Eating A Meal With Christ - John 6:25-71

The passage we have set before us is very difficult indeed because in verse 52 we get kind of towards the end of this teaching.

The Jews begin to dispute among themselves saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?

I mean, they are perceiving that Jesus is talking about cannibalism.

It's a very shocking teaching.

And you would think Jesus is to say, hey, wait, that's not what I mean.

I'm not teaching cannibalism.

That you would think that he would, knowing what they're thinking, he would suppress that misconception.

But rather in verse 53 he says, truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood as eternal life, and I'll raise him up on the last day.

For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

What does it mean by that?

Well, I have four questions that we want to answer today with one in particular.

That's the main question.

The first question is after the resurrection of Jesus, his physical body rose from the grave.

The woman Mary Magdalene came and clung to him, started hugging him.

I can imagine she's just so excited and just begin to hug on him.

And you and I would want to do the same.

We would want to cling to his body.

We thought he was dead.

Now he's resurrected.

So the question is, why did Jesus rebuke Mary?

She said, quit clinging to me.

Don't cling to me.

For I haven't yet gone to the Father.

I will go to the Father and I'll send my spirit to you.

Why was he saying, don't look to my physical flesh.

Don't cling to my flesh, to my body.

So that's one question to consider.

Second question, what did Jesus mean when he says, my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed.

And unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you will not have eternal life.

What does that mean?

Christ teach cannibalism.

So hard question.

I mean, it's we say, no, of course you didn't teach cannibalism, but what does that text mean?

Then why is he saying it that way?

Third question, this is for you to examine your heart.

What would you do if you knew the Lord Jesus in his physical flesh?

You know, if he said he's going to show up at church next week, he's going to be here.

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He's going to be here.

How would that change your thinking and your plans?

What if you had a scheduled vacation for next weekend?

Would that change your vacation?

I mean, even if you had the most amazing vacation planned and you was going to go somewhere exotic and you've been planning for years, but you all of a sudden found out that the Lord Jesus was going to show up.

Now this is not his second coming, so I know this is hypothetical, but just pretend hypothetically that Jesus made physical visits to churches during these this time between the first and second appearing and he was physically, literally going to come and sit in one of our chairs and worship with us or maybe even teach preach for us.

What would you do?

I'd tell you probably what you would do.

You would cancel your vacation.

You would be here.

You would be here and you would probably tell everybody to come.

You would want everyone to be here, right?

Probably.

But if I said, hey, we're going to do the Lord supper next week, you probably wouldn't let that affect you at all.

And you're thinking.

If I said the Lord was going to be with us next week, the Lord Jesus is promised to be with us next week.

In the Lord's table, you may or may not even be moved by that.

That leads me to the fourth question that we want to answer.

And this is the main question.

This is the question we'll spend our time trying to answer.

In what ways or how is Jesus present in the Lord's supper?

We say he is going to be with us.

He's going to have communion with us and we're going to have communion with Christ.

But in what ways do we actually have communion and fellowship?

In what ways is Christ present with us?

Now on that question, there's three basic answers or possible solutions.

One you have the mainline Catholic and even Lutheran position that Christ is physically present at the table.

We eat the physical body of Christ and drink his physical blood.

That's what many, many professing Christians believe.

The second option is that Christ is not physically present with us, but that he's mentally or conceptually present.

The fact that we believe the Lord's supper is a memorial.

It's a time to remember the death of Christ as when you visit a World War II monument that commemorates or moralizes all those who have died in a particular battle.

So imagine going to, even in Faulkner County at the courthouse, there is a World War II monument.

It's got names on it and it represents those who have died in Faulkner County in World War II.

You go and look at that and you see the monument, the stone with the names sketched in there.

You go, okay, I know that these dead bodies are not here physically, but this symbolizes their life and sacrifice and their death.

Conceptually I can remember them and they become present to me in my mind.

I remember them so they're present in my thinking.

Conceptually they become close to me or near me.

Then the third position is the position I'm going to try to present to you, that Christ is spiritually present where we by faith can experience Christ.

The Spirit of Christ comes to us and personally is present and communes with us, in us and among us.

Now, I want you to think about this.

Do you believe that we're having communion service and I'm going to incorporate the communion into this sermon?

And so we all hopefully we have the elements and our hands are close by.

Do you believe what we're about to partake of, that we're going to actually be in the presence of Jesus Christ?

Do you believe that?

That Jesus Christ is not physically going to appear here, but he's really in all actuality objectively, not just us pretending in this kind of memorialized fashion that we can remember something that happened 2000 years ago and thus we can recall his death and bring that to our mind.

That can happen for believers and unbelievers can participate in that form of conceptual presence of Christ.

But for those who believe, for those who know the Lord who has faith, that Christ will be here or is here with us.

Do you believe that?

Well, that's what I'm going to try to present to us.

But first we're going to try to rule out the fact that Christ is not physically present.

When he says, truly, truly, I say to you in verse 53, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Verse 54, whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I'll raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

Now the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans take these verses and they use it as their proof text, as their their scriptural warrant to claim that Christ is physically present in the elements of the Eucharist or the or the Lord's table.

And the Roman Catholics, their position is what was known as the transubstantiation.

The word transubstantiation just simply means to change.

It's kind of like a a callipular changing, a metamorphizing or being converted from one substance to another substance.

So they believe with the utterance of the words of consecration, this is my body, which in Latin reads hocus corpus magum.

With these Latin words, the physical elements, the substance of the bread and the substance of the wine are changed, transformed, converted into the very substance of Christ and the substance of his body and blood.

Now this was first taught somewhat by Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century, but it wasn't really canonized until the fourth Lateran Council of 1215.

But it was my favorite theologian, Thomas Aquinas, that explained it and he used Aristotelian logic to help him to say that there's difference between substance and what he called accidents.

Now think about the substance of my son Martin is something deep within him that maybe we cannot perceive or understand or be able to sense.

But the accidents are his hair color, his height, a baby face.

These accidents, these things that we can see about little Martin, changes as he grows older and matures.

The color of his hair changes.

The texture of his hair may change.

His facial looks change and all these things change about Martin.

But his substance is the same.

It's the same boy.

It's the same person.

He goes from a boy to a teenager to a man and to an old man, but it's the same substance.

But all the accidents, what we see and identify him with, are always changing.

And so Thomas Aquinas is saying here the substance, which is something you can't see is undiscernable, imperceptible qualities.

These things don't change, but the substance change.

So it's kind of like a double miracle.

So double miracle in the Eucharist, according to the Catholic Church.

You have like this pulpit.

It looks like wood.

It has all the accidents of a wooden pulpit, but through the magic words of hocus pocus, it changes into, let's say, gold.

It becomes solid gold.

The substance is gold.

And it's a double miracle because this can't come to gold, but God can turn this into gold.

And it happens to still look like wood.

It has the weight of wood.

It has all the discernible elements and properties of wood, but somehow we have to believe it is gold.

Now that's what they believe.

It looks like wine.

It looks like bread, but we must believe it's the actual literal, physical body of Jesus Christ.

It's His actual blood.

Now Zola had a lot of reasons that's hard to believe.

The Lutheran position, Martin Luther, held to something similar.

His position was what we're known as the consubstantiation.

And consubstantiation, that word means not to change substance, but something that comes alongside of or coexist.

Something that is attached to.

So Luther said the wine doesn't change.

It stays wine, both in substance and in accidents.

It looks like wine and it still is wine.

It looks like bread.

It remains bread.

Okay, we're not going to try to pretend like they've changed when they're not.

They're actually to stay the same.

However, Jesus said, this is my body.

And He must have been literally saying that.

He must have been, that must have been the, his belief that it's really his body.

So Luther says the physical body of Jesus is attached or comes alongside.

And in fact, the Lutherans would say the body and blood of Christ is with and in the elements where, well, don't ask that question, but just believe that the physical body of Christ is in these elements.

And when you partake of these elements, you're actually physically eating and drinking the body of Christ.

So here we see that this was some form of belief and cannibalism where you eat God and in some sense take on His properties.

You're nourished, you're spiritually obtained like by physically eating the life of Christ.

And His body and His blood.

Now is this what Jesus is teaching?

And they get these doctrine, they get both of these teachings from our passage, from this passage here set before us.

But is this what Jesus is teaching?

It does seem like that at first glance.

In fact, we see that the crowds left Jesus because they couldn't receive this teaching.

So the crowds thought this is what Jesus was teaching and Jesus basically leaves them in their deception.

He leaves them to think that He's teaching cannibalism.

But for us to understand this passage, and it's a very difficult passage, we need to understand the problems.

The reason why these pseudo-disciples, the crowd, misunderstood Jesus.

They were bound to misunderstand Him and there's several reasons why they could not help but misunderstand Jesus.

One, they were seeking Jesus for the wrong reasons.

Now we've got to understand that this bread of life discourse happened after He fed 5,000 people.

In fact, these same people were the people that were with Christ.

I'm not 100% sure it's the whole 5,000, but there was a group of men that were seeking to make Jesus king by force.

Remember He fed 5,000 and Jesus sent His disciples to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

You go on before Me.

He fled into the wilderness alone to pray and to flee the crowds, taking Him to make Him king by force.

So He flees.

He doesn't want to be an earthly king.

He doesn't want to be their hero that overcome the Roman Empire.

He wasn't interested in overcoming Rome.

Again, He's interested in overcoming Satan.

But these Jews had a misconception and they wanted Christ for the wrong reasons.

They wanted Christ to help them meet their physical objectives.

And so they begin to look for Christ.

Christ comes and He meets the disciples on the Sea of Galilee and that's where Peter tries to walk on water.

And after that, the next day they come back to Capernaum and Jesus finds Himself at the synagogue and here these Jews finally find Him and He begins to say, you're seeking Me, you're coming to Me, you're looking for Me because I fed you, that I filled your belly and now you want more food.

You're coming to Me not because you think that you can have spiritual life.

It's not because you're interested in forgiveness of sin.

You're coming to Me because you want the dream of having prosperity.

You're looking for Me for the wrong reasons.

He said that in verse 25 and 26.

26 says, truly, truly I said to you, you're seeking Me not because you saw signs, because you ate your fill of the lobes.

And so Jesus seeks to correct their thinking.

Look at verse 27.

Do not work for food that perishes.

You're coming to Me for the wrong reasons, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, for on Him God the Father has set His seal.

Don't seek the food, don't seek the gift, seek the giver.

Don't seek food that perishes, seek the food that will give you eternal life.

Seek Me, come to Me, look to Me, you're just wanting My gifts.

And some of you here may be coming to church only because you want what God can provide you.

You're not seeking God, you're not seeking Christ.

And if you're coming to God in that way, you're going to fundamentally misunderstand the Scriptures.

And this is the problem of these Jews.

They can't comprehend what Jesus is saying because they're thinking horribly, they're thinking physically, they're thinking in the wrong direction.

So that's the first thing we have to understand.

The second problem that they have is that they simply did not believe Christ.

Look at verse 28.

Then they said to Him, what must we do to be doing the works of God?

Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe on Him.

So this is it, this is a key thing, like what must we do?

Well believe on Me.

Believe on the one who God has sent.

You know you're seeking Me for the wrong reason, well what must we do?

Well believe Me.

But to Me, not to the bread, but to Me.

But look at verse 30 and 31, they proved that they did not believe.

So they said to Him, this is amazing.

I mean they just watched 5,000 people get fed and some loaves being multiplied.

They just got through that the day before.

So they said to Him, then what sign will you do?

Like okay, if I don't believe in you, you're going to have to do so.

So that we may see and believe you.

What work do you perform?

He says, our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written and He gave them bread to eat, from heaven to eat.

So it's like hey, Moses had some signs, now let's see you do some signs.

What kind of question is this?

I mean, Lord, regardless of what you've already done, I'm not going to believe You if You do something else.

We find ourselves kind of in that category too sometimes.

I mean we've seen God work in our lives, we've seen Him save our souls, we've seen Him interact and sometimes we get to the point that if You don't do something new, If You don't do something for Me today, I just won't believe You.

But this is the way these Jews were thinking and so they simply don't believe Christ.

They don't believe Him and Jesus said in another place, even if a man was raised from the dead, that's not going to be sufficient to call someone to believe.

You can multiply the miracles and the miracles is not going to cause you to believe at all.

And these Jews did not believe in Him.

In fact we see in verse 32 that they did not believe.

Jesus said to them, truly, truly He said to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven but the Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

They said to Him, Sir, give us this bread always.

I mean we want this food, we want to live forever.

Jesus said in verse 35 to them, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.

But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe.

Your problem is you have no faith.

This is the reason they're misunderstanding Jesus.

They want Him for the earthly benefits, earthly blessings.

They want Him to be their earthly king.

They want food from Him but they don't believe that He's from God.

Jesus knows that they don't believe.

He knows that they are only seeking Him for His earthly provisions.

The third problem they have is they could not believe because they were not of God's elect.

Look at verse 37.

All that the Father gives Me will come to Me and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.

For I come down from heaven not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.

And this is the will of Him who sent Me that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of My Father that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life and I will raise Him up on the last day.

Here we see that the Lord is making a differentiation between those who come to Him and those who don't come to Him, those who believe on Him and those who don't believe on Him and the differentiation is the ones that the Father gives to Him.

And He is basically telling these Jews you don't believe in Me because you can't.

The fourth problem that they had is that they could not comprehend how Jesus could have come down from heaven.

Look at verse 41.

So the Jews grumbled about Him because He said, I am the bread that comes down from heaven.

Now at this time they are not worried about the fact that He is saying He is bread.

They are thinking He is claiming He is from God.

He is claiming that He has come from heaven.

And verse 42 says they said, Is this not Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?

How does He now say I have come down from heaven?

It is like no way you are from heaven.

I know your parents.

I don't believe you.

They don't believe that He is from God.

They don't believe that He is the second person of the Trinity.

They don't believe that He is sent to them from the Father.

This is their problem.

The fifth problem, they could not believe that He was sent from heaven because they were not taught of God.

Look at verse 43.

The Jews answered to them, Do not grumble among yourselves.

I mean you are having a hard time with my teaching and you are rejecting my teaching.

You are grumbling about my teaching.

But He says this is why.

He is going to explain why you are grumbling.

Verse 44, No one can come to Me, or in other words, no one can believe in Me, unless the Father who sit Me draws Him and I will raise Him up on the last day.

It is written in the prophets, and they will all be taught of God, everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.

Not that everyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God, he has seen the Father.

So Jesus is saying you are misunderstanding my teaching, you are rejecting my teaching, you are complaining about my teaching, you don't believe that I have come from heaven, you are about to have a problem when I say I am the bread of life.

It is because you are not taught from God.

Those who are taught from God will come to Me and I will not cast them out.

All who are taught from the Lord do come and all who are taught from the Lord believe in Me, but you simply are not taught of God, you are not chosen of God, you don't believe in God because you are trying to figure this out in the flesh.

The Bible tells us that the carnal mind cannot comprehend the things of God.

So they are left in their own fleshly comprehension and they are misunderstanding Jesus in all these ways.

The sixth problem they have is that they are fundamentally misinterpreting Jesus.

Look at verse 52, then the Jews are disputed among themselves saying how can this man give his flesh to eat?

So they are saying he can't be from heaven, we reject that and also we reject the fact that he can give us his flesh to eat.

That is cannibalism and that is awful.

This just cannot be true.

The seventh problem is that Jesus at first, now he does correct them a little bit, but at first he doesn't correct them.

In fact he pushes the illustration and the analogy further to shock them.

I think to test them.

You and I will be going wait a minute, wait a minute, you are misunderstanding me.

I don't want you to leave me thinking I am teaching cannibalism.

That is the way I would be doing.

If I was the Lord Jesus, I don't want anyone to leave this room misunderstanding my teaching and thinking I am teaching cannibalism.

That wouldn't be good for my reputation.

You are going to spread that abroad, you are going to tell other people I am teaching this and that is not what I am teaching, that is not what I believe, that is not what I am trying to communicate.

You are misunderstanding me.

But here Jesus doesn't do that, he takes this and pushes it further.

Look at verse 53, so Jesus said to them, truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise them on the last day.

For my flesh is true food.

I mean, wow Lord that sounds very troubling.

My blood is true drink.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.

As the living Father sent me, I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.

This is the bread that comes down from heaven, not like the bread the Fathers ate and died.

Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.

Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught at Capernaum.

Now, they completely are misunderstanding him.

And you have to remember, sometimes Jesus teaches in a way that confuses on purpose.

It doesn't make sense, but go read Matthew 13 and when they come to Jesus, we don't understand these parables.

You are teaching all these parables, but these parables are not really making things clearer, they are making things more foggy.

You are confusing us with these parables.

And Jesus doesn't go, hey, I am trying to give you illustrations to make it clearer.

He goes, no, I am giving you illustrations to make it more unclear.

For unto you it has been given to understand, but unto them, to the masses, to the intellect, it has not been given to them to understand.

Therefore, I teach them in parables so that they will misunderstand me.

Isn't that amazing?

Daniel 12.10 says in the last days that the wicked will continue to do wicked and they will shall not understand.

And this is what is going on here.

The crowds, these superficial disciples of Jesus who are after His food and they just want to see signs and wonders, they don't understand.

And they are being brought into even more error even through the teachings of Christ and they are coming to the conclusion that Christ is teaching cannibalism when He is actually not.

And we know that He is not teaching cannibalism because of His correction.

And I think He corrects them for the sake of His, not twelve disciples, but eleven out of the twelve disciples.

Look at verse 60, when many of His disciples heard it, they said, this is a hard saying.

Who can listen to it?

But Jesus knowing in Himself that His disciples were grumbling about this said to them, do you take offense at this?

Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?

You say you don't believe that come from heaven?

Well wait till you see me go up to heaven.

And then He corrects them.

He corrects them the fact that He is from heaven because He is going to go back up to heaven and they are going to see that.

And then He corrects this idea of cannibalism.

He says in verse 63, it is the Spirit who gives life.

The flesh, He is talking about my flesh, His body is of no help at all.

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Not teaching will save you, but not my physical body.

Now you got to think what does He say?

Is Jesus saying my physical body means nothing?

That He didn't need to become incarnate?

That He didn't need to take on human flesh?

That He did not need to spill His physical blood on the cross?

That He didn't physically need to die?

Surely He is not saying His body is of no importance or His physical body has nothing to do with our salvation.

We know that He had to take on a body like us to die for us.

So He can't be nullifying the importance of His own physical body.

But I think Zingli is right when he says what Christ is correcting is the Jews' misunderstanding of Him.

He is correcting the idea of cannibalism.

We don't eat our God and take on His powers.

It's not as if you physically ate the body of Jesus all of a sudden you will be saved.

You got to remember His body was fully human and His body was just like your body.

If you cut it it would bleed and the body had no more magical powers.

Our divinity was no more in His part of the substance of His body as your body.

He is a hundred percent fully man.

So just eating His body, that flesh would not save you.

Cannibalism as gross as it is would do you no good to eat Christ's body.

We don't need these elements to turn into the physical body of Jesus Christ, to have communion with Him, for Him to be present with us.

So He is rejecting this notion.

So He is correcting this false thinking that these Jews were perceiving.

Now did they receive this correction?

No they left.

They all left.

The bulk of them left Him and followed Him no more.

The misunderstanding is the fact that you could eat Christ and be saved.

When Christ says over and over in this text the way of being saved and having eternal life and having the partaking of Christ, just Christ lives by the life of the Father.

We live by the life of Christ is by faith.

Look at verse 29.

Let's go back.

Look at verse 29.

Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in Him who has said.

Look at verse 35.

I am the beloved of life.

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

You come to Him by faith, by believing.

Verse 40.

For this is the will of my Father that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in Him shall have eternal life.

Verse 43.

Jesus answered them, do not grumble among yourselves.

No one can come to me or believe in me unless the Father who sent me draws Him.

And then verse 47.

Truly, truly I say unto you, whoever believes has eternal life.

This is how you take on the life of Christ.

By faith, not by physical consumption.

And so it seems to me that Christ is testing His disciples to see who actually believes in Him and who will be offended at Him.

Look at verse 64.

But there are some of you who do not believe.

For Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and who it was who would betray Him.

And He said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted Him by the Father.

After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.

So yeah, they're offended.

They don't believe.

They left.

I can't take this teaching.

Look at verse 67.

So Jesus said to the twelve, do you want to go away as well?

Look what Simon Peter says.

Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.

We believe You have come from God.

Where do we go?

You have the words of eternal life.

So the answer is no.

The bread of life discourse is not teaching the physical presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper.

So we reject that one.

The second option is maybe He is present through a conceptually as if the Lord's Supper is merely a memorial service.

It is written in 1 Corinthians 11, do this in remembrance of me.

And the idea is kind of like a monument.

We do this as a ceremonial service, like a memorial service to take our minds back to what Christ did for us two thousand years ago so that we can revisit or visit that in our minds and draw a historical reality of the physical death where Christ takes His body and His body is laid up on a cross and He spills His physical blood and we merely conceptualize that and bring that historical reality to our present reality in our minds.

Not thinking it is a re-sacrifice but that we are recalling it and remembering it and celebrating what Christ has done for us.

And these elements if you would take on symbolic meaning.

It is just wine but Christ says this wine symbolizes my blood.

It is just bread but this bread symbolizes my body.

It is kind of like the wedding ring.

It is just a ring until you get married and the ring means more than just a ring once it represents the marriage, vows and covet.

And so in this sense these things become kind of a memorial to Christ and Christ becomes present to us.

Now all this is true.

We do believe the fact that the Lord's Supper is a memorial of the death of Christ and it does bring Christ to us mentally or conceptually and that is so important that you are not daydreaming and thinking about other things when we take the Lord's Supper that you are contemplating His death and visualizing the fact that He hung upon a rugged cross for your sins.

But the third thing and this is the reason I think the Lord's Supper is so precious and beautiful and I want us to value it and look forward to the Lord's Supper and say I want to be present when we have the Lord's Supper.

I don't want to miss when we have the Lord's Supper is that there is a supernatural presence of Christ with us.

We have real communion with Christ when we take the elements of the table.

But to understand this we have to understand what we mean by presence.

You see many people when they talk about this doctrine they will try to go what do we mean by presence and there are two categories typically that are talked about.

You have the presence by us by us and that would be like a physical presence.

There are a lot of things that are next to you physically or by you right now but they are not conceptually near you.

Think of the well right now you are not thinking about it but as soon as I say it you are going to think oh I forgot that was next to me.

The carpet.

You see the carpet that your feet are touching that carpet has been next to you physically literally next to you this whole time.

You have other people all around you next to you.

There's people right behind you that you are not aware of or you have forgotten about.

Hopefully you are focused on the sermon and you forgot there are people all around me by me next to me physically bodily next to me but I'm not conceptually aware of those people.

Well you see there's a one way some sense even nearer presence.

In fact you could have something on your mind that is not by you that would be present to you to you to you.

You may be thinking right now hopefully you are not you may be thinking I can't wait to get home to get into that stew in the crop pot and though the crop pot is back at home and you are physically here the food in the crop pot is present to you in your mind.

And so you are distracted and you are preoccupied with something at a long distance away but it's really close to you in your heart and your thinking and that's important to have the presence to you.

But I suggest to you there is a more intimate presence that is far more intimate than present by you or present to you.

And this is the most important element of presence presence in you.

By faith we believe by faith we consume Christ and by faith he dwells within us.

Verse 56 says Hoover feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.

This is not just a physical drawing near you.

This is why Jesus said to Mary Magdalene don't cling to my body.

Don't cling to my body there is something more important I haven't gone to my father when I do I'm going to send my spirit and he will come and comfort you he will dwell with you and lo I will go I Jesus Christ will be with you and go with you to the end of the age I will come back to you not physically but I'll come back to you spiritually I'll come to you in the spirit and not just come and live next to you or by you or so in your mind where even unbelievers can have Christ in their mind but unbelievers can't have Christ in their hearts.

Christ doesn't dwell on the hearts of unbelievers.

Can you imagine Christ be so present to you that he dwells within you?

This is what faith does.

Now the bread and the cup as visible words are used by God to facilitate faith in us and by faith in God's word Christ dwells within us, communes among us and is spiritually present with us.

Do you believe that?

This is almost amazing.

In fact it is amazing.

I say this is a more glorious truth than Christ saying I'm physically going to attend your church because Christ could physically attend his church and you could lead as unbelievers.

How do we know that true?

He visited the synagogue in Capernaum and the majority of them left unaffected by his teaching.

You need more than Christ's physical presence in front of you.

You can take the elements all you want and not be saved by them even if they are magically transformed into his physical body and blood.

You need by faith to have Christ dwell in your hearts and you're going to understand that this communion is a method that God has given to the church and so not just to symbolize our communion but to even facilitate our communion.

This is one of my favorite things to do in life.

I'm so old I don't play basketball much anymore.

I can't ride my skateboard.

People say let's go hiking.

I go oh that sounds tiring.

Going fishing.

I'm like man I got to get my tackle.

I'm going to have rats nest in my line.

I don't feel like it.

Everything like that is just losing its appeal to me.

But you know what I just love doing?

If you say Jeff I want to do something with you.

Take me out to eat.

I promise you it's not just the food though.

I know Jimmy takes me to Sam's and gives me a hot dog.

I'm talking about I really enjoy good food but it's not the food that is so wonderful is it?

What you really love about a meal is sitting across a table.

I really like that two or three families is kind of my comfort zone.

Two or three families.

The kids at home you know.

It's the fellowship.

It is like God has made food to facilitate communion.

It's not the food that is important.

It's the fellowship, the interaction.

It's the conversation.

It's the building the relationship.

It's the intimacy that comes with eating.

So God has given us something to facilitate that one represents Him but also facilitates the very thing that we love is communion and interacting with Christ.

In fact we know that it is not just a memorial service merely because of 1 Corinthians 11 verse 16 it says the cup of blessing that we bless is it not a participation or communion or fellowship is it not a real interaction in the blood of Christ the bread that we break is it not a participation in the body of Christ because there is one bread we are many and one body we all partake of the one bread considered the people of Israel are these are not those who ate the sacrifice participants in the altar.

1 Corinthians 11:16

What do I imply then that food offer to idols is anything or an idol is anything.

So I imply that what pagan sacrifice they offered to demons and not to God and I do not want you to participate with demons.

You know I don't want you to have fellowship with demons and have communion with demons.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord in the cup of demons.

You cannot partake of the table of the Lord in the table of demons.

So here are these even though there is no idols that are real what's behind idols are is the demonic realm and when you're sacrificing food to idols you're participating and having communion and interaction with the demonic spirits don't do that and just as unbelievers and pagans have real interaction with demonic spirits Christians at the table have real fellowship real communion with Christ and not just with Christ but we have real fellowship with the saints in Christ all who have real faith.

You know if you don't have faith you don't have communion.

You can't enter into this communion if you don't believe.

If you do partake of this you're in danger of being sick or maybe dying you're taking unworthy because you don't have real communion with Christ.

If you don't believe this is just bread and poor tasting grape juice.

You see let me try to explain this and bring it all to a conclusion.

The bread and wine functions as as the Puritans would say as visible words that God uses to bring about faith.

Where faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God and these this as long as we understand the meaning of this symbolically these takes on truth and they become visible words to us and by seeing these visible words seeing Christ represented in the elements and seeing his body and blood and his death by faith we see that and by faith we apprehend the realities the death of Christ his death becomes our death his life becomes our life and this supper is meant to help foster and facilitate and grow our faith.

This is why verse 66, 63 says it is spirit who gives life the flesh is no help at all the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life it's the words of God that teaching your price that brings forth faith.

Now let me give you this illustration to see if this makes sense.

About two months ago I preached or maybe three months ago I preached a sermon on on hell and I remember waking up Sunday morning and and praying and praying and praying and in my prayer I could visualize where I was visualizing conceptually hell and in my mind I was praying for some of our unconverted children and in my mind I could see these children being thrown into hell and when I saw that in my prayers I began to weep affected me and I cried out to the Lord for mercy for these for these young people and I remember you know being so affected by that prayer he said well Jeff that's just all in your mind that's just make believe you're just pretending well you can make believe about unicorns and silly things all you want and be affected by them you know it could be having all these middle pictures that are not true and you could be scared to death that happens a lot you may need to go see someone.

But the difference between just make believe is that there is the word of God that makes it real you know it's not me make believing that there's a hell in fact Jesus said it this way or Paul said it this way the things that are unseen are more real by faith is the evidence of the things not seen when you have faith the things that other people don't see I mean these Jews they wanted the physical breath they couldn't see that Jesus is from God they couldn't see that but faith allows you to see the reality of Jesus Christ you see his death that his death is is the is for you by faith it becomes applicable you appropriate the realities of the cross by faith and it not just becomes mental conceptions it becomes something true in your heart and it becomes real and by becoming real it does affect you emotionally experientially true you know he's like why just sometimes we have to have faith when we don't have experiences we don't need to be run by our experiences but I promise you when you see things that are real like the love of Jesus Christ it will break your heart and when you see the death of Christ hanging on the tree for your behalf on your behalf and seeing he loves you and that he's not just a 2000 years ago person but he's present with you today that's comforting that changes things you can have real communion you can walk with God and I really believe I may be wrong here but I really believe that communion is one of the the highest pinnacles of communion with Christ you can commune with Christ tomorrow morning read your Bibles you can commune with Christ Tuesday and Wednesday you can walk with the Lord constantly he never leaves you or forsake you by faith you know that but this is the time of celebration when we take the Lord's table he is specially present and he gives us these visible aids that help us in the weakness of our faith so let's answer our questions and take communion together after the resurrection why did Jesus rebuke Mary Magdalene for clinging to him because Jesus says don't look to the physical body I'm not gonna physically visit one church and go visit another church I'm gonna visit all the churches my body doesn't take on omnipresence but my spirit does my spirit is omnipresent that is why did Jesus mean when he said my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink he's saying the fact that I'm gonna die on the cross is gonna save you it's that my body I need my body is what's gonna save you the fact I'm gonna die and my blood is gonna cover your sins and that is true food to believe in that's gonna give you food that gives you eternal life what would you do if the Lord was going to attend your church next week our church next week I'm telling you he is here with us today and I would say we should make church a priority it's a sad thing that people will skip church for any reason that is only they understand that Christ says I will be there in a special way where the Word of God is proclaimed and the ordinances observed fourth question and this is the main one how is Jesus present in the Lord's Supper my faith is spiritually with us now if you would if you're an unbeliever please I know you you shouldn't take this and rightly you should be a Christian before you take this elements but if you're an unbeliever you can come to Christ because you don't need this if you don't know the Lord right now and you say I wish I could take the Lord's Supper you said well you don't actually need to eat this is it not going to do you any good if you don't have faith but by faith alone without the ordinance without protecting the other elements you can be saved and you can have eternal life today for us who are believers I want you to take the bread I want you to look at it this represents the body of Christ I want you to conceptually see Christ hanging on that rugged cross on your behalf and by faith appropriate his death for you you say well I don't feel worthy this is why you look to Christ you need this all the more all need this let's ask the Lord's blessing on it dear Lord thank you for communion with us thank you for being with us thank you for this bread that represents your body amen you may I love how this bread is absorbed within us and becomes in some sense part of us I love how by faith Christ dwells in us and becomes our life now if you have the cup look at this cup and be reminded we do this in remembrance of the blood of Christ his death without the shedding of blood there's no remission of sin you stand forgiven today I mean this is a time of celebration we stand forgiven because of this this represents his death let's drink I asked Jonathan to come and sing acapella all I have is Christ and I want you to do me a favor sing as loud as you can without losing it you Thank you.