“Taking The Lord’s Supper” Mark 14:12-26 April 27, 2008

SI: Reading is Mark’s account of the Last Supper. .

INTRO: The doctor has said it won’t be long now.

It’s time for you to say your last goodbyes to your dear old uncle.

He had no children of his own. You were his favorite nephew.

And he’s already told you that he has left his whole estate to you in his will.

You take his hand and he opens his eyes and says:

Do you remember our tradition?

Do you remember our Saturday morning breakfasts?

When you were little I’d drive over to sister’s and pick you up.

And then, when you got older, you would drive over and pick me up.

And we would go get pancakes and would talk and laugh.

Promise me something.

Promise me that from now on, when you drink your Saturday morning cup of

coffee, you will thank God for the good times we had together.

Would you do it? Would you make that promise to your dear old uncle?

And would you remember him and pray that prayer when you sipped

your Saturday cup of coffee? Of course you would.

You would do it gladly. It would be a precious time every week to you.

Has it ever seemed strange to you that most Bible-believing, evangelical Christians

in America pay so little attention to the Lord’s Supper?

Here we have what amounts to our Lord Jesus Christ’s last request.

It’s the night before his death, and he knows it, and he says:

Remember me with the bread and cup. Proclaim my death in this way till I come.

This was obviously something very important to him.

He wanted this meal to be precious to his disciples then and forever.

And yet many, many churches that believe the Bible is the Word of God,

and our rule for faith and practice observe the Lord’s Supper infrequently.

And it plays a very small role in the regular spiritual life of many believers.

We put lots of emphasis on the importance of Bible study, prayer,

fellowship, accountability and things like that.

But not on taking the Lord’s Supper. Even though it was so important to Jesus.

There are a number of historical reasons for this neglect.

Mostly a reaction against Roman Catholicism.

Our denomination has a history of infrequent, quarterly communion

that goes all the way back to Reformation times.

But we also allow the elders in each church to

decide for their congregation how often to celebrate it.

And a number of years ago, after study and prayer, elders believed there were

good biblical reasons to have Communion weekly and that it would be spiritually

beneficial for Christ Covenant.

So we are out of step with most PCA churches, and if you grow up Baptist

or Methodist, or in an independent Bible church, you didn’t have it weekly,

but if you grew up Lutheran or Episcopal, it feels comfortable.

Christians of good will have different views on how often is best.

I think weekly is best, and I’m glad that is our practice.

But with weekly Communion comes the responsibility to understand

what we are doing. It can become an empty ritual.

Or, it can be what Jesus intended—

a precious and powerful means of grace in your life.

Let’s look at this passage and subject under two headings:

1. What the Lord’s Supper means

2. How the Lord’s Supper blesses.

(Credit to Dr. Tim Keller)

MP#1 What the Lord’s Supper means

Jesus’ last supper was a Passover meal. “Go and make preparations for Passover.”

We read earlier in the service part of the Passover story in Exodus.

It was the last night of the Israelites bondage in slavery.

For 400 years the Egyptians had enslaved them.

God sent Moses to tell Pharaoh to let his people go.

But Pharaoh hardened his heart, treated the Israelites even more cruelly.

So God had send the Ten Plagues on Egypt—blood, frogs, flies, and hail.

Then God told Moses—Tonight I’m going to bring the last plague on Egypt.

Death will come to every firstborn son.

But there was something about this plague that was different from the others.

There was no separation between Israelites and Egyptians.

God said, when this plague comes down, it’s going to fall on everybody.

It’s not just the Egyptians who will be hit—everyone will.

The reason was that this last plague was a picture of the final judgment.

And in the final judgment it doesn’t matter if you are an Israelite or Egyptian,

your race doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you are slave or free, rich or poor.

Because at the judgment, God’s wrath falls on all sin.

So God said to Moses, the only way you can escape is to kill a lamb, and eat it.

And put the blood on the doorposts of your house.

When my justice comes,

only by taking refuge under the blood of the lamb will you be saved.

Your family connections don’t count, your good deeds don’t count—

you must have faith in the sacrificial lamb.

That night, in every home in Egypt there as either a dead son or a dead lamb.

God’s justice came down, and everyone fell under it unless he took refuge

under the substitute. If he did, God’s judgment passed over him.

In the centuries after the first Passover,

the Jews added lots of little traditions to make the meal more meaningful.

Remember God told them:

When your child asks you what these things mean,

Tell him about the way I saved you from Egypt.

So Jews had lots of traditions to drive home the history of the meal.

There were certain questions, songs, prayers, symbolic food, explanations.

When bread was broken by the leader of the Passover meal he would say:

“This is the bread of suffering that our Father’s ate in the wilderness.”

So you can imagine the disciples’ surprise when Jesus broke the bread,

and they expected him to say the words they had heard from time children.

Instead he said: “This is my body, broken for you.”

And then he took the cup, it was the third cup,

and instead of the usual words over the wine says:

“This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many.”

We miss how startling this was to the disciples.

Jesus took traditional Passover words,

and changed them so that they were all about him.

He was saying: I have come to bring the ultimate deliverance from slavery.

In me you will have the ultimate exodus—

freedom from slavery of sin, deliverance from affliction.

I am the great substitute. By my death, God’s judgment passes over you.

So the meaning of the Lord’s Supper is simply the death of Christ.

As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 11.

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death.”

The reason we proclaim the Lord’s death is because his death was totally different

from any other death—it was a substitutionary sacrifice.

Sometimes people ask: Why couldn’t God just forgive us?

Why did Jesus have to die?

Sometimes Christians even ask those questions.

Why couldn’t God just forgive us? Why did Jesus have to die?

The answer is that all real, life-changing love requires substitutionary sacrifice.

It’s easy to love nice people.

It’s easy to love people whose lives are all together, who are doing fine.

The reason it’s easy because it costs you nothing. It’s fun.

But if you love a troubled, wounded, suffering person—it costs you, doesn’t it?

If an emotionally wounded person comes into your life.

Why do you want to go the other way?

Because you can see that he’s sinking.

And you know that loving him you are going to be pulled under yourself.

Because you can see that she is emotionally starved.

And loving her means that your emotions will be drained.

When you love a troubled person, a transfer occurs.

Some of their trouble comes on you, even as your strength flows out to them.

Tim Keller says imagine a high school girl who is really cool—

she’s part of the in crowd.

And she notices a girl who is an isolated loner, a social misfit.

And she reaches out to her, befriends her, wants to draw her out of her isolation.

What will happen next? What will the in crowd start saying?

Why are you hanging out with her?

You are acting so weird?

As he put it: There is no way for you to diminish her isolation,

without some of her dorkiness rubbing off on you.

All real, life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice.

There will always be a transfer.

So what had to happen when God chose to love sinful, messed up people?

There had to be a transfer.

There had to be substitutionary sacrifice.

And that is the death of Christ that we proclaim.

Jesus came to us in our sin and misery and guilt,

and that was transferred to him, he took it on himself to such a degree

that he suffered the ultimate penalty for it—the wrath of God.

And because he did that—we can be forgiven.

On the cross, Jesus did on a cosmic level

what you and I have to do every day if we are going to love people.

And Jesus said that he wants us to remember his death

by taking the Lord’s Supper. There are other ways to remember—

but this is the way that Jesus specifically asked us to do it.

When we do, certain blessings flow to us—let’s talk about those.

MP#2 How the Lord’s Supper blesses.

The Lord’s Supper blesses by pressing home to your heart

in a unique way, the reality of Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice for you.

If you were starving and a feast was put before you,

it would do you no good unless you ate it.

Jesus doesn’t just say—This is my body, broken for you.

He doesn’t just set the feast before us and say—look at this fact.

He then says—Take and eat.

He wants you to take in this wonderful reality of his death.

He wants it to become food and drink to your soul.

The great work of the Christian life, is to take the things you know are true,

and work them in deep so that they make a difference.

How do you work them in deep?

Ask most Christians that and they would say two things.

By reading the Bible and by praying.

That is absolutely right. Those are two great “means of grace.”

You can’t work the truth in deep without the Word and prayer.

But another way is by taking the Lord’s Supper.

The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament.

That word isn’t in the Bible, but it’s biblical.

Just like the word Trinity isn’t in the Bible, but biblical.

Idea of a sacrament, is that there is an invisible spiritual reality

that is represented by a visible sign.

And the two are so closely connected,

that a person can actually draw spiritual benefit from the visible sign.

Let me give you an example from everyday life—a wedding ring.

Wedding ring a visible representation of something invisible—marriage promises.

“With this ring I thee wed, and I do promise and covenant . . .”

There is a sacramental union between that gold ring and the wedding covenant.

And a person can draw benefit from the visible sign.

Allison and I will never forget time a friend of ours called very distressed.

He and his wife were newlyweds and had gotten into first big argument.

He was from a calm, quiet family that never raised their voices.

She was Portuguese. Her family would scream and draw blood.

He had used logic and reason to show her how her position was stupid.

She had taken off her wedding ring and thrown it in his face, stormed out.

He said: My marriage is over. Michelle has left me. She’s divorced me.

We tried to encourage him. No, that’s just her Portuguese temper.

Then he called back in a couple hours—She’s home.

She’s still not speaking to me but I’m pretty hopeful.

She put her ring back on and she’s cooking supper.

Do you see how that wedding ring operated as a sacrament?

He could look at it and it gave him assurance that the invisible

marriage promises and covenant were still intact.

The Lord’s Supper functions in a similar way.

There is no power in the elements.

The bread is just bread, and the wine is just wine (or in our case, grape juice).

It doesn’t have any intrinsic power to bless you.

And it’s not required for salvation in any way—

any more than a wedding ring is required for a person to get married.

And if you weren’t able to take Communion for some reason—

you would still have salvation and all of its benefits.

We have to say those things, because it has been misunderstood and misused.

But as you eat and drink with faith in Christ

the reality of his death for you and all his benefits are confirmed

and impressed on you in special way.

There is a mystery to it, but when a believer takes the Lord’s Supper,

the reality of Christ’s death works in a little bit deeper.

It concentrates your attention on Christ in a tangible way.

And any time our attention is concentrated on Christ,

we are strengthened spiritually.

Why are you bothered by criticism?

Why does your view of yourself rise and fall on your performance,

or on the approval of people?

Why do you think being punished when things go bad?

Why are you discontent with your life?

The reason you have turmoil, even as a Christian, is because

the great truth of Christ’s death has not been pressed in deep enough.

If you really believed, not just in your head but in your heart

that Jesus is your substitute, that he died for you,

these things wouldn’t throw you into turmoil.

How do you make the most of the Lord’s Supper, by doing three things as take.

1. Remember his death. Jesus wants you to do that.

As you take the bread and cup, feel them, smell them, taste them, swallow them.

And tell yourself that Jesus’ death for you was just as real.

He died as your substitute. He took on himself your guilt.

Because that is absolutely certain and complete—

all is right between you and God.

Let the assurance of that wash over you.

2. Trust in his promises.

At the Last Supper, Jesus not only spoke of his death—

but he made a great promise about his second coming.

“I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until I drink it anew in kingdom of God.”

In Bible times, for a person to make an oath not to eat or drink until

something was accomplished, was the strongest oath possible.

Because you were saying: I will do this or die.

Jesus could not say more clearly—I am absolutely committed to blessing you.

That should give you hope no matter what you are going through.

3. Talk to him.

Lord’s Supper is called in I Corinthians 10, koinonia in the body of Christ.

Koinonia translated participation, fellowship, or communion.

There is at the Lord’s Table a particularly sweet communion with Christ.

Is he present at all times and places? Of course.

Can we talk to him any time? Yes.

But just as friend who can talk any time have special times and places

that they love to go and be together—so God himself meets with us in special

times and places—and this is one.

Make use of it for a time of special prayer.