2-4: The Ordinance of the Lord's Supper

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: 1 Cor. 10:16-17

N: Bible study card, Donna papers.

Welcome

Welcome in room and online. Thanks band. Thanks Bible study leaders. The importance of connecting with a Bible study group to really participate in the life of the body.

Announcements

Donna & Friends this Friday night at 7:00 pm, raising money for children’s camps. (Paper)

WISDOM Spring Tea this Saturday at 2:00 pm, Pursonalities keynote, Kelsey special feature. (Paper)

Ken Goode memorial Saturday as well at 11:00 am

AAEO ($17,416) This is the last Sunday.

Opening

This morning, we are finishing up Part 2 of our We Believe series. In Part 1 back in January, we considered the doctrines of God and His Word. In Part 2, we’re focusing on Old and New: the doctrine of man, the doctrine of salvation, and the ordinance of baptism. This morning, we will look at the other ordinance of the church: The Lord’s Supper. Give people a heads up to get elements ready if they are participating from home because of being unable to join the body due to illness or other health concerns.

Our focal passage this morning is really short: just two verses. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Word.

1 Corinthians 10:16–17 CSB

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.

PRAYER (praying for Anchor Church North, South, and West campuses, Jared Bridge, Justin Pearson, and Carl Anderson pastors)

One of the most powerful ways that we connect with each other as people is through shared experience. A shared experience is any experience that causes people to identify with one another in some way. When we experience something with someone else or many other someones, it helps to form connections between us that bring us closer. These experiences can be positive—such as a meal enjoyed together or a participating in a successful performance or competition with others—or they can be negative, like witnessing a tragedy or sharing in a stressful endeavor. They can include a few people (a board game session in a living room) or even whole countries (like 9/11).

Shared experience can help break down barriers of communication with strangers—think about how many times you’ve found yourself in a conversation with someone you had never met because you were both standing in line together somewhere. They can also help us deepen already existing relationships—like the fact that it is just more fun to go to the movies with a friend or family member… you’re sitting and staring at a giant screen and not talking to each other… but it’s just better somehow. Shared experiences connect us.

And connection is really what we are about as a church family. Remember that our Vision statement that we’ve adopted during our work on the Master Plan is all about connection:

The Eastern Hills Baptist Church Family exists to connect people to Jesus and to each other.

We will be talking about this statement more and more in the weeks and months to come, as well as how we as a church will fulfill this vision.

But our focus of connection today is the Lord’s Supper. I really enjoy taking the Supper together as a church. When we come into Family Worship as the body of Christ at Eastern Hills, we enter into an important shared experience as a church family. And when we take the Supper as a part of that time together, we expand that shared experience in a really important way.

The Supper is an ordinance of the church, a practice that is a part of who we are as followers of Jesus. When we observe it, we are actually participating in a declaration of our relationship with Jesus and with each other that we can not only hear, but touch, smell, and taste as well.

Our Statement of Belief says this about the Lord’s Supper:

EHBC’s Statement of Belief, Article 8: Baptism & The Lord’s Supper

The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members…memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.

The Lord’s Supper is a practice where we memorialize the death of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, who ransomed us out of sin and death through giving His life on the cross, and who defeated death in our place by rising from the dead. He has also ascended into heaven, and will return in glory to judge the world and to give eternal life to those who belong to Him by faith. The Bible says that those who do not believe in Jesus are already condemned, and will be separated from God, the very source of love because He is love, forever.

If you know this isn’t you: that you haven’t trusted in Jesus for your salvation, you haven’t surrendered your life to Him as Christ the Lord, then can I just take this opportunity to invite you? I invite you to give up on going your own way, and surrender to Jesus, even right now in this moment. You can’t save yourself, and the Bible tells us that the only way to be saved is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 10:9 CSB

9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

You can begin a new life in Jesus by giving up this morning, right here, right now, by confessing that Jesus is your Lord, and believing that He died and rose again to save us. I’m going to take just a moment of silence as each of us reflect on our own relationship with God through faith in Jesus.

Moment of silent reflection.

Now, since the Supper memorializes what Jesus has done and anticipates His glorious return, the Supper is only for those who belong to Him by faith. I don’t say this to be rude or to be exclusionary this morning, and I hopefully will make the reasoning for this clear during my message today. If you don’t believe in Jesus, I don’t think that it’s an accident that you’re here today. I pray that your getting to see this church family consider and take the Lord’s Supper together will be a blessing to you and help you to understand the Gospel, and that God would use it to draw you to faith.

As we prepare for the Supper, we are going to reflect on how our taking the Supper together connects us to Jesus and to each other.

1) Observing the Supper connects us to Jesus.

Before you label me a heretic, let me explain that I’m not saying that taking the Supper saves us. It doesn’t. I’m also not saying that the elements are somehow Jesus’ body and blood as some do. I’m saying that there is a shared experience aspect of the Supper that helps us in our personal connection to Jesus.

As our Statement of Belief reads, the Lord’s Supper is certainly symbolic... but it is also something more than merely a symbol. When we take the Lord’s Supper, it’s a declarative act. We’re each making a declaration about what we believe and about who we are. Look again at verse 16 of our focal passage this morning, and notice the idea of “sharing”:

1 Corinthians 10:16 CSB

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?

When we share the juice and bread that symbolize the blood and body of Jesus, we’re saying each saying that we belong to Christ, and we are sharing in what Jesus has done for us in a very tangible way. Our practice of taking the Lord’s Supper is a both a memorializing practice and an identifying practice, both of which help us in our individual connection to Jesus.

A) Observing the Supper connects us to Jesus THROUGH REMEMBRANCE

Jesus always intended that the Supper be used as a means of remembering what He has done for us. When we take the Supper, we experience in that moment a kind of shared connection with the disciples as they shared in the Last Supper together nearly 2000 years ago. Paul wrote about it specifically in chapter 11 of the same letter to the church at Corinth:

1 Corinthians 11:23–25 CSB

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.”

Each time we take the Supper, we are helped in our connection to Jesus because we are reminded of His earthly ministry: that Jesus was a real person, who came and lived, and walked with His disciples. We are reminded of His sacrifice: that Jesus would be arrested, beaten, and crucified because of our sins. We are reminded of His resurrection: that the grave could not keep Him. We are reminded of His promise to come back and set the world right again, and the promise of eternal reward that He has made to those who follow Him.

As we remember these truths, we are moved to worship the Lord for who He is and for what He has done, and we are moved to a deeper appreciation and love for Him because of His grace and mercy. We declare in the Supper that we remember Him, and since we remember Him, we also identify with Him, which is the second way the Supper connects us to Jesus:

B) Observing the Supper connects us to Jesus THROUGH IDENTIFICATION

What Jesus did at the Last Supper intentionally instituted a planned remembrance for His followers of both the giving of His body and His blood and the reason for the giving of His body and blood. When we take the Supper together, we are engaged in an observance that has happened probably billions of times, for nearly two millennia, all over the world, that marks off His followers by them identifying with the sacrifice of Christ and with the kind of life we are called to live.

In this way, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are closely linked. Together they make up all the ordinances of the church that we have been instructed to observe. And both of them mark off the followers of Jesus from the rest of the world. The person who enters the baptismal waters does so preaching the message of the Gospel as we saw last week: that they believe and trust in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and so have died to the old self, have buried it, and have been raised to walk in newness of life. The baptized person has made a declaration that he or she identifies with Jesus, drawing a line in the sand, if you will.

Likewise, the Lord’s Supper is an observance that continually reminds us of our identification with Jesus. Every time we take the Supper, each of us is stating that we believe the Gospel and that we are defined by the Gospel. There is no escaping the imagery.

1 Corinthians 11:26 CSB

26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Think for a moment about the elements of the Supper: the bread and the juice, representing the body and blood of Jesus, respectively. His body was broken and His blood was spilled through the instrument of the cross. In Luke 9, well before the Last Supper, Jesus spoke of the cross being the identifying marker for the one who would follow after Him:

Luke 9:23 CSB

23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

While He wasn’t speaking about the Supper directly, He was definitely speaking to the identification that the believer is to have with His crucifixion. When we take the Supper, we declare that we belong to Christ, and that we renew our identifying with His death, burial, and resurrection; our death to our selves, our burial in baptism, and our new way of life.

Since these are the case: that we are connected to Jesus both by remembrance and by identification through our practice of the Lord’s Supper—it is important that we take the Supper circumspectly and with reverence. This is why Paul would also say in 1 Corinthians 11—

1 Corinthians 11:27–29 CSB

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.

We are to come to the table of the Lord’s Supper with our hearts prepared to remember and ready to be identified again with the cross of Christ, because we each declare the Lord’s death in the Supper until He comes again.

But the other part of connection in the Supper comes from the fact that this is an act that we do together. We each individually declare the Lord’s death, yes… but we also declare it collectively. And this brings us to our second point:

2) Observing the Supper connects us to each other.

The fact that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper as a kind of reframing of the Jewish Passover celebration is telling. In the Jewish culture, they take Sabbath, or Shabbat, very seriously as an act of togetherness every week. Passover is the pinnacle of Shabbat, and togetherness is vital: even to the point of bringing multiple families together to celebrate it, if necessary.

In Luke’s account of the Last Supper, he recorded that Jesus said that He “fervently desired” to eat the Passover with His disciples, His followers, together. So there is a togetherness, a connection to each other, that takes place when we take the Supper as a congregation. Just as verse 16 of 1 Corinthians 10 was more “vertically” oriented (meaning it was about our connection to Jesus), we find in verse 17 a “horizontal” connection in the Supper:

1 Corinthians 10:17 CSB

17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, since all of us share the one bread.

In the Supper, the many are made into one, because we form a single body, a single family, through the participation in observing the Supper with each other and through identifying with each other through the observance of the Supper.

A) Observing the Supper connects us to each other THROUGH PARTICIPATION

When we come together for Family Worship, there’s a reason we call it that. Yes, it’s partially because we want families to worship God together. But the main reason is because we see the church body as a family. We have one Father, and we are all adopted as His children, so we have become brothers and sisters in the Lord, so we’re family. And since this time together is a family time, when we come together to take the Lord’s Supper, we come together to the family table, so to speak, and we take the family meal together. I love this picture of the Supper.

The first church took the opportunity to use the taking of the Lord’s Supper as a means of the family of God participating in life together. Look at what Luke recorded in Acts 2:

Acts 2:42 CSB

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

Acts 2:46 CSB

46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts,

“Breaking bread” was another way of speaking about the Lord’s Supper. The believers did life together, and the Lord’s Supper was an important part of that fellowship. And we now are the church. We who belong to Christ are together participating in the life of the single body of the church as we connect to our Lord corporately as well as individually. We are to take this time of family Supper and use it as a catalyst for participating in each other’s lives outside of this place. We’ve been saved into a Gospel community, and we should act like it. The Supper helps us to make this a reality.

Again, the Supper is a shared experience with each other: we’re all participating in the same event, the same meal, and it should help us connect with each other because of that shared dynamic.

And this takes us to our last point: that the Supper also connects us to each other through a kind of identification as well.

B) Observing the Supper connects us to each other THROUGH IDENTIFICATION

Just as the Supper connects us to Jesus as we individually identify with His death, burial, and resurrection, it also performs that same function between us collectively, because we together declare that we identify as the body of Christ when we all share in the bread. When we come together and take the Supper, we are essentially saying, “I identify with this body of believers. Eastern Hills Baptist Church is my church family.”

Quick side note: it is perfectly fine for you to take the Supper if you are a born-again, baptized believer, even if you are not a member of Eastern Hills. This is because you are still identified with the universal family of God, so in this moment, you’re here with this part of the family, staying in our house with us so to speak, so we of course invite you to have the Supper with us.

So when we come together to eat the Supper, we should acknowledge and welcome each other according to Paul:

1 Corinthians 11:33 CSB

33 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another.

To welcome someone to your table is an intimate thing. When we come together, we are identifying with each other in fellowship in that moment, and we are acknowledging that we go together with each other through participation in the Supper.

In his little book on the Lord’s Supper, called Understanding the Lord’s Supper, Bobby Jamieson shows the importance of the church identifying with each other through the Lord’s Supper (and baptism):

“The Lord’s Supper marks off an entire group of Christians as one body, drawing a line between them and the world around them. And by drawing a line between the church and the world, baptism and the Lord’s Supper draw a line around the church. The ordinances make it possible to point to something and say ‘church’ rather than only pointing to many somethings and saying ‘Christians.’”

—Bobby Jamieson, Understanding the Lord’s Supper

I am not my own—I identify with and belong to all of you who are my brothers and sisters. You are not your own—you identify with and belong to all of us who belong to Christ. We identify with one another collectively when we take the Lord’s Supper, renewing the oath that we entered into with one another at baptism, again marking ourselves off as those who believe in Jesus.

Closing

The Eastern Hills Baptist Church family exists to connect people to Jesus and to each other.

One of the ways that we do that is through observing the Lord’s Supper, which we will do momentarily. But first, I’d like to take a moment to have a time of response to this morning’s message from the Word.

If you have never trusted in the Lord Jesus before for your salvation, I’d like to ask you to take a moment and reflect on the message of the Good News of Jesus Christ: that we all have sin that separates us from God, but because of God’s great love for us, Jesus (the Son of God) came and lived a perfect life that we could never live, and died a sinner’s death that we should have died, and defeated an enemy we could never defeat: death, by rising from the grave, and ascended to a place that we could never reach without Him: heaven. He will come back and receive those who are His in His time. Is today the day that you will surrender your life to Jesus as Lord, trusting Him as your Savior, and begin a new life in Him? If that’s you, we’d love to talk with you about it and celebrate with you. While the band is playing in just a moment, come and tell us that you’ve surrendered to Jesus this morning, so we can rejoice with you. Joe, Kerry, and Trevor will be down here with me to receive you. If you’re online and you’ve surrendered to Christ this morning, send me an email so we can celebrate with you and get you some resources to get you started on this new spiritual journey.

If you believe that Eastern Hills is a church family that you can get connected to, walk with, grow with, and serve with, then we’d like to discuss that with you as well. Come and let us know, and we’ll set an appointment with you to go over our Statement of Belief, talk about our testimonies, and answer any questions you might have about Eastern Hills. Online but in the Albuquerque area? Reach out by email.

This time will also be a good time to reflect on the state of your heart before taking the Supper, and also to worship God through the giving of tithes and offerings. You can do that online through our app or on our website, or if you prefer to give in person, just wait until we dismiss after the Supper, and you can put your offering in the plates by the doors on the way out.

PRAYER

Lord’s Supper Observance

I’d like to invite our deacons to come down and prepare to serve the Lord’s Supper to our church family.

As they come, I’d like to reiterate both a welcome and a warning. The welcome is that we’re here together in this room (and online for those who could not be here this morning, but are participating), and it’s such a joy to be able to take the Supper together. Look around you for just a moment and welcome each other to the family table.

The warning is that if you do not belong to God through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, please do not take the Supper. Since this is a time of memorial of and identification with the Gospel, if you do not believe, you should not participate. This is to safeguard the sanctity of the ordinance and for your protection as well, according to Scripture. We love you, and we’re glad that you’re here. We pray that witnessing this ordinance will be a blessing to you and open your heart to ask questions or to want to find out more about following Christ.

Ask Wayne and Chuck to come and distribute the bread to the deacons.

Mark 15 records that Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke, it, and gave it to His disciples.

We’re going to do something just a little different this morning as we prepare to take the bread and the cup. We’re going to have a time of directed prayer. Families or groups sitting near each other, feel free to share this prayer together.

Directed prayer for the bread.

Take a moment to praise the Father for His amazing love.

Thank Jesus for giving His body so that we can live forever in Him.

Ask the Holy Spirit to convict you of any sins of the flesh that you might be holding onto before we take the Supper.

Confess those sins to God, asking for His forgiveness.

Lord, we ask you to bless this bread and help us to eat it in a worthy manner this morning. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Deacons distribute the bread.

Mark 15:22 says that Jesus told His disciples, “Take it; this is my body.”

Have Wayne and Chuck come and distribute the cup to the deacons.

Mark also recorded that Jesus gave thanks and gave the cup to His disciples.

Directed prayer for the cup.

Praise the Father for His mercy—that He doesn’t give us the wrath that we truly deserve because He has poured it out on Jesus.

Thank Jesus for shedding His blood to blot out our sinfulness.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to connect with both Jesus and the church through this taking of the Supper.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you identify with both Jesus and the church through taking the Supper today.

Lord, we ask you to bless this cup and let us bring you glory as we take it together. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Deacons distribute the cup.

Mark 15:24 says that Jesus said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”

Thank you, deacons, for serving our church family this morning. We all appreciate your faithfulness. And thank you, Donna, for playing during the Supper.

As the deacons return to their seats, I have just a couple of closing words:

Closing Remarks

I will be sharing about my trip to Israel again tonight at 5:30 here in the sanctuary.

Bible reading: 1 Kings 3 today.

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Ephesians 2:18–22 CSB

18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building, being put together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you are also being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit.

We belong to Jesus by faith and to each other as family. We are one body in Christ. Have a blessed day, and we’ll see you this evening.