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Remember the Lord’s Supper

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

The Institution of the Lord’s Supper

We’re going to take the Lord’s Supper today, but before we actually break bread, I wanted to share the Word. We’re going to look at quite a few Scriptures, but I wanted to start with the actual words of Jesus in the Gospel, so go to Matthew 26. And by the way, one correction on the announcement, El Teo’s is not the best in O’Fallon. It’s the best in the world. Got it, in the world. It’s all free. They’re doing this free. It’s amazing. Yeah. Twenty-six. You got your large-print Bible there, Shawn? Shawn’s getting picked on today. We all there? Matthew 26 in verse 26. [audio unclear]

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”

(Matthew 26:26–28)

Note the words, My body, note the words, My blood, note the words, remission of sin. Now go to Mark 14 in verse 22. “As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ Then He took the cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said to them, ‘This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many.’” Notice the word shed there. Now go to Luke, Luke 22 in verse 19. “And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.’”

Now go to 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul talks about the Lord’s Supper and refers to the words of Jesus, which we have just read. In 1 Corinthians 11, starting in verse 23, he says, “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you.” Notice Paul didn’t say I read this in the Gospels. All right, and that’s important. I received this from the Lord. Okay, “I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’” Now in the Gospel accounts, Jesus does not say after He gave the bread, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” It’s not recorded there. But He said it. How do we know? Because He told Paul, I said it. Got it? So Paul is giving us information about a Gospel event that’s not recorded in the Gospel. Got it? Verse 26: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.”

So what’s called the Lord’s Supper is, the church is called, an ordinance or a sacrament. And it’s done to remember the Lord Jesus. And there’s a whole lot about Jesus we could talk about, right? There’s a whole lot we could remember. But clearly the focus of the remembrance, according to Paul, is the death of Jesus. Now when Scripture talks about the death of Jesus, it is not just about His death, because when he talks about His death, Paul’s assuming that Jesus not only died, but He rose from the dead, right? Matter of fact, later in this very book, he gives the longest exposition that we have on the resurrection of Christ. So the death of Jesus is more than just Him dying. A typical first-century pagan believed Jesus died. What wasn’t believed is that Jesus died and rose from the dead? Jesus makes a point in the institution of the Supper to stress that His blood was being shed for the remission of sins. Okay, in other words, something was going on here that had to do with the sins of the world, really with my sins and your sins. Something was happening with the death of Jesus that had universal implications and universal application. It wasn’t just that Jesus was a radical criminal or Jesus was a social justice warrior speaking truth to power and that’s why He was killed. Something was going on that was of cosmic significance with the death of Jesus. And it had to do with His broken body and with His shed blood. The supper that we take, as I’ve said many times, but we need to hear it again, the supper that we take, the emblems or the symbols, if you will, involved, have to do not only with bread, but with bread that is broken. And of course it speaks of His death, and the wine poured of the pouring out of His blood, what we traditionally called the passion of Jesus, the suffering and the death of Jesus. That death for our sins of course includes as we know the burial and then the ultimate resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus, amen.

Why We Must Remember

Now as I pointed out before to you, it is striking to me that we’re told to remember, to do this in remembrance. It’s striking to me that elsewhere in the Scripture in the New Testament, we’re told to remember Jesus. Paul specifically tells Timothy, of all people, a man he trained in the ministry, the man who was basically the second in command—Paul was going to die and Timothy was going to step in and take over the oversight of the churches that Paul founded. He says to him, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. Remember that. Now, did you forget that this week? I mean, do we need to be reminded that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead? I’ve been saved 43 years, I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten it. Well, but the point is, apparently we need to be reminded about the foundational, about the foundational, elementary, basic gospel. We need to be reminded of this on a regular basis. Apparently we do. Paul says as often, or Jesus says, as often as you do this. In the early church it was whenever they gathered. [audio unclear] Drift is simply sin. And so we see for example look at Galatians. We’re going to be jumping around, by the way, some different Scriptures.

The Galatian Drift

If you look at Galatians chapter 1, here’s what Paul says. He says in chapter 1 verse 3, “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.” Now Paul founded this church, and if he visited the church, at least the Galatian area, at least twice—the big debate, and theologians debate if he went three times or not. The point is he founded churches in the Galatian region. He preached the gospel, the simple gospel of Christ dying for their sins, rising from the dead. He preached justification by faith, which we’ll see in a moment as we look further in Galatians. And many of them embraced the gospel, professed the gospel, and then shortly thereafter, many of them were turning away. They were turning away. But the amazing thing about this is they didn’t know they were turning away. You know what I’m saying? Now there’s some people who profess Christ, especially young people who grow up, yeah, I believe in Jesus, I was baptized, and they get to their teen years like, I don’t think I believe in Jesus anymore. And their denial of the faith, what’s called apostasy, is clear-cut. No, I don’t believe anymore. This is different. This is drifting. Okay, this is, yeah, I believe in Jesus. Yeah, I believe in Jesus. Yeah, I believe in the gospel. Yeah, I believe in Jesus. Same words, different position. Same words, different location. You know what I’m saying? That’s drifting. It’s thinking you’re standing here in one place by what you’re saying is the same, but in fact you’re really standing over here in what you’re really believing in your heart. You’re drifting. People are drifting. So that drifting, Paul calls a turning away, and he calls it a perversion of the gospel. And he says they were turning to another gospel, but in verse 7 he says, which is not another. In other words, there aren’t two gospels, there aren’t three or four. It doesn’t work that way. Now you can go to church down the street and they have a certain kind of worship or certain kind of style or certain kind of building and they look this way, you go down the street and this church looks different and that church is different. We have different denominations. But if they’re truly Christian churches they should all adhere to the same gospel. Right? Now I understand some people think Jesus is coming before the rapture, some people don’t believe in a rapture, some people think, you know, okay, we’re talking about the core elements of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and what happened when that happened. That’s the foundation. That’s what Paul’s talking about here. He’s not talking about, well did you use wafers during communion or did you use unleavened bread? Churches split over stuff like this. The foundational reality of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Did it happen, and if it happened, what did it mean? And what does it mean today? That’s what the gospel is about. It’s not about many of the peripheral issues. The Galatians were drifting and by drifting they were perverting the gospel. [audio unclear] They were Jesus followers and yet while they were saying I’m a Jesus follower, drifting, and the drift meant that ultimately they were perverting the gospel.

And this is what is so important about Paul, really the Scripture as a whole, but Paul especially, is that he could smell out when it came to the gospel, he could smell out when there was a drift happening. Okay, he could smell it out. He was very open to all sorts of things, but when it came to the gospel and the essence of the gospel, there was to be no compromise. No compromise on the gospel, on the heart of the gospel. So much so that as we go on in the book of Galatians, what you see in chapter 2 is Paul actually publicly, get this, publicly confronted Peter. Not privately, publicly. You got two apostles arguing in public. It’s astounding. He called him out in public. Why? His behavior was betraying the fundamental aspect of the gospel. Now I don’t think Peter knew that. I don’t think Peter was trying to do that. But Paul connected the dots. If you say this and you do this, it leads to this and that’s a betrayal of the gospel. So in chapter 2 for example he says, verse 11, “When Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed.” Why? “For before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision,” meaning the Jewish faction of the church, “and the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.” Peter and Barnabas—you’re talking about the pillars of the church. “But when I saw that they were not straightforward about” what? “the truth of the gospel.” This was the issue. The truth of the gospel. “I said to Peter before them all, ‘If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we,’” meaning even we Jews, “‘have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh’”—no man, no Gentile, no Jew, no person—“‘shall be justified.’” Couldn’t be any more clear. Couldn’t be any more clear. Peter didn’t realize that his behavior and the fact that he withdrew from the Gentiles in order to impress the faction of the church, the Jewish faction of the church who were having trouble adjusting to the fact that Gentiles were actually invited into the kingdom, into the covenant—understandable in light of the history of racial animosity between Jew and Gentile. But he was doing it to please men. But in doing so, he was compromising by his actions the integrity of the gospel. Verse 20, he says, “For I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain”—without His death. Why would Jesus need to die if by our good works or if by God’s general goodness, we could be, quote, saved? Why? Wouldn’t make any sense. It’s totally illogical.

So Paul goes on to the Galatians. He says, 3:1, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” Ooh, they’re being deceived. Professing Christians being deceived. “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” When you were born again, were you born again because you were obeying the law, or were you born again because you put your faith in Christ the Savior? Which was it? The answer obviously is by faith, right? “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect,” or mature, “by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” In other words, God was clearly doing miraculous things in their community. And he’s saying, is God doing these miracles in your community because you’re being good, because you’re conforming to the law, or because you are believing? Verse 6, just as Abraham, the father of the faithful, the father of the Jews, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.” So the Galatian problem was that they were unwittingly, he says, you’re being deceived, you’re being bewitched. They were unwittingly drifting away from the gospel, as Paul phrases it, turning away, even perverting the gospel, but they didn’t know it. And in their case, what they were doing is they were adding works to grace. Works to grace.

Compromise in the Name of Tolerance

Now I’m going to talk about that more in just a moment, but let me just say this. The Galatian problem is a perennial problem. Okay? It’s not as if, you know, early Christians were confused and now we all got it together. It’s really not quite like that. As a matter of fact, today there’s a great apostasy upon us. And we see profound ignorance in the evangelical church. I use the word broadly. I won’t give you any stats. I’ve quoted stats before but look up any research on the [audio unclear] “All men will be saved.” These are Christian singers. “Those who are sincere will be saved. All men are basically good.” All kinds of statements which are at odds with Scripture and really at odds with the heart of the gospel. Common, common ignorance in the church. And then we have compromise that accompanies the ignorance. It’s often in the name of love, might be in the name of tolerance, it might be in the name of church growth, it might be in the name of self-esteem, it might be in the name of justice, it might be in the name of anything. But when it comes to the gospel there’s a compromise that ends up taking place. Here’s what one author said, you want to hear this? You’re going to like this, ready? “I don’t think that anything has been done in the name of Christ under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and hence counterproductive to the evangelistic enterprise than the unchristian, uncouth strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition.” Did you hear that? It is un-Christian to tell non-Christians they’re not Christians. It is uncouth, un-Christian, to tell someone who doesn’t know Christ that they’re actually lost. That’s what he’s saying. Well if that’s not compromise, I don’t know what is. It’s a person who had one of the biggest churches in America. Don’t preach the gospel because people might be offended, but build a big church. You got it? Produce followers of Jesus who aren’t born again. Followers of Jesus who’ve never repented because they’ve never been told that they are sinners. Let’s build a church like that. What do you say? Y’all for that? It’s not a church. It’s not a church. In the book of Revelation, Jesus calls it the synagogue of Satan. It is not a church. The church is made up of all those who have put their faith in Christ, and faith includes repentance for one’s sins. Faith in Christ, and they have been blood-bought. That is, they believed Jesus was not just a good man, not just a guru, not just a teacher, but He was a Savior. He was an atonement. He was a Redeemer, that when He died, He died on the cross for their sins. And then because of faith, they had been born again by God’s Spirit, and they’re now in God’s family. Amen? I don’t know how in the world you preach the gospel to people that you can’t say to them you’re lost. What’s the good news? If there’s no bad news, what’s the good news?

This kind of thinking is permeating the church. There’s an 11th commandment that’s been added to the 10, you want to hear it. Thou shalt not offend anyone. Thou shalt not offend anyone. Even if it’s the Bible that might offend them, thou shalt not offend anyone. Even if it’s the words of Jesus that might offend someone, thou shalt not offend anyone. Because this is the greatest sin. Because the greatest virtue is tolerance. Tolerance. We read the Scripture last week, I’m going to go back to it in 2 Corinthians where Paul is expressing his concern. 2 Corinthians 10 or 11. He’s expressing his concern about the Corinthians here and how they were potentially being deceived. He says, verse 2 of 2 Corinthians 11, “For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” I want to present you to Jesus as a pure bride, not defiled with sin and not defiled with false doctrine and all kinds of other, pure. “But I fear,” verse 3, “lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ,” or the purity in Christ, or the simple devotion of Christ. So Paul is saying I’m very concerned about you because I think you’re being deceived, potentially going to be deceived, “for if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted—you may well put up with it,” you may well tolerate it. This is tolerance to the nth degree, right? You just tolerate everything. Everything. Well. Paul didn’t tolerate everything. Jesus didn’t tolerate everything. There are some lines that have to be drawn. Now you can draw pretty wide, but there’s some lines that have to be drawn.

I remember a conversation I had with a guy who was—long backstory anyway. He didn’t believe in the deity of Jesus and he didn’t believe in the Trinity. When I say the deity of Jesus, that Jesus was truly God, truly God, as well as truly man. So he didn’t believe in the divine nature of Jesus, didn’t really believe in the Trinity. So we have this long conversation where he tried to convince me. [audio unclear] I was sitting in my office, this desk illustration is orthodoxy and it’s pretty broad. When you read what’s called the [audio unclear] atoning death, one of them is His resurrection, one of them is His final return, these are in the basic creeds, but it’s pretty broad. And I said, you’re not on the desk. I mean, I wasn’t trying to be mean. I know sometimes when I preach I sound mean, you know. I wasn’t being mean. I’m just saying, you know, you can’t keep on extending, you can’t be building a new desk every week and extending the edges every week because you want to be more tolerant. I mean at some point there’s an end to the desk, okay. Just, you know, everybody draws lines somewhere, and I think that the creeds—and some people don’t like the creeds—but the creeds are very broad, and if you can’t fit into that, then you’re outside orthodoxy. You’re not a Christian. And even saying that today sounds hateful because we’ve been so conditioned that tolerance means tolerating everything. And to say something like, well you’re lost, and no that’s actually not biblical, that sounds judgmental to people because we’re conditioned just, you know, love means tolerating everything. So Paul loved the Corinthians. Matter of fact, he said that he had a godly jealousy, a burning passion for their purity, a burning passion. He was solicitous for them. He was watching over them. He was concerned for them. Have you ever had a newborn baby? Have you ever stayed up at night and just watched them sleep? Are you okay? Only the first one, of course. And that’s the way Paul was over the churches. And it was that kind of concern that he had for them that would cause him to say things that would sound so harsh. Sounds harsh.

Go back to Galatians and Paul even addresses his harshness. In chapter 1 back where we were, where he says that there’s some in verse 7, some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel, but then look what he says, this is probably the hardest passage in the Bible, next to anything the Bible says about hell. This is it, right here, ready? “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received,” meaning from us, “let him be accursed.” That’s pretty strong. And then in verse 10 he says, “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men?” God, if he would say that, right? Clearly Paul wasn’t worried about pleasing man. I would have never said something so harsh. So harsh. And then in chapter 4, he says to them in verse 16, he says, “Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” And so often, people do become your enemies because you are speaking the truth. They don’t want to hear the truth. The truth offends them. So you become offensive because of the truth that you hold. I’ve shared many times that often I’ll meet people that don’t really know me and they’re really friendly and we’re chatting, we’re having a great time. As soon as they find out I’m a Christian, or especially if they find out I’m a pastor, they treat me totally different immediately. Well clearly it isn’t me, because we were having a great time. Nothing changed about me. What changed is your knowledge of me. Right? So Paul was being treated as an enemy by the very church that he founded because he was speaking to them an unpleasant truth. They didn’t want to hear what he was saying. And what he was saying was, you’re drifting away from the gospel. You’re drifting away from the gospel. And they took offense at what he said to them.

Justified by Faith, Not by the Law

So Paul, let me try to wrap up my ramblings this morning. Go back to chapter 3 of Galatians. Paul says to them, he really gives us, he already says in chapter 2 that we’re justified by faith, not by works of the law. Then he says in chapter 3 verse 10, “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.’” In other words, if you’re making your stand on the law for justification, meaning acceptance with God. If you’re making your stand on the law and say, I will be accepted based upon my performance of the law, Paul says, well, okay, fine. I’ll grant the premise. But do you understand that means you must do it all? Not some of it, all of it, all the time. “But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for ‘the just shall live by faith,’” he’s quoting Habakkuk. “Yet the law is not of faith, but ‘the man who does them shall live by them.’ Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith,” through faith. Verse 21: “Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” The law shows us our fallenness. It shows us our need for Christ. You look at the law and then you look at yourself like, oh my. I don’t do that, and I certainly don’t do it all the time. Okay.

By the way, as a footnote, since I’m rambling, I’ll just continue to ramble, the Sermon on the Mount has the same function in the new covenant that the law has in the old. When you read the Sermon on the Mount, it’s not a gracious sermon. There’s not stuff about grace and faith and atonement or any of it. Right? He said, matter of fact, he says, your righteousness needs to exceed that of the Pharisees. Like, wow, okay, I thought they were going to get in. I’m really in trouble. Why? Why did Jesus take that approach? Because He was trying to get those who believed in their own righteousness, who believed in law-work salvation, He was trying to get them to see their fallenness. Oh, He did that very thing that a preacher said not to do. Jesus wanted them to see that they were lost. You see? So the way He did that was not just saying, oh God loves you, but He’s saying, you think you’re righteous, you think you’re okay with God, in fact you’re not, and here’s why. And He showed them that the precepts of the law are spiritual. Even if a man never commits physical adultery, I can guarantee you pretty much every man has thought about it. Because of lust in the heart. And that’s what Jesus was doing. He was taking the law as an external expression of God’s will and applying it internally and then saying, how you doing now? How you doing now? Ouch is right. Anger is murder. Lust is adultery. How you doing now? And we could go on and on. I could go on and on anyway.

Remember the Atonement

Well, I just read this website of this one group. They’re another, and how they like to take digs at traditional evangelicalism and they’re going to redefine it all for us now. And one of their mission statements is, we’re going to live out the Sermon on the Mount. No, you’re not. And when you read through all their what? There’s no atonement. There’s no blood of Jesus, but they’re saying, we are the real followers of Jesus. No blood. That’s how deception works. In the name of the tolerant, in the name of the tolerant Jesus, well we won’t talk about that blood-sacrifice thing because that’s really offensive. This is why Paul said and Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Remember the atonement. Remember the sacrifice. Remember the foundation of the faith, the broken body, the shed blood. Remember all the other things we want to tack onto it, whether you’re a fundamentalist or an evangelical or you’re a hymn-only or whether you’re a social-justice Christian or hipster, whatever you are. Anything you want to tack it on, fine. As long as it’s consistent with the blood atonement. Are you hearing me? The fact that we’re talking about public influential figures in Christianity can say, don’t tell somebody they’re lost, or can say we’re leading the way, we are going to demonstrate to the world the way Jesus lived, and deny His atonement, it is profoundly disturbing, my friends, for the future of the church. All the more we need to be wary, we need to be reminded of the foundation of our faith. The foundation of our faith is Jesus. It is not just Jesus as a good man or Jesus as a teacher, but it is Jesus, the One who died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and three days later rose from the dead, and then ascended into heaven and now sits at the right hand of the Father. This is the foundational creed of the church. This is the mystery of godliness, because apart from it there ultimately is no godliness. Amen.

Why don’t we stand and pray and then we’ll have the elements served. The elders and deacons come forward to serve, please. Lord Jesus, we thank You that You are the author and finisher of our faith. You are the One to whom we come for salvation. We thank You that today we again remember and proclaim Your death and Your resurrection as the foundation of our faith. We thank You, Lord, that You invite all to come. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” That is Your invitation. I pray, Lord, for us, for our children, for our friends, for the broader church in our nation. Jesus, I pray that You would, I pray that You would protect us from deception. And protect us from the falling away that we’re seeing around us. I pray, Lord, that You would be the center of not just our personal lives but our corporate life, the center of our profession, the center of our gospel. And Lord when I say You, I don’t mean the You that we’d like You to be, but the You who You are, that we can only truly discover in Your Word through Your Spirit. Dear Lord, protect us from making You in our image when You rather want to make us into Your image. Bless these elements to our souls, Lord, as we take them to remember Your death. We pray in Your name, amen.