Worship Wholeheartedly – Part 1

In this message from David Platt, we see how the celebration of Christ’s death and the salvation it secured shapes the Church’s worship. 

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Transcript

Podcast Intro And Scripture Setup

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You are listening to David Platt Messages, a weekly podcast with sermons and messages from pastor, author, and teacher David Platt.

The Early Church And Breaking Bread

Jesus Institutes The Lord’s Supper

Paul’s Warning And Self-Examination

Who Should Take Communion

Where The Church Celebrates Communion

How Often Should We Observe It

Symbol Or Salvation Through Substance

Why Communion Matters In Worship

Remember Christ’s Body And Blood

Reflect On Sin And Promises

Renew Commitment To Christ

Renew Unity With Each Other

Renew Commitment To The Mission

Rejoice In Freedom And His Return

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If you have a Bible, I invite you to pull it out and open to the book of. No, Luke. We're going to Luke today. But I'm glad you're so excited about studying Acts. And we're going to get there in just a second. But the way I figure it, a lot of you are memorizing the whole book anyway, so you don't even need to turn there. Acts chapter 2, verse 42. If you know it, say it with me. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. What I want us to do this morning and next week is begin to look at the worship life of the early church. You know what's really interesting when you see this summation in Acts chapter 2 that we've been studying about the things they devoted themselves to, you don't see worship listed anywhere. We're looking at the things that made the early church different. And many times when we think today about what makes churches different, we talk about worship. Well, our worship is different in this way. We've got different worship, but that's not one of the things that made them different. Now, that doesn't mean worship wasn't extremely important. I think it was. I think it infiltrates a lot of what we're seeing in Acts chapter 2. But we're going to get a pretty strong clue about the worship life of the early church as we think about this third thing they devoted themselves to, the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, and the breaking of bread. Breaking of bread is talking about the Lord's Supper. It's about how they came together to have communion. And I think we're going to learn a lot about what it means to worship wholeheartedly, worship truly, based on what Scripture teaches about how they devoted themselves to communion, how they devoted themselves to the Lord's Supper. When we think about worship today, we think about all kinds of different elements. We think about singing, we think about preaching, we think about praying, all of these different things we do, maybe even some traditional things that are more traditional than biblical, with a welcome or celebration guides that we use. Even the come down the aisle or raise the hand invitation really wasn't used for the first 1800 plus years of church history and the way we use it today. We think about all different elements in worship. Many times, though, the Lord's Supper doesn't come to our mind. And I think there's some significant things that the Lord's Supper has to teach us about what it means to worship. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at three different passages today. We're going to look at Luke chapter 22, and we're going to see Jesus having the Lord's Supper, communion with his disciples right before he goes to the cross. And then we're going to make reference to Acts chapter 2, which we've been memorizing, and then we're going to dive into 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and look at the relationship between worship and the Lord's Supper. So, Luke chapter 22, we're going to start in verse 7. Imagine the scene with the disciples. Look what the Bible teaches us. Then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John saying, Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover. Where do you want us to prepare for it? They asked. And he replied, As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, The teacher asks, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparations there. They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. And after taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after the supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for you. But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. The Son of Man will go, as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him. They begin to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this. Now turn to the right. We see Luke in the book of Acts, chapter 2, verse 42, tell us that they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. Keep going to the right, and you're going to come to 1 Corinthians 11. And I want you to turn to me to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and I want you to see what Paul has to say to believers in the early church concerning the Lord's Supper. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. We'll pick up in verse 23. We'll look at some of the context around it in just a second. But verse 23 says, For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and we had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are not we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world. God, we pray that you would open our eyes to understand your word this morning, in particular the meaning of the Lord's Supper. God, we pray that your spirit would help us to grasp the significance of communion and to see how it affects the way we worship you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. What I want us to do is ask some basic questions about the Lord's Supper. Across this room, there are a variety of religious backgrounds. Many of you have not grown up in church. Many of you have grown up in church. Even if you've grown up in church, there's a variety of different religious backgrounds that are represented, denominational backgrounds that are represented in this room. And so we've got some questions about the Lord's Supper that I want us to take a look at biblically this morning. And you've got a list there. If you got your celebration guide, pull those notes out and use these notes as a guide as we look at worship in the Lord's Supper. Question number one: Who should participate in the Lord's Supper? Who should participate in the Lord's Supper? First of all, I want us to see the believers share in the work of Christ as they eat the Lord's Supper. Believers share in the work of Christ as they eat the Lord's Supper. Now, what I mean by believers at this point is Christ's followers, people who have trusted Christ to save them from their sins, trusted Christ for salvation. The church. The church shares in the work of Christ as they eat the Lord's Supper. Let me show you this one chapter before what we just read in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 14, Paul begins to talk about idolatry in the Lord's Supper, which we'll get to a little further in just a second. But he says in verse 13, 14, therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say. Now pay attention close to verse 16 and 17. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Just by chance, anybody know what the original language of the New Testament is saying there, the Greek for participation? Anyone know? You said it, say it a little louder. Koinonia, all right. Don't you feel smart? You know the Greek, all right? The Greek koinonia, what we talked about. If you weren't here last week and you feel really left out right now, we we talked about the fellowship. It's the same word when we see fellowship in Acts chapter 2, verse 42, that's used here to talk about how we participate together in the body and blood of Christ. So we've got the Koinania picture here in verse 17 says, Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. So what you've got is a picture of the church of believers, Christ's followers, sharing together in the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper. Now, throughout church history, this has been maligned at different points. For many, many years, the Catholic Church necessitated that only clergy, only leaders in the church should take the Lord's Supper. And the majority of believers would sit back passively and watch as the leaders took the Lord's Supper. We don't see anywhere in Scripture where this should be relegated to a certain class of believers. There's some people who say that the Lord's Supper should really only involve baptized believers. And I understand, in a sense, where they're coming from. In just a second, we're going to see how the Lord's Supper involves reflecting on our sin in any areas of our life where we're being disobedient and committing our lives to identifying with Christ. And if we participate in the Lord's Supper week after week, or month after month, or year after year, but we are disobedient in Christ's command for us to be baptized, then we're really missing the whole point of the Lord's Supper. This is more of an anniversary of our relationship with Christ as opposed to the wedding ceremony that we talked about the baptism is. So it doesn't make sense to have an anniversary without a wedding first. And so if you haven't been baptized before, let me encourage you today, as we celebrate the Lord's Supper, to ask yourself, why am I not being obedient to this primary command of Christ to be baptized once I place my faith in him? At the same time, I don't see evidence in Scripture where we should deprive some believers of Lord's Supper as opposed to other believers. And so basically, all people who are Christ's followers have the opportunity to participate in the Lord's Supper. Now, does that mean that if you are in this room this morning, you're not a Christ follower, you've never placed your faith in Christ for salvation, never taken that step. Maybe you're exploring Christ, maybe you're just visiting here on a whim this morning. Does that mean you need to leave the room? Absolutely not. There's a role you play here too. Believers share in the work of Christ as they eat the Lord's Supper. Unbelievers see the work of Christ as they watch the Lord's Supper. You see, here's the deal. In the early church, they would participate in the Lord's Supper, and I'm convinced it was one of the ways that they would draw outsiders into faith in Christ, unbelievers to faith in Christ, because unbelievers would see them identifying with Christ and corporately committing their lives to Him through this act of worship called the Lord's Supper. And they would be drawn to see his grace and his love. So if you're in here this morning and you've never placed your faith in Christ, then I want to invite you in just a minute when we pass this bread and the cup, just let that go by. You just pass it to the person next to you, and you take this time to observe the grace and the love and the mercy of Christ. Because you're gonna see, and we're about to dive into it deeper, you're gonna see a picture this morning of the fact that there's a Savior who died on the cross for you. And he gave his life so that you might have life. And he shed his body and his blood for you. And I want you to see the reality of the Lord's Supper, not just for us, but its meaning for your life this morning as well. And I have prayed that God would even use our time together in the Lord's Supper this morning to draw people in this room to faith in Christ for the first time. Just as you heard one testimony on video. That you would see Christ, that you would see his glory and his grace and his mercy, and that you would submit your life to him during the Lord's Supper. So believers share in the work of Christ, unbelievers see the work of Christ as they watch the Lord's Supper. Second question: where should we have the Lord's Supper? And really the only biblical requirement for where we need to have the Lord's Supper is at a gathering of the church. That's really all that Scripture tells us. When you get over to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, you see this over and over again in what Paul is saying. Four times in the passage where he's talking about the Lord's Supper, he talks about how we come together as a church for the Lord's Supper. Look in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 18. Maybe you can circle these four different times that it talks about believers coming together for the Lord's Supper. In verse 18, it says, in the first place, I hear that when you, here it is, come together as a church, that's the first time, there are divisions among you. And to some extent I believe it. Now look down in verse 20. When you come together, as a church, come together, and it's not the Lord's Supper you eat, and he begins to talk about how they were abusing the Lord's Supper. You get closer to the end of the chapter in verse 33. Paul says, So then, my brothers, when you come together as a church to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together, there's the fourth time, it may not result in judgment. And so, whenever the church gathers together, there's an opportunity there for the Lord's Supper to happen. That doesn't mean every single time the church gathers together. We'll get to that in a second, but the church must be gathered together. Now, some people think that the Lord's Supper should only happen in the sanctuary of a church. But at that point we're giving our theology away and we're saying that the church is made up of a building or a room, and that's just not biblical. Whether we're in this room or with a bedridden believer in a hospital or in the middle of a jungle in the Sudan, whenever there's a gathering of the church, we can have the Lord's Supper. So that's who and where. Third question: When should we have the Lord's Supper? When should we have the Lord's Supper? And I want you to think about this in two ways: a command and a question. First of all, the command, observe it often. When we come to the book of Matthew, Mark, Luke, we see Jesus having the supper with his disciples, and he says, Do this in remembrance of me. In other words, the Lord's Supper is commanded by Christ for us to do. We are commanded to participate in the Lord's Supper. Therefore, to neglect the Lord's Supper is to be disobedient to Christ. We need to think pretty seriously about this, because many times we go through a whole year without ever participating in the Lord's Supper. And that's not observing it often. When you get to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, you see Paul say, whenever you do this, as often as you do this, do it in remembrance of Christ. And so we've got a picture of them doing it very often in the early church. That's the command. Observe it often. Now here's the question: What about weekly? Should we do the Lord's Supper weekly? Many people grow up in denominational traditions where their Lord's Supper is taken weekly. And some people who've even been visiting Brook Hills have asked, why don't you guys ever do the Lord's Supper? And that's a great question. Should we do it weekly? Well, in Scripture, we don't see anywhere a mandate for this is how often you're to do it. Do it every day, do it every week, every month, every year. It doesn't ever tell us to do that. So we've got some freedom here. I want you to turn back with me to the left, though. Look at Acts chapter 20. Just to give you a picture of what seems to be a biblical pattern. Look at Acts chapter 20, verse 7. This is Luke telling us about some believers in Troas as they gathered together. And I want you to hear what they gathered together to do. This is talking about their worship service. In Acts chapter 20, verse 7, it says, On the first day of the week, we came together to do what? To break bread, to have the Lord's Supper together. And so we see that this is happening on the first day of the week. Their regular worship service, this is something they did. Then you get over to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and the context is all these believers that were meeting in house churches, they would have, they would have meals together, and most often those meals would include, be accompanied by the Lord's Supper. So it was happening very regularly. Now, does that mean that we're supposed to do it weekly? Not necessarily, but I think we need to look as a church at how often we should do the Lord's Supper. And we've got freedom based on Scripture. Should we do it weekly? Some people automatically think, well, no, you don't do it weekly because you want it to be special. You don't want it to become a routine thing. You don't want it to lose its meaning. Well, if we follow that logic, then does that mean we should just come together for worship uh once a month so that so that we don't get too routine and we lose the meaning of what we do when we gather together on Sundays? Maybe we should sing just once a quarter so that it'll be meaningful when we sing. Or maybe we could just study the word once a quarter so that we can have a meaningful time. On the contrary, I think something we do on a weekly, regular basis actually increases its meaning for us. And if we're afraid of being routine, we need to make sure to look at our other forms of worship and make sure we're not getting too routine there. May our worship, whether it's the Lord's Supper, singing, or studying the word, may our worship never be routine. So, what about weekly? I'm not gonna answer that quite yet. I think we need to dive into the rest of this thing. We're not gonna get too crazy yet, but we do see Jesus saying, observe it often. The New Testament church showing us a very regular pattern of the Lord's Supper. Okay, let's move on to the fourth question. How should we understand the Lord's Supper? How should we understand the Lord's Supper? And I want us to look at this from two angles. First of all, from a traditional misunderstanding. The traditional misunderstanding looks at the Lord's Supper as a change of substance that results in salvation. A change of substance that results in salvation. Now, this is the Catholic teaching of the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist, which that word literally comes from these instances in the New Testament where it says Jesus gave thanks. That's literally what the word is in the original language of the New Testament. That's why they call it the Eucharist. That's why it's one way to refer to communion. But in the Catholic Church, official teaching of the Catholic Church is that when you have the Lord's Supper, there is a change of substance. And the word that's used to describe that, I thought about making this one of your blanks, but thought it'd be just kind of challenging to make sure we got it all down. Transubstantiation. That's a mouthful. And basically what it means is a change of substance, transformation of substance. So what the Catholic Church teaches, and for many years the church operated on, was that the body or the bread and the wine keep the outward appearance of bread and wine. But the inner substance of the bread and wine is changed into the body of Christ and to the blood of Christ. And so when you eat, you are literally partaking of the body of Christ in this piece of bread. Or when you drink, you're literally partaking of the blood of Christ, which is in this cup. Now that's obviously a little different physically, but it's also different spiritually. Because if the body or the bread is the body, and if the cup is the blood of Christ, Catholic teaching then goes on to say that partaking in the Eucharist is important as a part of your salvation. It is a means of grace by which Christ infuses himself into your life. I grew up, or not grew up, spent the last six years in New Orleans, which is a predominantly Catholic city, and spent time talking with numerous Catholic folks as well as priests. I had one priest describe his theology to me as a theology of covering bases. And basically what he meant by that is you participate in baptism, then you go through confirmation, you participate in the Eucharist week in and week out as you go to Mass, and you cover all your bases because these are the means by which grace of Christ is infused into your life, and salvation involves you going and covering all those bases. Do you see how this change of substance now becomes something that results in salvation? And you've got a worse-based, works-based picture of what it means to be saved. You do these things and you're saved. You experience salvation. And that is a traditional misunderstanding. A biblical understanding of the Lord's Supper does not look at it as a change of substance that results in salvation. Instead, the Lord's Supper is a symbolic meal that reflects salvation. It reflects the salvation that we already have in Christ. What we're about to do when we eat this bread and drink this cup is not in an effort to cover a base in order to experience salvation. We already have salvation by grace through faith alone. We don't have to do any works, we don't have to cover any bases. Christ covered all the bases for us. And so what we do is we celebrate the salvation we already have in Christ, and we remember him. So when he says, This is my body, he doesn't literally mean this is my body. His body was right there in Luke chapter 22. Or this is my blood. His blood was still in his veins. It's a verb we use it. See at many different points in the New Testament, talking about something that represents something else. This body, this bread represents my body, this cup represents my blood. And so this is a symbolic meal that we celebrate today that reflects the salvation we already have. So there's four basic questions who should participate, where should we have it? When should we? Have it. How should we understand it? Now, here's the question I really want us to camp out on. Why should the Lord's Supper be significant in our worship? It is the central act of worship in many facets of church history as we look at the church throughout the ages. It's been the central facet of worship. Many, many churches would in the past do public prayers and then have a reading of the scriptures or explanation of the word, i.e. a sermon, and then use communion or the Lord's Supper as a response to the word. Which I think makes a lot of sense in light of what we're about to see. But it's the only act of worship in the New Testament that we've got some specific instructions for. So I think we need to pay attention to them. Why should the Lord's Supper be significant in our worship? We've got four reasons there that I'm going to give you. They all start with R, so hopefully it'll help us be able to remember these. So the rest of this sermon brought to you by the letter R, okay? First, we should make the Lord's Supper significant in our worship because it's something we remember. In the Lord's Supper, we remember. Two times in 1 Corinthians 11, we see reflected what had been said each time in the Gospels. Do this in remembrance of Christ. Do this in remembrance of Christ. And this is more than just recalling something, not forgetting something. It's more than Heather saying, Dave, don't forget or remember to take the trash out. This is deeper than that. It's more than just recalling, hey, I need to do something. It is focusing our mind and our attention intentionally on something. It's looking back at the historical events of Jesus' life and his death and his resurrection, these concrete things. Many times we have a tendency when we think about the Lord's Supper to think about it as some mystical thing we do. And in a sense, it is mysterious how the Spirit works in our lives in the Lord's Supper. But we've got to remember that the Lord's Supper foundationally, it's not about imagining, it's not about channeling, it's not about just kind of going into neutral or just kind of listening. The Lord's Supper involves a conscious attention to the life and the death of Christ. It's intentionally remembering two things. Number one, we remember the body of Jesus. This is my body, this represents my body given for you. It says he broke bread and said, This is my body given for you. Notice he doesn't say, This is my body broken for you. We know we look at Jesus' death on the cross. Was his body broken? No, just as it had been prophesied years before, not one bone of his body was broken. He gave his life for us. So we remember the body of Jesus, and second, we remember the blood of Jesus. We remember the blood he shed on the cross. Now, in order to grasp the just the thick meaning of this in 1 Corinthians 11, we've got to realize the historical context here. Wish we had time. We can go back and look in the Old Testament at different places. Genesis chapter 8, verse 10, where God made a covenant with Noah, and blood was the seal of that covenant. Same thing in Genesis chapter 15, verse 10, with Moses. Blood was the seal of the covenant they had together. Exodus chapter 24, that was Abraham, sorry, Genesis 15. In Exodus chapter 24, it was Moses. God sealed his covenant with Moses with blood. And you get to Leviticus chapter 17, verse 11, and the Bible teaches us that blood was so important, these covenants with God, because the life of the flesh is in the blood. And so the blood was a picture of the life we have with God, and the relationship we have with God, the covenant we have with Him. You remember the Passover in Exodus chapter 12 and the chapters that follow. How God's people, the Israelites, were slaves in Egypt. And God delivered them out of that. How did he do it? He said, Take a lamb, sacrifice the lamb, and take its what? Take its blood and put it over the doorposts of your houses. And for every house that has the blood of the lamb over it, you will escape out from under the judgment of God on the people of Egypt, and you'll be delivered from slavery. That was the Passover. And they were told to remember that year after year after year. Every year, celebrate the Passover where you remember how you, by the blood of the Lamb, were delivered out from slavery in Egypt and brought into freedom. Now it just so happens that when we get to Luke chapter 22, it's the time of the what? Passover. And so Jesus has this meal with his disciples, and then hours later, he goes to the cross where he sheds his blood so that people in that day and all of us in this room can be brought out from under the judgment of God and brought into the freedom that he gives. Isn't that a neat coincidence that it just so happened to be on that day? When Jesus, all of these people, coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, when God delivered his people out of slavery into freedom, and they look on a cross and they see God Himself in the flesh, shedding his blood, and there, by that act in history, all people who place their faith in him can be brought out from under God's judgment and brought into his freedom. That's good, isn't it? That's something worth remembering. Remember the body of Jesus, remember the blood of Jesus, the reality of that. Second, not only do we remember, but we reflect. We reflect. When we come to the Lord's Supper, it's not just thinking, well, this happened 2,000 years ago. But the word in the original language of the New Testament here literally means we think about its implications for our lives in the present. And so we remember back to what Christ did with his body and his blood, but we also think about how that affects our lives, and we reflect on the ramifications of his death then for our lives today, in 2006. We reflect on two things mainly. Number one, we reflect on our sin. We reflect on our sin. Because we know that Jesus died on a cross and shed his blood because of the sins of the world. Because of not only their sins in the past, but our sins today. It's what Jesus died for. And that's why Paul puts a lot of emphasis on self-examination. You need to spend some time reflecting on your life and the sin in your life, he says. Remember 1 Corinthians chapter 11? When he gets to verse 27, listen to what he says: Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. Now listen to this in verse 30. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. And what does that mean? Bunch of people just got tired in the Lord's Supper and started falling asleep before the bread and the cup got to them. No. Paul's saying that there are some of you who have died because you treated the Lord's Supper in a way that did not honor Christ. In the original language of the New Testament, that means take the Lord's Supper seriously. This is a time where we look at our lives and examine ourselves and come honestly before God. As we think about the death of Christ for our sins, we see the weight and we feel the weight of the sins in our lives. And it involves a reflection on our sin. But thankfully, that's not where it stops. We don't just reflect on our sin, we reflect on his promises. Because as you reflect on the fact that we are sinners before God and we have disobeyed him, deliberately disobeyed him, and in our core we have turned against him. When we realize that and we see that in our lives, then his promise comes home when he says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and he will forgive us of our sins, and he will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And the reality of the death of Christ now becomes very real in our lives today because we see how his promises free us even now. This is not just something that affected lives 2,000 years ago. It's something that affects our lives in this room, right here, right now, as the promises of Christ come to bear on our hearts and our lives. When we come together for the Lord's Supper, this is not primarily a physical meal. I mean, let's be honest. If you're hungry this morning, this little piece of bread is really probably not going to do it for you. And if you're really thirsty, you're not getting a big gulp in what's about to be passed out to you. This is not primarily a physical meal. This is primarily a spiritual meal. Where these signify the nourishment that the Holy Spirit gives to our lives. The Holy Spirit nourishes us in a very real way through the presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper spiritually. It's a feast. I think we feast on two things in the Lord's Supper based on scripture. Number one, we feast on his forgiveness. We feast on his forgiveness. The reality of the forgiveness of Christ comes home to us. And not only is forgiveness, but we feast on his faithfulness. We feast on his faithfulness. Now I want you to think about how these two things relate to our time in the word and our response to the word. I mentioned earlier that many times after they would read the word, they would have the Lord's Supper. How many times was we study the Word, do you often see, you know, I just don't measure up? The Word exposes our need for Christ, it exposes our sin. We come in here sometimes and we spend that time in the Word and we are convicted of our sin. And so it's a natural response to go into the Lord's Supper where we see his forgiveness for us. But not only his forgiveness, but his faithfulness. We walk out of our time in the Word many times on Sunday and we think, How am I going to put that into practice? We talked about some heavy things last week. How do we put that into practice? How do we value people over possessions and have the social concern that we need to have for the needs of the world? And we feel inadequate. How do we do that? And it's right when we're thinking like that that Christ comes home to us in the Lord's Supper and He says, You don't have to do this on your own. I live in you. I enable you to obey the word. And it encourages us by his faithfulness. And so what we've got is a picture of Jesus saying in the Lord's Supper, This is my body given for you. This is my blood given for you. Let those last two words and those sentences hit home. God became a man for you. He suffered for you. He was beaten and scourged and mocked and spit upon. And he died on a cross for you. Whether or not we accept the gift of Christ for us is one thing in our lives. We've got that choice. But the biblical truth is Christ did this for us in this room. He died for you. He rose for you. And the reality of that truth comes home in the Lord's Supper as we reflect on our sin and then we reflect on his promises to us. And as we eat this meal, he says to us over and over again, You are mine, and my promises are yours. This is something that we need to be doing. Eat up, drink up, the spiritual nourishment of Christ and the Lord's Supper. So we remember, we reflect. Third, we renew. We renew. When you think about the death of Christ, you think about its reality in your life, it changes our perspective on our walking with Him. And this is something the believers in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 had missed out on. If you go to 1 Corinthians 10, you read through over and over again, Paul talks about idolatry and how they would have the Lord's Supper, but they would go worship at the feasts of idols. Look in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 19. Listen to what he says there. Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too. You cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons. Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than He? Don't miss the picture. These people thought they'd take the Lord's Supper, eat the bread, drink the cup, that they're good, and then they can walk away and go participate in idols' feasts. Dangerous thing is, millions of Christians are doing the exact same thing today in the Lord's Supper. We look at the Lord's Supper as a grace dispenser where we eat the bread and we drink the cup and we're safe, and then we can go off and live our lives however we want to, and it's just not biblical. How can you look at the death of Christ and reflect on its meaning for your life now and the weight of your sin now and to feel his promises and then to walk away and not obey him and not live a life that is identified with him? So first we renew our commitment to Christ and the Lord's Supper. That's part of what this whole thing is about. Many times in camps or conferences or even invitations in the church, we we make a decision to rededicate our lives. Well, that's exactly what the Lord's Supper is about. Every time we take the Lord's Supper to renew our commitment to Christ, we will profane the Lord's Supper today if we participate in it and walk away without a renewed zeal to honor Christ for their lives. We've missed the point. If there's not a renewal of our commitment to Christ. But not only our commitment to Christ, second, we renew our commitment to each other, our commitment to each other. You see, the context here in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 is in these house churches, they would meet together for meals. And they would do it kind of like we do potluck today. Everybody would bring their own food. The problem was, instead of putting all the food out on the table and sharing it with everybody, people would bring their own meals and then go sit over in the corner with their friends and eat their food there. And the poor people were being left out. And there was division between the body. And Paul comes on the scene and says, How can you pretend to participate in the body of Christ by taking the Lord's Supper when you're not caring for the spiritual body of Christ around you? And he said, We've got to be unified in this thing. This is where in our worship in the Lord's Supper, it doesn't matter what race you are, it doesn't matter what gender you are, it doesn't matter how old or young you are, we all come together as one unified body. It's exactly what we saw in verse 17 in 1 Corinthians 10. There is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. This is where the unity of the church becomes very real at the Lord's Supper. In fact, that's why they would often use a common cup in the Lord's Supper. And why that's done around the world today. What do you think? Common cup this morning? Couple thousand other lips on the cup? We start to think about how that makes us uncomfortable. Well, just imagine being in the middle of a jungle in Sudan or a house church in Asia where there's who knows how many diseases represented around the church, and there's a common cup that's being passed around. And you're just praying the whole time. You know what? There's something very real about the unity of the church when in the middle of a jungle in Sudan or a house church in Asia, you come together across racial, ethnic, gender, any kind of boundaries, and together you unite together in participating in the body and the blood of Christ. Let me free your anxieties. We're not using a common cup today. However, the Lord's Supper is where the unity of the church at Brook Hills must be real. And if there are things that we're holding against a brother or sister, the things that separate us from a brother or sister, then we need to deal with those in order to come together for the Lord's Supper. We renew our commitment to each other. This is the unity that must be there in worship. Renew our commitment to Christ, we renew our commitment to each other, and finally, we renew our commitment to his mission. Did you hear what Paul said in chapter 11, verse 26? For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death. You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. And so what we're doing is not just remembering and reflecting on this thing and renewing our commitment to Christ and to each other, but we're renewing our commitment to proclaiming the death of Christ. Because when the reality of the Lord's Supper soaks in, and we feast on his forgiveness and we feast on his faithfulness, then when we realize the essence of worship is not so that we would keep the greatness of God to ourselves, but that we would proclaim the greatness of God in the streets. And the Lord's Supper propels us into the mission that Christ has given us. Because this news is too good to be kept in here. The Lord's death is proclaimed as we walk out of these doors. So we can renew our commitment to his mission. Do you see how the Lord's Supper offers a very fitting response to the Word of God? Once we've studied God's Word, to reflect on our sin and his promises to us and his word, and to renew our commitment to Christ and to each other and to his mission. The Lord's Supper was significant in the worship life of the early church for a reason. We got one more. We remember, we reflect, we renew. And then forth, in the Lord's Supper, we rejoice. We rejoice. What do you mean we rejoice? I thought the Lord's Supper was a very serious thing. Somber. Many times we participate in the Lord's Supper and then we dismiss, and we all kind of walk out with our heads down, and there's kind of this gloom and sadness over us. We just participate in the Lord's Supper. We look like somebody died. Well, in a sense, someone did, but don't forget we are looking back at the death of Christ. But as we reflect on the death of Christ, we remember that it's by the death of Christ that we live. And as a result, we've got a lot of reason to rejoice in the Lord's Supper. And this was the pattern of the early church. When they got together, it wasn't on Friday to look back to the cross. They would gather together to worship on the day of resurrection. They would gather together to celebrate the fact that Jesus, who died on the cross for their sins, rose from the grave and ascended into heaven. And that gave them a lot of reason to celebrate. And it's the same reason we have to celebrate today, to rejoice. I think there's two primary reasons that are coming out in here. Number one, we rejoice because he has set us free. That's the whole picture of the Passover. That Jesus, by his death on the cross, that we celebrate in the Lord's Supper, has allowed us to come out, because of his blood over us, to come out from under God's judgment into the freedom of being a child of God. We are not slaves to sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us. Christ's life is now poured out in us and we live through him. He has set us free. That's a good thing. Second, we rejoice not only because he set us free, but we rejoice because he is coming back. I think this is the facet of the Lord's Supper that we leave off most often in the church. Paul says in verse 26, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death. What's the last three words? Until He comes. Now, what does that mean? Well, Matthew chapter 26, I think, sums it up even better. Let me just read it for you. When he's having the Lord's Supper in Matthew, he says, I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom. Next time I'm going to have this supper with you guys, it's going to be a completely different setting. Next time we drink, it'll be when I come to you in my Father's kingdom. So in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul says, We proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Now let Let me read you over in Revelation chapter 19, verse 6. Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder shouting, Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. By the way, you're the bride. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints. Then the angel said to me, Write this down. Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding, supper of the Lamb. And he added, These are the words of God. Here's the deal. We're about to have a nice meal where we feast spiritually on the presence of Christ. And that is an awesome truth in and of itself. But the best news is there is coming a day when we will not feast spiritually on his presence. Ladies and gentlemen, you and I are going to feast physically with his presence, and we are going to sit across the table from him in a supper for all of eternity, feasting on his greatness and the forgiveness and the faithfulness that he is giving. Ladies and gentlemen, there is a time limitation on the Lord's Supper. We're not always going to do this. I say we take advantage of it as much as we can because there's coming a day when we're going to have this feast physically. And we're going to sit around with him and we're going to have the supper of all suppers. That's good news. Why would we not want the Lord's Supper to be significant in our worship? The bottom line is we see the early church.

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