You can turn in your Bibles to the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, the first Corinthians in chapter 11. When you do find yourself to that book. First Corinthians chapter 11. For our Lord's Supper meditation and sermon this evening, I'll read those portions that we commonly read when we do observe the Lord's Supper.
Sometimes we may read from the gospel accounts of the institution of the Lord's Supper by our Lord Jesus Christ. Other times we will read from 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul does reiterate and stress the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in the institution of that blessed ordinance. So I'll read in 1 Corinthians 11, beginning at verse 17 and to the end of the chapter. Now, in giving these instructions, I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better, but for the worse.
For, first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Therefore, when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others, and one is hungry and another is drunk.
What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the Church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you?
Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you. For 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. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.
Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.
For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment.
And the rest I will set in order when I come. Amen.
Opening Prayer
Well, let us go again to the Lord in prayer. Our Lord and God, we rejoice that we can now engage in this act of worship, the preaching of the word. We do pray again that you would bless this act of worship, that you would help preacher and pulpit to proclaim your word, to proclaim it with precision, Lord God, knowing that the preacher is but a cracked pot disclosing the glories of gospel truth. And we just pray that you'd bless this act and that you would bless those in the congregation this evening, Lord God, that you would, by your spirit, edify those who are yours and instruct them in the things of Christ and in your word.
And Lord God, for any who entered in those doors this evening, outside of Christ, in unbelief, whether young or old, that you would, by your amazing and victorious grace, cause them to believe in the Savior and to rejoice in the forgiveness of sins. We pray in Christ's precious name. Amen.
Scripture Reading
While
Introduction
1 Corinthians 11, 24, and 25 will be our primary focus this evening, specifically the words do this in remembrance of me. They are repeated. That phrase is repeated twice in this section, verses 23 to 26. But just for introduction, for introductory sake, Paul is issuing here a corrective to the Corinthians for their abuse of and their improper approach to the observance of the Lord's Supper.
So he does so by stressing the divine stamp of authority that comes with the institution of the Lord's Supper. For I received it from the Lord. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you. They are not to that.
One of the reasons they most certainly are not to abuse the Lord's Supper and to treat it as an improper thing is because it comes with the divine stamp of authority. the divine stamp of approbation. It is the Lord God, the Lord Christ, that has instituted this ordinance of the Lord's Supper. And the weight of the argument is seen in the repetition of the phrase, do this in remembrance of me. This was not to be a Paschal commemoration, as Gil notes.
It was not to be a remembrance of the Passover. It was not to commemorate the exodus, but now the true Passover lamb having come and been that Passover lamb sacrificed for us, it was the remembrance of Christ that was to be central in this ordinance. And so Paul brings those words of the Lord Jesus Christ to the fore. Do this in remembrance of me in order to squash, in order to drive out this improper and approach of debauchery by those who were turning the Lord's Supper into no supper at all.
We will, again, examine the phrase, do this in remembrance of me, and we'll do so under three points, three considerations. First, the command of the Lord's Supper. It is a command, the command of the Lord's Supper. Secondly, the character of the Lord's Supper.
And then thirdly, The Christocentrism of the Lord's Supper, that simply means the Christ-centeredness of the Lord's Supper, contrary to anthropocentrism or egocentrism, that it's all about us. No, it's all about Christ. And so the command of the Lord's Supper, the character of the Lord's Supper, and the Christo centrism of the Lord's Supper. So
The Command of the Lord's Supper
first, then the command of the Lord's Supper, Paul rehearses Christ's words in which he said, do this. It is a command. The observation of the Lord's Supper are gathering together as saints of the Most High to observe this ordinance. We are doing it as an act of obedience to the living and true God, an act of obedience to Jesus Christ. the only lawgiver.
Our confession of faith speaks this way. Baptism, this is chapter 28, paragraph one. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are ordinances of positive and sovereign institution appointed by the Lord Jesus, the only lawgiver, to be continued in his church to the end of the world. And Paragraph one of chapter 30, specifically dealing now with only the Lord's Supper, says the supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by him the same night wherein he was betrayed to be observed in his churches unto the end of the world.
You see, when we come to the observation of the Lord's Supper, we are doing it as an act of obedience. But you see, it is a command that is joyful to obey, that we rejoice in, in God or with God's commands, with the commands and the positive sovereign institutions of Christ. We do not have or we are not the recipients of a heavy handed tyrant who arbitrarily imposes upon us hard to live with and hard to deal with things. But much rather, we have the simplicity, for example, in the Ten Commandments of love to God and love to your neighbor.
We have in the Lord's Supper, we do not have a sacrament of C4 and detonators like other religions, where by their God, they are tasked to blow people up with a detonator and plastic explosives. But rather, we have a merciful and a blessing a merciful blessing in the sacrament given to us where we come and we get to a veil of bread and we get to a veil of wine. Oh, the heavy hand of Jehovah. No, oh, the blessed hand and kind hand of our great God in giving us this ordinance to observe.
And we are to do so joyfully. It is always a mystery. It's always quite the conundrum. At least it should be to us. when those who name the name of Christ repudiate the idea that God commands his people to do anything.
Of course, we know that our salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone. Praise be to God. But this side of that blessed reality of having been saved, God gives us and hedges us in by these merciful commands, not tyrannical impositions by an arbitrary deity or a deity that imposes arbitrary things, but much rather kind, condescending commands where God keeps us and where God blesses us. And on that note, it is a comforting ordinance.
It is a comforting ordinance. Have you ever considered this?
A Comforting Ordinance
In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 23, for I received from the Lord, that which I also delivered to you. And then this, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And we'll pause on that verse for a moment, because have you ever considered the comfort that is in the recognition of that fact that it was on the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed that he instituted the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. You see, this isn't the Lord Jesus Christ and Paul now reiterating the words of Christ, but this isn't the words of the Lord Jesus Christ just or sorry, Paul here rehearsing a simple historical fact that It was just the case that the Lord Jesus Christ instituted the Lord's Supper on the night that he was betrayed.
No, that is given to us for a measure of comfort as it would have first been a great comfort to his disciples at that time of chaos and madness coming by the way of the Jews and the Romans. So how do we see comfort in this particular text? Well, we see it first off in the fact that by this Christ is instituting an ordinance or in the original context, it would have been something of a disclosure of a visitation of love upon the disciples by God through Jesus Christ, the Lord that was before them. Gill puts it this way, and he's talking about Matthew 26, 23, acknowledging the betrayal by Judas on that night where the Lord's Supper was instituted.
And he says this, the circumstance of Judas's betraying him is mentioned not only because it was in the night and a work of darkness, but being in the same night he instituted the supper shows the knowledge he had of his death by the means of the betrayer. and his great love to his disciples, his church and people in appointing such an ordinance in remembrance of him and his death when he was just about to leave them. You see, rather than having a pre-death emotional gathering of consolation and lamentation, we rather have Christ in his messianic composure instituting an ordinance for his disciples and for his church that is to be a comfort because he will be gone. But we will have these visible and tangible tokens where we know that he is near and that he will come again in glory to bring us with him to that blessed eternity. So it is a comforting ordinance.
It is a command, most certainly a joyful one to observe, and it is a comforting ordinance. And we should pause just one more for one more moment at this point. You see, yes, there is a Godward trajectory in this command. We render obedience joyfully, I hope, and it should be joyful.
We render joyful obedience in observing the Lord's Supper and God receives the glory and the praise for it. But you see,
A Means of Grace
in this command and in this ordinance, if we already if we did not already get that from the comfort aspect, we do have God blessing His people. Christ institutes this Lord's Supper in order to bring a gift to His people, in the observation of it, that we might receive from on high the blessings of redemption, that means of grace. Our confession speaks about this reality. In chapter 14, that God, through His Spirit, strengthens His saints by way of means.
One of those means is our gathering together for worship, where the Word is preached. And then it says also by other means such as baptism and the Lord's Supper prayer and other means ordained by God. And so we come here and yes, we are obeying a command of our Lord God, but is also a command wherein God blesses us and fills us with those great blessings of joy in Christ. So we have the command of the Lord's Supper.
The Character of the Lord's Supper
Secondly, we have the character of the Lord's Supper. Paul rehearses Christ's words in which he says, do this in remembrance of me. Do this in remembrance of me. So we have the character of the Lord's Supper as one that is remembrance.
The character of the Lord's Supper is such that it is an ordinance of remembrance. The Lord's Supper is not only a memorial meal, but it is a memorial meal. And what do we mean by that? Well, we already said that God, by the Lord's Supper, grows us in our faith by the Spirit, strengthening us in the inner man.
But you see, it is the character of the Lord's Supper is such that it is a memorial meal. Do this in remembrance of me.
Memorial, Not Repetition
Our confession of faith again highlights this in contradistinction to a blasphemous, repetitious mass in the Roman Catholic Church. In this ordinance, Christ is not offered up to his father, nor any real sacrifice made at all for remission of sin of the quick or dead, but only a memorial of that one offering up of himself by himself upon the cross once for all. And a spiritual oblation, that is, an offering up or a sacrifice, of all possible praise unto God for the same, so that the Pope's sacrifice of the Mass, as they call it, is most abominable, injurious to Christ's own sacrifice, the alone propitiation for all the sins of the elect. We have this ordinance as a memorial of that one offering up of Himself by Himself.
And you see, we are remembering a once-for-all sacrifice. That's why in a few moments' time we'll highlight this fact, that when we come together to gather for the Lord's Supper, it is not a remembrance that is introspective. It's not an egocentric remembrance where we are somehow drawn by the papist inside of us to look inside at the motions of the Holy Spirit and the impurities and all those sorts of things. But rather, our gaze is extrospective at the riches and the excellencies of Jesus Christ and his perfect redemption.
And so it is a memorial meal, a memorial of that one offering up of Christ by himself upon the cross once for all. And
Answering Man's Tendency to Forget
this remembrance, this character of the Lord's Supper as remembrance, it answers man's natural tendency to forget. In other words, in this command that God has given us to observe this blessed meal, it is God, in a sense, remembering that we are but finite in our existence. We are but men at best, and we are men that can forget our Christ and can forget the blessings of gospel truth. A long quote, but listen to this, these words from Spurgeon, on the point of the Lord's Supper because I believe he does hit the nail on the head.
It seems then that Christians may forget Christ. The text implies the possibility of forgetfulness concerning him whom gratitude and affection should constrain them to remember. There could be no need for this loving exhortation if there were not a fearful supposition that our memories might prove treacherous and our remembrance superficial in its character or changing in its nature. Where one would think that memory would linger and unmindfulness would be an unknown intruder, that is the spot which is desecrated by the feet of forgetfulness and that the place where memory too seldom looks.
I appeal to the conscience of every Christian here. Can you deny the truth of what I utter? Do you not find yourselves forgetful of Jesus? Some creature steals away your heart. and you are unmindful of him upon whom your affection ought to be set, some earthly business engrosses your attention when you should have your eye steadily fixed upon the cross.
It is the incessant round of world, world, world, the constant din of earth, earth, earth. that takes away the soul from Christ. Oh, my friends, is it not too sadly true that we can recollect anything but Christ and forget nothing so easy as him whom we ought to remember? While memory will preserve a poisoned weed, it suffereth the rose of Sharon to wither. And so you see, this giving of the Lord's Supper to us is God knowing our frame, that we are but men and prone to forget. that even as Christians made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit and regenerating grace, we can nevertheless in our lives as Christians forget the one who saved us and forget the verities of his saving gospel.
And so in the Lord's Supper, we have this, the character of remembrance whereby God blesses us because we are naturally trending towards forgetfulness each and every day. They had a problem remembering that Paul has to do this again in 1 Corinthians 15. In 1 Corinthians 15 at verse 1, Paul needs to do this again. You see, they forgot about the proper observance of the Lord's Supper.
They had turned it into a supper of absolute selfishness. eating to gluttony and drinking to drunkenness. They had forgot that it was delivered to them by Paul already. That's what he uses, that language that he uses, and he uses it again in 1 Corinthians 15. You see, here in 15, they were to remember that it is most certainly true that the dead will rise.
The resurrection of the dead is most certainly true, and it is vital to our Christian profession For if the dead do not rise, then how is Christ raised from the dead? And if Christ is not raised from the dead, then your faith is futile. It's empty. And our preaching, our preaching is folly and vanity.
We'll notice the reminder in first Corinthians 15 one. Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel, which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand by, which also you are saved. If you hold fast that word, which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
I declared to you the gospel which I preached to you." He had to come and remind them again what the gospel was so that they would not fall after these vain philosophies, negating or rejecting, denying the resurrection of the dead. So in 1 Corinthians 11, We read in verse 23, for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you. He had already instructed them. He had already given them instruction in the Lord's supper.
And yet they were gluttons and drunkards abusing with selfish neglect, the proper observance of the Lord's supper. So the remembrance, the character of remembrance is such that it answers to man's natural tendency to forget. And
Historical Retrospect in Christian Life
this highlights The character of remembrance in the Lord's Supper highlights the Christian practice of historical retrospect. That simply means, everyone, historical looking back. That is, and it has to be, a mark of our daily Christian walk. What does Paul do?
Well, actually, first off, what does the Old Testament show to us but that the people of God are always drawn back to a remembrance of the mighty works of God. Come behold the works of the Lord. Pastor Butler preached this morning in Psalm 46 in verse eight. We are always to be drawn back.
We are always to be engaging in that exercise of contemplating the historical works of our great God. You don't necessarily have to turn there, but we see that in Deuteronomy 5.15. In Deuteronomy 5.15, we read this. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm.
Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. The keeping of the Sabbath day is not some tyrannical imposition, again, by a God who just wants to impose his will upon us in an arbitrary and capricious fashion, but rather it is the blessing of God from on high, whereby the people are to remember their redemption physically from bondage in Egypt. We turn to a place like Psalm 40, And we see the same thing, this Old Testament pattern, the saints of Christ, the saints of God, remembering the mighty works of the Lord. In Psalm 44, right at the beginning, verse 1, Psalm 44, we have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us the deeds you did in their days, in days of old.
You drove out the nations with your hand, but them you planted. You afflicted the peoples and cast them out, for they did not gain possession of the land by their own sword, nor did their own arm save them, but it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your countenance because you favored them." You see, remembrance is to be the mark of a Christian, one of the marks of a Christian. We are to have that historical retrospect, that historical looking back. We are to Drive out the introspective aspect of our selfishness in our humanity and we are to look with extra spectrum upon the riches and the excellencies of our triune God and of his truth and we are to look with Retrospection upon the mighty works of our Lord.
Isn't this what Paul does in the New Testament in one of those? In one of those well-known passages to hopefully each and every one of us Ephesians 1 3 to 14 That is historical retrospect in the blessed garments of doxology. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every blessing, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself. You see, that whole, that whole sentence from Isaiah or from Ephesians 1, 3 to 14 is one long doxological retrospection.
Paul glorifying God in looking back and surveying the beautiful landscape of triune salvation. And Christians are to do the same. approach to the Lord's Supper is one of remembrance, wherein we glory in the saving immensity of our Jesus Christ.
The Christocentrism of the Lord's Supper
Well, lastly then, and finally, the Christocentrism of the Lord's Supper. The Christocentrism of the Lord's Supper. Paul rehearses Christ's words in which he said, do this in remembrance of me. Do this in remembrance of me." The Christocentrism of the Lord's Supper.
This, of course, excludes this then, that it is to be remembrance pointed back towards ourselves, that we are to be remembering ourselves. You see, it is sometimes a wholesome exercise to engage in introspection. In fact, the Apostle Paul here says, but let a man examine himself. So there is a place for that, and Paul most certainly commands that and exhorts the Christians to do that.
But you see, the Lord's Supper is a remembrance, though, of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can at times, As Spurgeon had once said, let us peruse the diary of our memories, for there the witnesses of our guilt have faithfully recorded their names. But you see, he then says, but we are not to linger there, but rather quickly to fly with eyes of faith, casting a gaze upon the one who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. You see, we do not linger long on guilty, vile, and helpless we. but rather we quickly move on to spotless Lamb of God was he.
And so remembrance, the remembrance in the Lord's Supper is the remembrance of me. That is not Cam Porter, but the Lord Jesus Christ. Do this in remembrance of me. It is not a remembrance of our sins.
That is the falling and the madness. of the Roman Catholic Mass, but rather it is a remembrance, because Christ has offered up himself once for all for the sins of his people, it is a remembrance of that blessed and perfect work of salvation. So it is a remembrance of Christ, and if it is the remembrance of Christ, then it is not a bad thing to engage in a remembrance of Christ, generally speaking. Is it ever? In that sermon by Spurgeon, and you have to, you have to read it, you have to, you don't have to, but if you can read it, beautiful sermon called The Remembrance of Christ, just on the Christians historical retrospect and remembering our savior.
And you see, he traverses the whole life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ with beautiful language. You see, when we engage in remembrance of Christ, there is nothing that is not wholesome or glorious to remember. We see him in the incarnation. We see God, if you will, in a feed trough coming into this world to redeem guilty sinners.
Is that not something glorious to remember? Though we were not there, yet by the word we can, in a sense, remember that our Lord Jesus Christ came into this world born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law. God in a feed trough. not there so that we could have fond notions of a cuddly baby, but to come in and to do that blessed work that he would, 30-some years later, speak of when he said, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. We glory in the fact of Christ entering into that mission, that messianic mission, whereby he perfectly performed the law in our stead, obedience to the law so that we might have a righteousness to avail with him.
Spurgeon, in indicting men, indicting men in our natural tendency to forget, says we have reason to suspect at his baptism that the conscious water trembled at the fact that it contained the deity. In that water, Christ goes down, He comes up, and before having done that and before receiving that approbation from the Father, He said, it must be so that I might fulfill all righteousness. It was His meat to do the will of the Father. Have you ever considered that from the birth of Christ to the death and resurrection and ascension of Christ, that whole messianic mission was one large and giant act of substitutionary obedience to the Father.
From his first breath as a babe in Mary's womb, where he was breathing in the amniotic fluid, to his last breath as a breathing human, to that point where he is ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high, that is all one giant and immense and perfect act of vicarious obedience in the stead of all those who believe. We remember a massive and a glorious savior. We remember him and we're drawing near an end for all, including me, who are hot. We remember his kindness in his earthly ministry.
Go and sin no longer. He doesn't come with the venom and the vitriol that so many of us would come to an adulterous woman. Throwing figurative fire and brimstone at someone who could do such a thing. Go and sin no longer.
After indicting those who were seeking to put her to death unlawfully. But you see, we also see our blessed Savior with his wholesome severity. His wonderful wholesome severity. Those Pharisees and those scribes, you hypocrites. brood of vipers.
You are witnesses against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Indicting those who would seek to cast under their muddy sandals the law of God and the perfect and just one who came to fulfill all righteousness. So we see Christ and we rejoice in a remembrance of him generally. But you see,
Proclaiming the Lord's Death
the text, and as we draw to a close, has something specific in view for when it says, take eat, this is my body which is broken for you. When it says this cup is the new covenant in my blood, it is saying what is summarized at verse 26. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. So we come and yes, a wholesome remembrance of that whole scope of Christ's messianic work.
But specifically, we come and we remember and we proclaim his death till he comes again. This is what is immediately in view when we read those words of institution. And when we read the summary, Jesus Christ, the cross, substitutionary atonement. Notice the simple language.
Take eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. It wasn't an exemplary sacrifice to the exclusion of any redemption or atonement. It wasn't just Christ doing the highest moral act of self-sacrifice for persons, but it was an act of sacrificial substitutionary atonement. having his body broken for us, for all those who believe this cup is the new covenant in my blood and the gospel narratives we read that blood which is shed for you for the remission of sins.
So we remember Christ and in that remembrance of Christ, we remember him in that bloody massacre, bloody massacre upon Calvary's tree. You see, there was an old boy back in the second century, Melito of Sardis, who would use language to indict his audience for a lack of proper remembrance, for their forgetfulness in rightly recognizing and appreciating the sacrificial work of Jesus. He would say things like, he who fixed the stars in place is fixed in place upon a tree. He who set the galaxies rolling in their orbits is set in place upon a Roman implement of execution.
Woe to the one who would not tremble before such a condescending act of redemption and salvation. We tremble. We cast, we should or we ought to, or Melito of Sardis at least did cast malediction on anyone. who would thumb their nose and turn their nose upon such a mighty act of God and such a glorious act of a Savior. To consider and to examine and to read what the Lord Jesus Christ had done and to leave flying the banner of those who would say, crucify him, crucify him, give us Barabbas is an absolute proof of the total depravity of man.
May God come, may God fly upon the wings of amazing and victorious grace and cause sinners to know the truth of this blessed Christ who gave himself for the forgiveness of sins.
Application
In two minutes then, as we close, first we need to hold in high regard preaching and the ordinances of our Lord. Hopefully in some small measure we get that from these hot 40 minutes. That we are to hold in high regard the preaching and the ordinances of our Lord. Because have you ever wondered why in our church we don't have ornate stained glass windows?
We do not have a large wooden crucifix behind us with a blasphemous violation of the law of God spread out upon it. Why we don't have ornate and bedazzled and bejeweled crosses of gold, silver, and emerald, and diamond, and all of those sorts of things. It is for these reasons, says Calvin. Paul declares that by the true preaching of the gospel, Christ is portrayed in a manner crucified before our eyes.
Of what use, then, were the erection in churches of so many crosses of wood and stone? Silver and gold if this doctrine were faithfully and honestly preached Christ died that he might bear our curse upon the tree That he might expiate our sins by the sacrifice of his body wash them in his blood and in short Reconcile us to God the father from this one doctrine that people would learn more than from a thousand crosses of wood and stone As for crosses of gold and silver, it may be true that the avaricious give their eyes and minds to them more eagerly than to any heavenly instructor. When I consider the proper end for which churches are erected, it appears to me more unbecoming, their sacredness, than I well can tell, to admit any other images than those living symbols which the Lord has consecrated by his own word, I mean baptism and the Lord's Supper. blessed words from Calvin because it speaks to the absolute necessity and this truth that is not pictures that are worth a thousand words, but it is fitly spoken words that have the value of a multitude of pictures. Because God commands to preach the word, to preach Christ and Him crucified.
God forbid that I should boast save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We preach Christ crucified. And this Lord's Supper is a remembering of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that blessed cross work. So believer, remember your Savior.
Remember your Savior. Why is it? Why is it that we can spend so many minutes and so many hours downloading grumpy cat videos to the exclusion of reading the blessed word that point to the Savior dying for sinners and rising again. Why is it that we can spend so much time googling trampoline fails, and we can go days upon end without availing of that one who to believers is supposed to be precious, according to according to the Apostle Peter, to those who believe he is precious.
Remember your Savior. Third, Unbeliever remember this Savior you reject this ordinance now In your unbelief There will be a time though when that eschatological judgment comes if you have not closed with your Savior with our Savior Where you will not be able to reject The sacrament of judgment that will be given to you where he will cause you to eat wormwood and where he will cause you to drink gall. You see, you will not have bread on that day. It will be the bitterness and the wretchedness of wormwood.
You will not have the blessing of wine on that day and remembering a savior perfect in all things, but rather you will drink the gall of bitter judgment. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is this savior that we remember here tonight, given himself for sinners who has risen again for sinners and who has said all who believe in me shall have everlasting life.
Let us pray.
Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your holy word. We rejoice in this freedom to gather together unhindered to worship you, to avail of your word, to pray to you, to sing hymns. We just pray, Lord God, that you would have blessed this evening and that you would bless this evening, that you would cause your saints to rejoice and remember Christ to write, to rejoice in him, to remember him. And we do pray, Lord God, that by your grace, you would cause those who do not know you. to know you by your grace, for your glory, that they would have come in this place, yes, enemies of God, but that they would leave this place by grace, singing the praises of our Savior, singing along with us.
Hallelujah. What a Savior. And it is in Christ's name that we do pray. Amen.