

justified

by him.

Jesus Christ is there offered to us in

order that we may possess him and in him

all the fullness of grace which we can

desire and that herein we have a good

aid to confirm our consciences in the

faith which we ought to have in him.

This means in part that the Lord's

supper belongs to the weak Christian.

You don't have to come up to a certain

standard

of whether you're strong and joyful and

you can be a weak Christian. No one

comes to the table in unblenmished

worthiness or unddeminished strength. We

come to the table in need.

We come to the supper fresh from battles

with sin, discouragement,

unbelief the world.

We need to be fed again.

We need to receive the sustenance that

Christ affords.

By faith, we receive the nourishment we

need. As we embibe,

why did I write that word?

As we embibe the benefits of Christ,

his atoning work for sinners and

weaklings.

If you're a Christian,

have a meal. You need it.

going to say a couple other things.

Who can rightfully be in charge of

the supper? Who can administer the

supper and declare the words of

institution?

Who can serve the supper? I'm going to

say something here that might explain

that.

Jesus instituted two particular offices

in the church of elders and deacons.

Elders are to be and this is from 1

Timothy 3 and Titus 1 in the New

Testament.

Elders are supposed to be able to teach

and give instruction in sound doctrine.

They're set aside by the church to

teach, shepherd, oversee, and guard the

flock over which the Holy Spirit has

made them overseers.

Teaching, oversight

extend to the church's practice of the

sacraments

because they visibly portray the gospel.

The sacraments

teach.

Therefore, it's not a stretch to deduce

that when the church gathers, the one

who teaches the elders should normally

be the one to administer the sacraments.

When Paul rebuked the Corinthian

congregation for their divisive and even

drunken participation in the Lord's

supper, it was a failure of the church

as a whole. But it was certainly first a

failure of the elders whose job it was

to teach and guard.

The reformed church has always taken the

Lord's supper seriously.

It's a celebration, yes,

but it's also solemn.

It's dignified.

And because it is,

reformed churches

have among other things emphasized

educated clergy.

Emory

went to Regent College and studied with

some remarkable men.

And the way that he breaks the word open

for us and applies it to us comes from

study and learning.

He is a teaching elder.

I am a ruling elder. There's a

distinction. Emory has been trained

and ordained as a teaching elder. He

administers

the Lord's supper in this congregation.

Sometimes Todd Staithm has done so. His

father Jim Staithm has done so. They are

ordained teaching elders in the

Presbyterian church. And that protects

the dignity and the understanding,

the solemnity as well as celebration of

the Lord's supper. Historically, that

hasn't always been the case.

This happened because the Lord's supper

was not dignified or taken seriously

throughout history.

and

reformed churches said, "Hey, th this

has to be taken seriously."

And one of the ways to do it is

an educated, trained clergy.

Enough said there. I could go on about

history.

One of the things I'm a nerd about

seems that the New Testament,

although it does not tell us how often

we're to celebrate the Lord's supper,

it does indicate

that the early church in Acts

did it every time they gathered.

weekly. Anyway, that's indicated in Acts

2 and Acts 20

that when the church gathered on the

Lord's day,

they celebrated

with the Lord's supper. They shared the

meal

because they knew they needed the

nourishment and the strength.

Okay. The apostles died. What did the

early church do? Same thing. The early

church fathers talk about

just the commonality. They never ordered

it,

but they talked about the commonality of

coming together as the church on the

Lord's day

and sharing the meal, breaking bread.

And it wasn't just breaking bread, just

some kind of meal that we all sat down

and ate together. And

a definite article in certain places

distinguishes the Lord's supper from

just breaking bread together and having

a meal together. I could invite,

you know, Don and David over for supper

tonight. We could have meal and we have

broken bread together.

But often

that article, the

breaking of bread

set it apart. And when you read it in

context, and this is true in Acts two,

the breaking of bread

has to mean the Lord's supper.

it only makes sense in context.

And this continued

uh many of the reformers,

I've got a whole bunch of quotes here I

won't use,

but many of the reformers

went back to

weekly celebration. It's interesting

that Calvin wanted to do it weekly and

the town council said, "No, you're not

going to do that." So Calvin

submitted to the town council,

but he had the table

front and center

every Sunday, sort of

thumbming his nose at the town council,

saying, "You guys are wrong. We ought to

be doing this every Sunday. It's what he

wanted to do, although he didn't do it.

I I could name other guys like Martin

Buer that you've never heard of that

insisted on every week church gathers,

Lord's Supper. Why?

For all the reasons I've just said. And

the church needed it. They needed the

spiritual nourishment

that the Holy Spirit was willing and

waiting to give.

Okay? So if we celebrate it every week,

it's just going to become ordinary and

common and it just becomes something

that we do just do out of habit and it

loses its meaning.

I don't buy that.

We could say that. Okay, so you just

should only feed your family once in a

while.

Or

we don't need to pray so often. We don't

need to sing so often. Just becomes

ordinary and we take it for granted and

it loses its meaning. I don't buy that

argument.

The New Testament,

neither do the confessions, neither do

the reformers

give a directive.

They don't do it telling the church how

often the supper is to be observed.

But the witness taken as a whole assumes

a regular pattern of communion

as part of the church's ordinary

gathering. Now, I'm not going to say I

don't have the authority that we're

going to start doing this every week.

I'm just pointing out that

if we believe

as we are taught that the sacrament is

to nourish and strengthen and sustain,

that it is to unite us.

that it is to mark us separate from the

world.

Why are we not taking advantage of this?

There's something for you to think

about. And if you have

any thoughts on it or a real desire

about it, talk to your elders. The

session is the one that determines

what we do.

Okay,

just for you, I'm going to pass over a

whole bunch of quotes from reformers and

early church fathers and [laughter]

[sighs]

Jesus when he

changed

the Passover

in the upper room on the night before he

died [sighs] and said, "This is my body.

This is my blood.

Do this

until I come again.

I won't do this again with you. I won't

eat bread and drink wine with you like

this until we

do so in heaven. What was that pointing

to?

John tells us in Revelation 19

that the marriage supper of the lamb

is where we will

join a feast, a banquet

with Christ,

the head of the table. And we have that

to look forward to. And the Lord's

supper points forward to that

until I come.

My friend Glenn, who was a seminary

professor and a pastor in San Diego,

um

to tell you that he is a Christian

living in California should tell you all

he need to know about what he struggles

with sometimes with kids and grandkids.

said to me on the phone just a few days

ago, he said, "Ross,

the way things are going, I'm going to

start preaching on the last days."

And you know, I understood what he

meant. And I said, "Glenn, you do all

the time. Every time you have the Lord's

Supper,

you're preaching the last days." That's

what esquetology means.

final things.

And he you're right.

Every time we celebrate the Lord's

supper, we celebrate the hope of Jesus

coming again. And that's not empty hope.

He promised

and he's coming. Emory reminds us of

that often enough.

In the covenantal community,

the function of signs is not primarily

to express an inner experience or wish.

It is not a question of something

that is present representing something

that is absent or somehow making someone

present in one's mind like looking at a

picture.

It is not an object lesson or an

illustration.

When we remember

Christ's body and Christ's blood,

it's not just some distant memory that

we could make a drawing of. Recalling

the covenant is not simply recalling it

to mind. Rather, to remember the

covenant on the basis of the sign is to

acknowledge once again one's pledge.

That's what we're remembering. And for

God to remember his covenant is for him

to act in the present on the basis of

that past promise

in spite of the good reasons in the

present that God might have for doing

otherwise.

Unlike the pagan feasts which celebrated

natural cycles,

Israel's feasts solemnized a perpetual

present participation in the redemptive

events of the past and an expectation

of their fulfillment in the future.

We remember.

We anticipate.

This is our hope.

We've probably all heard the old joke

about the wife asking her husband,

"Honey, why don't you love me anymore?

You never tell me you love me anymore."

And the husband's answer

as he sits there with his nose in the

newspaper,

"I told you I loved you when I married

you. If I change my mind, I'll let you

know."

I made a silent pledge when I got

married that I would tell my wife that I

loved her every day for as long as the

Lord gave us together and mean it.

And I've come really close to keeping

that promise.

And I still do.

And I still mean it.

God does that

continually,

perfectly.

Every time the church, his bride, comes

together,

God reminds her that he loves her. Here,

here is my body.

Here is my blood.

This is my promise as sign and seal and

meal to love you forever.

While baptism represents a kind of I do

between Christ and his bride,

the supper repeats an I continue

statement of love from Jesus to his

church.

Communion reminds us that his love

endures

forever.

Let's pray.

Father God, we are people

who live by faith.

The reality

is there even if it is unseen.

The experience is based upon your

promise,

your word.

And you have given us physical tangible

signs

by which you stamp your kingly seal on

your promises to us.

Give us eyes to see, minds

to grasp and celebrate

the wonder

of your giving of yourself to us

as your people.

glorify yourself

and make us hungry

to know you

every day, every morning, every evening.

In Jesus, we ask this

and thank you for your Holy Spirit to

make this true. Amen.