The Lord's Supper (Luke 22:14-23)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel-centered church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

And when the hour came, Jesus reclined at table, and the apostles with him.

And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this, divide it amongst yourselves, for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on this table.

For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.

And they began to question one another which of them it could be who was going to do this.

A dispute arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest.

And he said to them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors, but not so with you.

Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as the one who serves.

For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves?

Is it not the one who reclines at table?

But I am among you as the one who serves.

You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

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

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we gather this evening not in your absence, but in your presence.

And we thank you, Lord, that it is by your Holy Spirit that we commune with you, that we know you, that your word is illumined to us, that hope is kindled.

And Lord, it's through the ministry of your Holy Spirit that we know Good Friday leads to Easter Sunday.

So we pray, Lord, by your Holy Spirit, would you comfort our hearts with the hope of your gospel?

Speak to us through your word.

Comfort us at your table.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, I do have a question for us tonight, and it's not a rhetorical question, so if no one answers, it's going to be long, awkward pause here.

My question is this.

Since the get-go, since day one, since the very beginning, what has been essential to the church?

What can the church not do without?

The church wouldn't be the church if it didn't have.

Help me fill in some blanks here, folks.

Oh, someone read my sermon notes.

Thank you very much.

Let's toss out a couple of others.

Come on.

Love.

Service.

Leaders.

Worship.

Gospel.

Jesus.

All great answers, by the way.

No wrong answers.

There is a, if we're curious, if we're curious about what it is that's essential to the church, or if we were to, if we were curious enough to ask one of the earliest Christians, what can the church not do without?

I think they would have an answer for us.

And I actually think we find that answer in the book of Acts, which is the recording of the very earliest church.

What did they get up to?

In Acts chapter 2, shortly after the day of Pentecost, right, the Spirit descends and empowers the church for mission.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

In Acts chapter 2, 42, we read that the earliest believers devoted themselves to four things.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

They devoted themselves, number one, to the apostles' teaching, number two, to the fellowship, number three, to the breaking of bread, and number four, to the prayers.

Now I think every answer that was given tonight relates to at least one, if not more, of those four things.

The essential things that the church cannot do without.

And yet, I wonder if one stands out.

I wonder if one seems like the odd man out here.

At least in my experience of church, I grew up in the church, grew up going to Sunday school, grew up going Sunday for Sunday.

My experience of the church, my earliest members of the church, I should say, include the long sermons that the pastor would preach.

Not that pastors preach long sermons.

I recall the prayers and the many prayer groups and prayer times that we had.

And of course, I remember the fellowship.

I remember going to church with other Christians, and I remember other Christians always being a part of my life and the life of my family.

Those things, at least for me, make intuitive sense.

But there's that other one that kind of has a way of standing out: the breaking of the bread.

How does that fit in to the scheme of the early church?

How they understood what they understood to be absolutely essential to the church, we couldn't do without the breaking of the bread.

I mean, first off, I think we're talking more than just church potlucks here.

When we look at how Luke, the author of the book of Acts, uses the phrase the breaking of the bread, I think it becomes very clear what Luke has in mind.

We read from the Gospel of Luke, the same author, in our gospel reading this evening.

And what we read is Jesus took bread and he broke it with his disciples.

We're talking about the Lord's Supper when we talk about the breaking of the bread.

Or we could call it Holy Communion or the Eucharist, or some Christians call it Mass, and all of these things describe a certain aspect of what it is that we mean by the Lord's Supper.

What's the big deal with the Lord's Supper?

Why is breaking of the bread not important to the church, but it seems to be essential to the church?

What makes it so essential?

See, in its teaching and its fellowship and its prayer, the church proclaims Christ as Savior, and we're here to proclaim the true and life-giving word of Jesus here at Newsong.

We're carrying out part of what it means to be the church together.

And in our teaching and our fellowship and our prayer, as we proclaim Christ the Savior, we find that in the breaking of the bread and the Lord's Supper, the church also has a proclamation to make.

We also proclaim Christ is the Savior.

We proclaim Christ as we partake in Christ.

See, it's in the Lord's Supper we proclaim Christ as Savior by partaking of Christ the Savior.

One Puritan pastor named Thomas Watson writes this of the Lord's Supper.

He writes, The Lord's Supper, the sacrament, is a visible sermon.

The word is a trumpet to proclaim Christ, the sacrament is a glass to represent him.

In other words, word and sacrament go together.

They partner together to proclaim Christ to us and through us.

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

Proclamation and partaking.

They go together at the Lord's Supper.

And what is it that we're proclaiming?

What's the sermon that the Lord's Supper has for us, this visual sermon that we take in?

It's at least this.

The Lord's Supper proclaims that we have been saved by Christ, and the Lord's Supper proclaims that we will be saved by Christ.

Salvation accomplished, salvation yet fully realized.

Already, not yet.

That's what the Lord's Supper is proclaiming to us.

Where we've been and where we're going, all in Christ.

So tonight I want us in our time together to consider the significance of the Lord's Supper, which I think is important to consider.

Not only because it's listed, of course, these essential four things that belong to the church, but because we spend a lot of time in our service celebrating the Lord's Supper, don't we?

Not every church does that, and of course it's not a matter of sin and salvation how frequently you celebrate the Lord's Supper, but at least ours chooses to do it, well, often.

We should probably know why.

I'd like for us to understand the significance of the Lord's Supper, but even more than that, I'd like us to understand what it means to be participants of the Lord's Supper, to partake of Christ in the supper.

Because what I'd like for all of us to see in the scriptures, what ministers to my heart and what I long to minister to see minister to your heart is the comfort and the assurance of the gospel that we find at the Lord's table.

That's what I want us to find tonight.

We proclaim Christ as we partake of Christ.

So what's the Lord's Supper saying to us?

It's saying, number one, we have been saved by Christ.

Luke's Gospel, chapter 22, verse 14.

When the hour had come, by the way, Luke doesn't mean like 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock, right?

The hour he's talking about is the cross.

Jesus knows exactly what the next day looks like for him, right?

And we're at the foot of the cross here.

The hour has come.

And Jesus reclined at table, and the apostles with him, and he said to the apostles, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

For I tell you I will not eat it, this Passover, until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

So notice that there's a backward-lookingness to the Lord's Supper, to the institution of the Lord's Supper, which is exactly what we're reading about in Luke 22.

Jesus is celebrating with his disciples this meal called the Passover.

Jesus is not just saying, hey, let's try this nifty new thing called Holy Communion.

They're celebrating an important and sacred meal.

And the question we probably want to ask is, well, what is the Passover?

And that, of course, takes us to our Acts, pardon me, our Exodus chapter 12 reading from earlier.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

That's not an accident.

God's people have been enslaved in Egypt for over 400 years.

They have been in bondage, they've been oppressed, they've experienced all sorts of cruelty, and they are not free.

But God has committed himself to do a miraculous saving act to bring them out of Egypt and into his promised land.

They will be the recipients, the beneficiaries of God's promise, his salvation, his deliverance.

And to show his power and to show himself greater than Pharaoh, God has sent at this point nine plagues to Exodus, or pardon me, to Egypt, and we're waiting for that tenth and final terrible plague, where God will send his destroying angel to take the life of every firstborn in the land.

But notice, by the way, that's not just the firstborn of the Egyptians, Egyptians, as though, you know, those are the bad guys.

Go get them.

And it's not as though God doesn't know where the Egyptians live and where the Israelites live either.

We all of us stand under God's judgment.

And we all of us deserve God's judgment.

That's at least part of what's being conveyed in this text here.

But God supplies a means of salvation.

God offers a way of deliverance.

And it's salvation through substitution.

That's what the Passover meal is all about.

The Israelites are going to take this lamb and they're going to cook this lamb.

They're going to consume this lamb and they're going to take its blood and put it on their doorposts.

And there's nothing magical about this lamb.

It's simply the means that God has chosen as their deliverance.

Putting their faith in God as their deliverer means we're going to follow through on what God is asking us to do.

And this lamb, partaking of this lamb, is as though they're consuming God's own promise for themselves.

And so he'll see the blood.

And he will pass his judgment over them.

That's why it's called Passover.

And this is instituted as an annual celebration where a lamb is cooked and eaten, where its blood is spilt, to remind God's people that God always provides a means of salvation.

Salvation through substitution.

And this logic, the logic of the Passover, is the same logic we find here in Luke 22, where Jesus is celebrating the Passover with his disciples.

But rather than simply partaking in any old lamb, present with them is the Lamb, the greatest sacrifice, the ultimate, unblemished sacrifice that takes away all the sin of the world.

See, Jesus takes this Passover meal that has pointed forward to God's ultimate act of salvation to come, and now he is re-centering it on himself.

He is saying, I am the means of substitution.

I am your salvation.

That's what the Holy Communion meal, that's what the Lord's Supper is all about.

It is our Christian Passover.

Because we who are in Christ know that He has taken our judgment on himself and bored away on the cross.

This is our Passover meal.

Salvation through substitution.

We have been saved by Christ.

That's what the Lord's Supper is telling us.

And that is past tense.

As accomplished as the cross is, so too is accomplished our salvation.

There's nothing more we can add to it, there is nothing we can take away from it.

The Lord's Supper reminds us that Jesus has paid it all.

All to him we owe.

We have been saved by Christ.

Past tense, full stop.

But let's notice this.

Even while the Lord's Supper witnesses to us that we have been saved by Christ, this is our Christian Passover, there is nevertheless baked in a future dimension to it, isn't there?

I wonder if you notice that.

Verse 16.

I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

There is a not-yetness to the Lord's Supper, isn't there?

It's yet to be fully realized.

It's yet to be fulfilled.

So the Lord's Supper is telling us, yes, we've been saved by Christ, but it's also bearing witness we will be saved by Christ.

The fullness of our salvation is yet to be realized.

So verse 17, Jesus took a cup, and when he'd given thanks, he said, Take this, divide it amongst yourselves.

For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

Verse 16 and 18 alike, until the kingdom of God.

Well, what's the kingdom of God about?

The kingdom of God is.

Christ who has crucified and bore away our sin is Christ who is risen to new and everlasting life and offers us a share in his resurrection life by faith.

Christ who is risen will return, and he will return in glory.

And when he returns, all evil will be answered, all wrong will be undone, everything sad will come untrue, is what Sam Wise Gamgee has to say in Lord of the Rings.

Creation will be renewed.

And Christ will reign forever and ever.

Hallelujah.

The kingdom of God is Christ's, the risen Christ's reign over everything.

And just as Paul reminds us that we proclaim Christ's death until he comes, the Lord's Supper points us forward to that day when he will return.

And we will feast with him fully, completely, gloriously, in his kingdom.

And just like the Bible uses this image of a lamb to point us to the reality that our salvation has been accomplished, Scripture points to this image, has an image in mind for salvation yet fully realized, this current sense of anticipation we have for what's to come.

And the image is this.

Maybe it surprises us.

It's the image of a bride and a bridegroom.

Salvation yet to come is as if the bridegroom is ready and waiting and returning for his bride.

We see this most vividly, the sense, this future tense of the Lord's Supper in Revelation chapter 19.

Revelation 19 · chapter mention

Revelation, the final book of the Bible, the final chapters of the final book of the Bible.

John is on exile and in exile on Patmos, and he's having this extended and dense and symbolic vision of what's to come.

And the bottom line is this, by the way, Jesus wins.

Don't let any YouTuber give you anxiety about Revelation.

Jesus wins.

And so John at this point has seen all evil vanquished, and everything that opposes God's good will has been answered.

And now in Revelation 19, John sees this.

Then I heard what seemed to be a voice of a great multitude crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.

Kingdom come, kingdom accomplished, heaven meets earth.

So let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory.

Why?

Here's John's answer.

For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready.

It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, that is to John, write this blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

A marriage supper between the bride and the bridegroom.

That's the salvation we're waiting for.

It's an image.

It's an image that is meant to communicate that our salvation fully realized is an eternal, everlasting, life-giving, covenant union of joy, of happiness.

You know, one of the questions I was asked most frequently as a youth pastor by my seventh graders was this Is heaven going to be boring?

And that's an honest question to ask when you're like in seventh grade and trying to think about it, because you're like, they're like, I really like hockey, but like if I only ever played hockey, like that would get kind of boring, you know?

And that's a pretty deep theological question when you're 14.

Heaven can be no more boring than can being in love be boring?

Let's put it that way.

It will be an everlasting union of the bride with the bridegroom.

That's the picture here.

So a little bit we need to see what's going on here in Luke 22 because it's maybe we see The Passover imagery at first glance, but this one, I gotta be honest, this one evaded me for a little while, but once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Now, when I got married, or pardon me, when I got engaged to Rachel, you know, I did the classic thing.

I clunked my way through a song on the piano, you know, and then I got down on one knee, and and then of course I asked, Will you marry me?

And then Rachel, you know, surprised, you know, might be surprised to hear, said, Yes.

And at that moment she became my ex-girlfriend, right?

Because that's how it works, right?

Your ex-girlfriend, now your fiance, now she's my ex-fiance, right?

That's how it works.

If Rachel and I, let's say, weren't living in 21st century Canada, but were instead living in first century Judea, that engagement, that betrothal would look a little different.

Instead of getting down on one knee and offering Rachel a ring, which she would either accept or, you know, politely reject, instead I would have a chalice.

I'd fill it with wine.

I would take a drink, and then I'd offer it to Rachel.

And if she were to accept my proposal, she would take the chalice and she would drink.

And now we're betrothed.

And that's as close to getting married as you can be without being married.

But now it's my job to go and prepare.

I, the groom, have to leave, and I gotta go prepare a place for us to live.

I have to go prepare a room in which we'll live.

The bridegroom has to go away, but eventually the bridegroom will return for his bride, and they'll be wed and live together for the rest of their lives.

Do you see the imagery now?

What's happening up here in the upper room?

Jesus is taking the Passover meal, yes, and recentering on himself, but he's also taking this recentered Passover meal and turning it into something of a theological betrothal.

He is pledging himself to his church, to his people, by way of his apostles.

He is taking a drink of wine and offering it to them.

And that's, by the way, why he says, I'll not drink of it again until I drink it with you in my father's kingdom.

The bridegroom has to go and prepare a place so that he can return for his bride.

And the next time Jesus drinks from that chalice will be with his people in his everlasting kingdom.

That's the imagery here.

It's a marriage meal.

One theologian named Carl Barth says that the Lord's Supper is not primarily a mourning or funeral meal, but the anticipation of the marriage feast of the Lamb.

The supper is a joyous meal.

We are guests at his table, and so no longer separated from himself.

Since we may receive the testimony of the Lord's Supper, we already live here and now in anticipation of the Eschaton, that is to say, the coming of the kingdom, when God will be all in all.

So I hope we see something of the big deal of the Lord's Supper.

When we come to this table, it's telling us at least two things.

It's a visible sermon that's telling us that we have been saved by Christ.

This is our Passover meal, and as surely as Jesus has borne away our sins on the cross, we are saved through Him.

And it is telling us that we will be saved through Christ.

That the fullness of our salvation is yet to come, and it will come when our bridegroom returns for us, and we will feast with him forever.

So here we are, right in the present, aren't we?

Between salvation accomplished and salvation yet to be fully realized.

And we come to this table not in the Lord's absence, but in his presence.

Evelyn Underhill writes that in the Eucharist, Christ gives not only his grace, as if that's something you know you can separate from Christ.

He gives himself.

That's what Jesus gives us at this table.

And so what does that mean for us who want to come and partake this, partake of this salvation meal?

It means we should come to this table with preparation.

We should prepare our hearts to receive the gift that we're going to receive here.

We should prepare our hearts with self-examination.

Do I presume upon God's grace in Christ?

Do I know that my life in some way is out of step with the commands that He has given me to do?

I am out of step with His loving and good commands for me.

And perhaps I just haven't cared.

This is our opportunity to repent and to ask forgiveness, knowing that God in Christ is eager to forgive our sins.

We should examine our hearts, confess our sins, make amends to our neighbor if need be.

If we know that we have done someone wrong, we should go to make amends first and then come to fellowship with Christ and one another at this table.

We should prepare to partake of the Lord's Supper.

But we should come and partake with preparation and with confidence.

If the only application I said is we got to prepare, then I betcha, if you're as anything as neurotic as I am, you will only ever be preparing.

You know what I mean?

Because on this side of eternity, I don't think you or I will ever be without sin.

And if the condition of coming to the Lord's Supper was you got to deal with your sin, you gotta deal with it 100%, we will probably never come, will we?

We come with confidence, not in ourselves, not because we, you know, nailed the Christian life this past week.

We come with confidence in Christ, who has done for us what we could not do for ourselves, who has borne away our sin, and in his resurrection offers us this gift of everlasting life.

J.C.

Ryle writes, we must not be discouraged from going to the Lord's table because of our sense of unworthiness.

The very fact we feel unworthy is one of the best evidences that we have truly prepared.

We come with preparation, we prepare our hearts, we come with confidence, not in ourselves, but in Christ.

And therefore we come with gratitude for this gift of our salvation, salvation accomplished, and salvation that will be fully realized.

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

Can I conclude with a prayer?

I'm just gonna get real old school real, by the way.

This is my old prayer book.

So I hope you'll forgive me that.

But I figure this prayer.

This is a prayer for preparing for communion, and I thought this would be an appropriate way for us to center our hearts.

Let's pray.

Oh Lord Jesus Christ, who hast ordained this holy sacrament to be a pledge of thy love and a continual remembrance of thy passion, grant that we, who partake thereof in faith, may grow up into thee in all things until we come to thy eternal joy, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest, one God, world without end.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.