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This being our communion time, we do this as oft as we do it. We do it once a year here. So it is a very special moment for us here at Valley Spring. And it is to be entered into and observed with all sincerity and reverence that's due to God manifested in the flesh. That's who we're doing these things in remembrance for too. For just a few moments here this morning, I want to talk about the communion and the it being an ordinance, one of the two ordinances of the church that were instituted by the Lord Himself, defined by him, and were given instructions concerning the two ordinances, that being of baptism, the first ordinance, which he instituted at 30 years of age at the beginning of his ministry, as he had been born into the world as the Savior, but yet he was subject unto his mother and stepfather, Joseph. He was not the son of Joseph, but he was the son of God. But he was made of a woman, and he was subject to her and subject to the law for the 30 years of his life before entering into his ministry. He was always up and about his father's business. Even back to the age of 12, they came back and found him among the leaders of the temple, and he was just making them awe at his wisdom as they listened to his answers and his questions and how he would just set them at awe. And they the Mary and Joseph came back and found him there and basically said, Why did you do this to us? And he said, Know ye not, I must be up and about my father's business. He was up and about his father's business even then. But he would not enter into his earthly ministry until he was 30, as the forerunner John the Baptist, who was foretold of in Isaiah, 40th chapter of Isaiah, speaks of the voice that cried from the wilderness. And that voice came and declared that he was there for the kingdom of heaven was at hand, and he was sent by God. There was a man sent by God. It was John the Baptist, and John was there to baptize in the name of the Father and the kingdom. He said, The kingdom of heaven is at hand, and he was baptizing, waiting for Jesus to be revealed to him. He was Jesus' cousin, but yet there was something told him that whomsoever you see the spirit descend upon as a dove, that's the one that I've sent. The promised son, all the way back to the promise given to Abraham, that in Isaac shall thy seed be called, which would be Jesus. Even back to the garden where he talked about the seed of the woman that would uh that would have his heel bruised, but he would bruise the head of the serpent. So that he was foretold of all the way back there. But here he is, finally coming on the scene at the age of 30, and John is baptizing, and Jesus tells him to take him down and baptize him in the river of Jordan. Baptism that is immersion, John took him down and baptized him and straight away came he out of the water. So that defines what baptism is. It is the total submersion in water. And that is for a purpose to depict or to show forth the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord. He did it in the for showing of his death, burial, and resurrection. He did it for us that we would be baptized, showing that we believe that he was baptized. For you, for us. That you that believe, my friends, baptism is for you. And you should follow that command. Baptism is not just the entry into the membership of the church. Baptism is a profession of your faith. It is a showing, I believe, that Jesus was dead, was buried, and was raised again with the purpose of delivering me to the family of God. And that, my friends, is a lifetime commitment that I believe that and want to live to it. It was, it's been 62 years since I was baptized. And my friends, I still want to live up to that profession. I want to live to that commitment made that I believe that then, and I uh I believe it today. That is the first of the two ordinances to the blessings of the church that the Lord left us. The second being at the last day of his earthly ministry. The last day of his earthly ministry, he was eating the Passover, which was the keeping of the law. And he kept the law, Brother Jimmy, to jot into a table. He never forsook the law. He said, I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. And he was fulfilling it that last day of his life. Uh that the day he was betrayed. He was eating the Passover, and out of that Passover, he brought elements out of that supper. Now we're told in the law by God Himself, thou shalt have no images. There shall be no images of God. There's nothing that we're not to have physical items that are attributed to God. Thou shalt have no graven images of God. But there's only three elements that the Lord instituted within the church to be used to depict him, to show forth him. That is three being water, which is the water baptism where he is baptized in water and out of the water, and therefore showing the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord. The other two being the unleavened bread, which was a token and a figure, wasn't a real thing. It doesn't become the real thing, but the unleavened bread that he took out of that Passover Supper, which that unleavened bread was to depict the haste, the quickness, the short time. There's not going to be time to let the bread leaven before you come out of Egypt. So there is a depicting of God's work that He would do to bring them out of Egypt, out of that bondage situation of them being slaves in Egypt. You'll not have time to leaven your bread. Eat unleavened bread. And the wine, which was the fruit of the vine. The fruit of the vine. Those three elements, water, unleavened bread, and wine, are the only physical items that are in the church. And he uses them to show forth his work that he came to do. And that was to uh to uh to deliver us from our bondage situation in sin. We were in bonds of sin and could not relieve ourselves from that bondage. We were not just in bondage to it, but we were dead in trespasses and sin. We were incapable of being delivered from that by our own works, by our own ideas, by our will or our to-do, had nothing to do with delivering us from that, but it was the one that would come down from heaven, sent by God the Father, to do the Father's will, uh, to deliver his children that he foreknew and loved before the world began, and he would see to it by coming into this world and taking their sin, taking their penalty, their condemnation that was upon them, and that being placed on Christ. It says He was, he bore our sin. Listen, friends, we cannot bear our own sins. We were dead, we were incapable of action. But he, my friends, is the life. He is the way, the truth, and the life that would take our sin, our penalty, and go before the judge and present himself, that holy thing that would represent us. He would be, as the scriptures say, in our room instead. He went into our room, the room that we deserved to be captured and kept in away from God. But he went into that room instead of me. And he bore my sin and he bore your sin. And he paid the very transactional price. Everything due to me fell upon him. And he did it willingly. He did it with joy because you were his. You're not your own, but you're bought with a price. He owns you. Brother Eldon, isn't it good to know that you are owned by the Lord? He you're his purchase possession. And someday he's going to receive you into his very presence because he bought you. He's not going to lose you. He's not going to lose the one. Everyone that he did for know, he will ultimately glorify body, soul, and spirit. Why? Because he died that we might live. He's worthy to be remembered. He's worthy of our remembrance. You know, I thought about we we have a lot to remember Jesus according to theology. The theology backs everything up in Scripture. All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God. And it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished, that you might be complete. You're complete in the inspired word of God because he completed you. He is my fullness. He is your fullness. So he's worthy to be remembered in theology, in all the doctrinal points, and all the nuances of him keeping the law to a jot and to a title. He's worthy to be remembered. He's worthy to be remembered in the fulfilling not only of the law, but also all that the prophets have spoken of. He says, search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. And they are they which speak of me, which teach of me. He's worthy to be remembered in all of his theology, in all of his uh, all of that word that is the very foundation that we build upon, that rock that we build our house of life upon in this world, that we raise our children on, that we all of those things, friends, they teach us what life really is. A lot of people have a lot of definitions for life, but I'm gonna tell you, my friends, the scripture teaches me that Christ is your life. He is the very essence of your being. People want to know what the purpose of life is. The purpose of life is to worship God. Hear what Solomon says. The sum of all of it, the conclusion to all of it. Fear God. And that doesn't mean be scared of God. God does not have you to be scared of him. He loves you with an everlasting love and with loving kindness he draws you. But that fear of God, Brother Jimmy, is that reverence, that seeing him where he is in his preeminent place. The very pinnacle of our heart should be where we hold fear of God. Fear of God, reverencing him, adoring him with all of our beings. My friends, that is the first. Fear God and keep his commandments. Hear what Jesus says about the law. The law is it hangs upon two things. It hangs on, it's like hinges of a door. The door hinges on these two things. They swing back and forth on these two things. That is, love God with thy heart, all thy heart, thy mind, thy soul, and thy strength. That's the first of commandments. The second is like unto it, love thy neighbor as yourself. You love yourself. I guarantee you, you love yourself. You may think I hate myself. No, you don't. You love yourself. That flesh loves, and that's why he said it like that. Love your neighbor as yourself. I guarantee you you'll never mistreat your neighbor. If you love him as yourself. And I'm gonna tell you, that's the way Jesus loved you. Jesus didn't say love your neighbor as yourself, but I'll do it my other another way. No, he loved you as he loves himself. Jesus loves himself. Jesus loves the Father. Jesus loves you with that unconditional love. Had nothing to do with works whatsoever. Whether the children having been not born, having done neither good nor evil. God did not choose based on action or qualities of the being. He loved on his own will and desire. You can't put the word why did Jesus love me because there was no condition that Jesus loved you. It was unconditional. Now we we remember him in the theology way. And my friends, here's what I've really been thinking about is he is worthy to be remembered in that personal connection way. What he has done in your life to remember what the Lord has done throughout your life. And by the way, it's consistent with theology of Scripture. It is based on what Scripture He has kept you throughout your journey. We all have a race that we're set to run. The race that is set before you. Run with patience, that race set before you, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of your faith. That race, my friends, has been one that we run from the very beginning of our life, through all of the things that we've seen and gone through and done. If you look back down that pathway, you look down through that journey, through that race, looking past all those barriers that we came up against, all the uh, you know, sometimes you can have to climb over mountains. Sometimes you might be able to float down a nice calm stream. Seems like there's a lot more mountains than there is nice calm streams. But nevertheless, look down through that journey that you've gone and just count the times. Just count your blessings. Count the times that the Lord delivered you through this and then through that. And then when I hit that bump, the Lord carried me through that. I got through that and I looked back and I could see where the Lord was working on my behalf. The Lord was interjecting himself in my lifetime. He has been with me all through that journey. Look down through your life and just see all the many times that the Lord has delivered you. As severe as some of those things are, he still carries us through it. Whether it be, my friends, the fears and the oppressions that we come against or the losses that we've suffered. We've suffered some bad, some hard losses. We've suffered some things that seem like it would consume us, but yet the Lord made a way of escape through those things. You see, there's nothing that happens to you that is not common to man. That's not common among people. We may think, I've just been dealt the worst hand. I'm gonna tell you, friends, you probably have not been dealt the worst hand. There are many others that have been dealt a lot harder hand than me. And I think all of us, but what was dealt to you was dealt to you. We've been blessed to have been guided by the Spirit into the church to dwell in his house. What a great blessing that the Father has let us come into his house and be in remembrance to him. Jesus, when he instituted the supper, the main objective, he says, as oft as you do these things, do in remembrance of me. You realize that for 2,000 years the church has been doing these things in remembrance to the Lord. I was going to go look at uh and maybe I'll look at some of it in a moment as we get into the supper. But they in Corinth. They had introduced detrimental things to the observance of the supper. They had made it kind of a festival situation. And it was the Judaizers that were doing a lot of it. They were trying to incorporate the Passover to be instituted along with the supper or before the supper. They would eat this commemorative thing before they would have the supper. And Gill calls it they were eating an anti-supper or anti-supper. It was kind of a wanting to satisfy the Jewish constituents, kind of a compromise, but on the other hand, it satisfied the flesh, because they were eating and drinking and they were they were all eating their own thing. They would bring their own meals and they would, it would be a uh, it would kind of be like our labor day or our Thanksgiving or one of our other commemorative days that we we go through, July the 4th, and stuff like that. And they were eating that, and then it would contaminate the reverence due to the supper. And it was detrimental to the very objective of the things that you do, do in remembrance of me. Realize how much, and I thought about some of our forefathers, that if I get back past my great grandfather, I can't tell you much of anything about those ancestors before him. I know they were somewhere back in Alabama, somewhere in Georgia, somewhere back over in the South. The grandpa, great-grandpa was the one that came to Texas. But before them, I can't tell you much in remembrance of those ancestors. But my friends, the Lord's wisdom was to put this ordinance in the church, give them definition to it, give them uh, it's not a law, you don't do it on a certain day, you don't tie it to so many times a year. But as oft as you do it, do it with intent. Do it with a purpose that is to be to bring remembrance of him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Brother Elton, for 2,000 years, Jesus is still relevant to me and you. And what keeps him real to me and you is his promise that where two or three are gathered together, I will be in your presence. He promised then the night that he was betrayed, that I'm going away, but I will pray to my Father, and he will send another comforter. He will send you the Holy Ghost. And friends, for 2,000 years, the reason he's still relevant is because that Holy Ghost continues to show himself and embrace his people in the church. When they gathered together in his name, he promised to be with them always. That's everywhere they are. It doesn't matter what continent you're on, it doesn't matter what city you're in, it doesn't matter what local church you're in. He promised if you're gathered in my name, there I'll be in the midst of you. He promised he would sing with the congregation. He promised he would be with us in prayer. My father's house is the house of prayer. And he promised to send the gospel. Tell John, shoe John again these things. What a great promise. What a great promise keeper. And he still, my friends, has promised. And he has promised that he will have a remnant somewhere. I hope it stays right here in Valley Spring. Right here where Brother Redford served for so many, and his father before him served all that time. I would like to think if Brother Redford was sitting right here, I'd get some amens. Because, my friends, it's important that we hold to what scriptures say. Let God be true, but every man a liar. Let these things be our guide. Let us do the things that He says to do it. Now we'll we'll stop there.