The Gift of Communion
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: 1 Cor 11:23-26
N: Elements for myself
Opening
Opening
Good morning! Welcome to Family Worship at Eastern Hills for this last Sunday of 2020. Those of you here in person and those of you online, thank you for being here to worship the Lord Jesus Christ together. I want to take a second and say thank you to our praise band for leading us in praise and worship this morning, and I appreciate your faithfulness throughout this year. I especially appreciate the fact that you hardly got to practice at all together since March, and you make it a point to be here early every Sunday so that you can get sufficient practice in in order to lead our congregation each week.
I also want to give you quick update on our Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions. Remember that our goal is $26,000, and to date, we have received $25,232! Praise the Lord for His work around the world through our Southern Baptist missionaries and thank you for being a part of that work through your support of those missionaries through this offering!
Well, we made it through Christmas, and it was so great to be able to come together on Thursday night to celebrate the culmination of Advent as we remembered the Gift of Christ our Savior, born in humble circumstances though He is a King, born to die though He is the author of life, born to bear the wrath of God against the sins of the world though He is sinless. Our Christmas Eve service is probably my favorite single service of the year, and I was blessed to be a part of it again this year.
And this morning, we will celebrate and remember another gift as we reflect upon the gift of communion. Let’s read our focal passage for this morning, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. Would you please stand with me in honor of God’s Word as we read:
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
PRAY
One of the gifts that I ordinarily receive at Christmas isn’t a “gift” at all. It’s nothing that gets unwrapped, nothing that could fit under a tree or have a bow put on it. Instead, it’s a kind of family tradition that my side of our extended family got in the habit of having. It’s a Christmas Eve morning brunch. We’d have donuts and fruit, breakfast casseroles and cinnamon rolls, bagels and of course, coffee. We’d gather together, exchange gifts (mostly just for the kids), and laugh and talk the afternoon away. I have 5 siblings, and all of us have at least one child, and often there are various in-laws invited as well, so this is a large gathering. It’s a kind of loving chaos, and growing up in a big family, chaos is sort of par for the course. We ordinarily have a competition of finding the pickle ornament in the tree, tons of mess from wrapping paper and the discarded boxes from toys, and entirely too much to eat. But the point of the get-together is less about the gifts and the food than it is about the togetherness, as it is sometimes difficult to get all of those families’ calendars synced up at other times of the year.
This year was different. We didn’t get to have that gathering because of the pandemic, and we had to miss out on that time of togetherness and celebration. Many of you can relate. However, this morning we are having another kind of family gathering, a gathering of this group of brothers and sisters in Christ around the family table for the family meal. Today, we get to take the Lord’s Supper together, both here in the building and online. It’s a great gift!
Throughout the season of Advent this year, we have been looking at the Gifts of Christmas, and seeing how the season of Advent joins us with the ancient Hebrew people as they waited for Messiah, how the coming of Messiah gives us the gifts of hope, love, joy, and peace in our present situation, and how we also have much to look forward to in the return of Christ in the future, as He returns to set the world right again. As I was reflecting on that picture of Advent as I prepared this morning’s message, I realized that in communion we have another gift that connects the past, the present, and the future in a powerful way.
This morning, let’s consider the gifts of Communion as we prepare our hearts to celebrate with the Lord’s Supper on our last Sunday of 2020.
1: Communion reminds us of the past.
1: Communion reminds us of the past.
We as people are generally a pretty nostalgic lot. We often come up with ways to recall important events, dates, or moments in our lives. We celebrate anniversaries, remembering the dates we were married. We celebrate birthdays, remembering the date that we or someone else was born. We have holidays for the creation of our nation, the birthdays of important historical figures, and remembrance of certain important aspects of our lives, such as Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. I have an Echo Show on my desk that throughout the day will show me pictures that I took on a given day in years past, so that I can remember.
The Lord’s Supper, or Communion, is an occasion given to us by our Lord so that we take a moment to stop and consciously remember what He did for us in the past:
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper on that night before He was crucified, He gave us a gift: a collective way for us to come together to remember the work that He had completed for us. When we reflect on the past work of Jesus as we take the Lord’s Supper, we do so as a way of remembering, of being reminded of what Jesus did for us nearly 2000 years ago—the message of the Gospel.
Because of our sin, we are in conflict with our Creator, with God Himself, who loves us. Knowing that we could never be good enough to get back to perfection, He gave His Son to come to earth, live as a man (but perfectly), and die in our place, taking the punishment of death that we deserve on Himself. Jesus’ death transformed an execution into a sacrifice. He did this so we can be forgiven and restored to a right relationship with God through faith in the work of Jesus. That work is finished, completed, done. He did all that was needed to provide that means of restoration, declaring on the cross that the work was finished:
30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.
Jesus took my sin and your sin and our sin and their sin on Himself when He was on that cross. And when we believe that, and trust in His sacrifice in faith to save us, then we are made new according to Scripture, and we have the forgiveness of our sins, and the promise of eternal life because Jesus defeated death and rose again.
When we take Communion together, we do so in remembrance of Jesus and His completed work—the giving of His body and the shedding of His blood for the cleansing of our sins. Jesus gave His life for us. He died for all, but for those of us who believe, as we remember His crucifixion, we should have an understanding and appreciation for that sacrifice as it has been applied to us. He did certainly die for the lost, so that the way would be available for them to be saved. But since they do not believe, it is foolishness to them.
18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved.
If you have never trusted in the finished work of Jesus, then this may very well sound like foolishness to you, as you have nothing to “remember.” But Jesus really did live and really did die and really did rise again, so that we can be saved. Believe the message of the Gospel, trust Jesus to save you, and discover that it really isn’t foolishness at all… but the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
And that’s one of the incredible things about the Gospel: the work of Jesus takes everyone who believes and brings them together under one umbrella. And Communion is to be a picture of that togetherness:
2: Communion connects us in the present.
2: Communion connects us in the present.
When we come together in the Lord’s Supper, there’s a picture being painted there about who we are. Just like my big family meals at the holidays, when we come together to worship on Sunday mornings, we come together as a family. And there is no more meaningful time as a family as when we come as one body to receive the gift of Communion.
It’s a together thing. Earlier in the letter that we call 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote this about the Lord’s Supper:
16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, since all of us share the one bread.
The word here that is translated twice as “sharing” is the Greek word koinonia. It’s a word that we also use for fellowship, solidarity, and commonality between each other, including a caring responsibility for one another. The interesting thing about the English word Communion it’s base definition is an act of sharing. So when we come together in this time, we are sharing in the remembrance of the shed body and blood of Jesus for us, and we are doing so in full view and in commonality with each other in the present. We should be holding one another accountable to the testimony that we claim when we do this. Why? Because of what Paul said in our focal passage in verse 26:
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
This is a thing that we are intentionally encouraged to do together. The English language is a funny thing. If we are referring to one person, we call them “you.” If we are referring to a group of people, we call them “you.” There are some times that Southern slang comes in handy. The “you” here in verse 26 is plural, so in Southern slang, it’s “Y’all”. It helps you get the picture if you say it that way: “For as often as y’all eat this bread and drink the cup, y’all proclaim the Lord’s death.”
See? It’s a thing we do together in the present. And what do we do with communion in the present? We take it together, so that we can declare the Lord’s death together. When we take Communion in a few minutes, we are making a loud-and-clear testimony of what we believe, who we belong to, and why we are here. We together proclaim the Lord’s death because it is because of that death that we have been saved and set free from the punishment that we deserve, and so now, we belong to the Lord as His servants. And we belong to Him both individually and collectively.
Communion is a practice that should tie us together as brothers and sisters in Christ, as family, as we come to the table with one another to share a meal and declare to each other and to anyone else watching just how much Jesus has done for us, and how much we mean to one another as a result.
But there is also a future aspect that we see in this passage:
3: Communion connects the past and the present to the future.
3: Communion connects the past and the present to the future.
When we take Communion, we look back to the completed work of Christ on the cross. It’s central to our faith. We also come as one body to share in the experience and to remember and encourage one another in the truth of the Gospel. But as we do that, we do so with the same kind of anticipation and longing that we have just talked about for 4 weeks with Advent. The gift of Communion is one that anticipates and celebrates the truth of the fact that Jesus is going to come back for those who are His, and He will set the broken world right when He does. How do we know this? It’s at the end of verse 26:
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
The Church (big C Church) isn’t going anywhere. She (we) is the Bride of Christ. She will be around from now until the return of Jesus. And throughout all of that time, as that Bride comes together and commemorates and celebrates what the Bridegroom has done for her (us), we will declare over and over again not just that Jesus died, but that He rose again, ascended to heaven, has saved us now, and one day is coming back. This is what we are called to, church: to declare to the world that there is a Savior, and He’s coming back to take those who belong to Him and to judge those who don’t. And it can happen at any time:
2 For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. 3 When they say, “Peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you, brothers and sisters, are not in the dark, for this day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness. 6 So then, let us not sleep, like the rest, but let us stay awake and be self-controlled.
We’re called to be ready at all times, church. That’s why we take the Lord’s Supper: to remember what Jesus has done in the past, to remind each other and encourage one another about what He is doing in the present, and to be steadfast and alert in the task we have been given of declaring His return until that time comes to fruition. As we do this together, we recognize that we are in Christ, but we also recognize how many are not. And in taking the Supper together, we recognize the mandate and mission that the Lord Jesus has given to us to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commanded. And so in the Supper, we challenge one another to fulfill of that mission that each of us has been giving individually, and collectively as the Body, the Bride of Christ.
Closing
Closing
Communion is a great gift that Jesus has given to the church: one that gives us a common focal point, a common message, a common task, and reminds us of the common hope we look forward to. I’m so glad that this morning, we are going to take the Lord’s Supper together. If you are a believer, you are welcome and invited to take the Supper.
You have heard the Gospel this morning, and I ask you in this moment to consider your relationship to God. Have you believed the Gospel? Have you understood that Jesus died to take the wrath of God against your sin and mine, so that we could be forgiven? Have you understood that He defeated death and rose again, so that we can have eternal life in Him? Have you trusted your forever to His grace and mercy, knowing that you cannot save yourself, and surrendering your life to His lordship? If you cannot answer yes to these questions, then this morning, right now even, I call on you to believe the Gospel, surrender your life to Jesus, and be made new, saved by the grace of God.
And if that is you, then I would love to know that and be able to connect with you to help you as you start this new faith journey. Please reach out to me after service or by email at bill@ehbc.org so we can connect with one another. Also, if this morning you have believed the Gospel and trusted in Jesus to save you, you are welcome to take the Supper with us this morning.
If you still do not believe the Gospel, if you are not saved through faith in Jesus Christ, then I will ask you not to take the Supper with us this morning. We don’t exclude because we hate those who don’t believe. We exclude because we love those who don’t believe. Right after what we just studied, we read this:
27 So, then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 This is why many are sick and ill among you, and many have fallen asleep. 31 If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged, 32 but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned with the world.
Since, as we saw in our focal passage today, since in the Supper we remember what Christ has done, and since we declare to one another and to the watching world what Christ has done for us, to take the Supper when we do not believe is to take it in this “unworthy manner.” We love you, and do not want you to eat and drink judgment on yourself.
If you are already a follower of Jesus, even if you are not a member of Eastern Hills, you are invited to take part in the Supper this morning. Just like my siblings who come to town for Christmas, you are a visiting family member! The table is a family table, and you are family, so the Supper is for you as well.
Let each of us who are going to participate in the Supper to take out our elements, and let us take a moment in silence to pray, asking the Lord to consider our hearts and our relationship with God through faith in Christ as we prepare to take the Supper together. As we take this time of reflection, let us remember the words of the psalmist in Psalm 139:23-24:
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way.
Amen. Take a moment to ask the Lord to examine your heart.
A FEW MOMENTS OF SILENCE
Pull the top clear plastic off of the wafer on top. As our focal passage today said (START WITH “ON THE NIGHT...”)
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Let’s give thanks for the bread.
PRAY, then eat.
Pull the second top off of the cup. As verse 25 said:
25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Let us give thanks for the cup as well.
PRAY, then drink.
Thank you for your reverent participation in the Lord’s Supper this morning.
I want to close this morning by inviting those who believe that God has brought you to Eastern Hills for your church home to let me know about that. You can stay in your seats as we dismiss today, and I will come find you after most have left. I’d like to set an appointment with you so that we can sit down, get to know one another, go over the church’s Statement of Faith, and answer any questions you might still have. You can also email me if you’d rather not hang around or if you’re online this morning. bill@ehbc.org
As Donna comes for our closing time of reflection, use this time to worship the Lord for His grace in giving us one another and the gift of communion to celebrate together. You can also use this time to give online as an act of worship as the Lord leads.
PRAY
Happy New Year this coming Friday, and next Sunday, we will being a new series just for the month of January, looking at common heresies in the church. We’re calling it, believe it or not: Heresies (super original and catchy, I know). I hope you’ll plan to be here each week!
I’ve uploaded a new Bible reading plan for January to the What’s Happening page on ehbc.org. We’ll finish Genesis in January, and then start reading through 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Benediction:
11 Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice. Become mature, be encouraged, be of the same mind, be at peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.