Lord's Supper Instructions

I want to make you aware of a change that is coming to the way we practice communion that the Elders see as necessary given the Bible’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper.

That change is in regards to how we fence the table.

The Lord’s Supper was given to the church for 2 purposes.

When Jesus first gave it he said that we were to do it in remembrance of him, meaning it is an act that reminds us how God saves us through Christ’s sacrificial death.

Where Baptism displays our initial commitment to follow Christ, the Lord’s Supper is how we as Christians renew that commitment as often as we take it.

However, the NT gives a second purpose for Communion. Not only does it proclaim the Lord’s death, but it is also the act by which the church renews their commitment to one another as a church body

That is why Paul said in Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread.

Paul’s point is that because we all share in fellowship with Christ when we take of the Lord’s Supper, this unity in Christ makes us a unified body as his church.

So, the Lord’s Supper allows us to 1. Remember Christ’s death and renew our commitment to the Lord as well as 2. Renew our commitment to one another as his body.

Therefore, to properly take communion, we must not only be committed to Christ as his disciples, we must also be committed to his body, the church.

Because of this, the change we will be making soon is in our instruction on who may take Communion with us.

We will say it is for All believers who have been baptized and are members of a gospel preaching church.

Now what do I mean by Members? Isn’t this just a legalistic rule that is not in the Bible? I mean even the term church membership is not found in the Scriptures.

All believers who have been baptized and are members* of a gospel preaching church.

As we will see in today’s sermon, Church Membership is just the term we use to describe what it means for us to commit to a local body of believers.

So a member is Anyone committed to any local body of believers that faithfully preaches the gospel and has affirmed their profession of faith and oversees their discipleship to Christ.

Anyone committed to any local body of believers that faithfully preaches the gospel and has affirmed their profession of faith and oversee their discipleship to Christ.

The Lord’s Supper is for the church. And Who is the Church? As we will see today the church are all those saved by God who have committed themselves to a local body of believers who hold them accountable for following Christ.

If the Lord’s Supper is for Christians, then we are responsible as a church to make every effort to ensure that those that partake of the Lord’s Supper are indeed saved.

How do we do that? By requiring those who partake to have be committed to a biblical church because when we commit to a church, other Christians, are able to affirm our faith and hold us accountable to our walk with Christ.

So this doesn’t mean that you have to be a member of Metro to take the Lord’s Supper. Only that the people who share communion with us will need to be committed in some way to a local church that faithfully preaches the gospel.

This describes what has been historically called visiting Communion, which we believe has precedence in the book of Acts.

What this will mean, is that anyone who calls Metro home and attends regularly will be asked to commit to Christ and the body before they are able to renew that commitment in taking the Lord’s Supper.

For us, this commitment is affirmed by the church expressed by the individual in becoming a member which is what we will be talking about today.

Now, we will not implement this change until after this next round of membership classes because our goal is not to keep people who call Metro home at arm’s length. Rather, we are offering to commit to them as a church by inviting them to become a part of our body.

And if you are hearing this and have any questions or concerns, I would ask that you keep coming back and listening to the sermons over the next 5 weeks.

This sermon series is building a foundation for what it means to be a biblical church and you will see that all the pillars of a church’s life together are connected.

Over the next two weeks we will be learning what the Bible says it means to be committed to a local church in membership.

This leads into a biblical understanding of Baptism which will be taught in three weeks.

This in turn leads to a biblical understanding of the Lord’s Supper which informs how we practice church discipline which will be the two weeks after that.

In order to be faithful in one of these areas, we must be faithful in all the others because they are all interconnected which is what we are hoping to learn together in this sermon series.

Overall, our goal as a church in making this change is driven by our desire to honor what God’s Word says about the ordinances and be faithful to obey his instruction.