[0:00] Let's turn together now for a short time to Galatians chapter 2. I'm going to look together at verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ.
[0:13] It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
[0:25] I'm going to spread this verse over our service today, including the Lord's table, where we'll look at the second part of the verse. As we said last night, our theme for the communion is Jesus and I.
[0:43] And last night we looked in chapter 6 at the way Jesus and I is set out there as Paul boasts in Christ. He is my boast.
[0:53] And as we look at this passage this morning, we could say that it's Jesus and I, that he is my life. We'll come back then in the evening to look at chapter 4, where he talks about adoption, where Jesus is my brother.
[1:12] But Paul is being very personal in these passages. There's a lot of heavy theology in them, certainly. A lot of depth, things which are really difficult to actually reach the extremity of their meaning.
[1:28] And our minds are really taxed as we come to actually wrestle with some of the great points that Galatians has to bring out in terms of the theology of salvation.
[1:38] But Paul is making it so very personal as well. And that's really one of the great things about the Bible from beginning to end. So often the greatest theological points are applied to a very, very personal experience.
[1:56] Nowhere more so than Jesus himself. Where in Mark chapter 10, verse 45, one of the great texts of the Bible, I am among you as one who serves.
[2:09] I have come to be the servant. What is that applied to? It's applied to the way that there was a dispute amongst the disciples. How did Jesus deal with a dispute among the disciples?
[2:20] He brought out the greatest theology about himself. The son of God as a servant. And he said, if I am this, what should you be?
[2:32] And here in Galatians, you have the same principle. Here is Paul saying, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
[2:42] And the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. You see how personal that is, this I and this me that Paul is dealing with.
[2:54] But you see, it's all about Christ. And it's all about making Christ personal. And it's all about how personal Christ has become to him. Because Christ made himself personal to Paul.
[3:06] That's the beauty of the cross and of the death of Christ. It's for me, he says. So we're looking at four things that are significant throughout the service.
[3:19] And the sermon will look at the first of these. The significance of being united to Christ. Because that's really what lies behind the language that he's using here.
[3:32] I have been crucified with Christ. I have a union with Christ in his cross. And then the result of that is that Christ has come to live in him.
[3:46] Now that significance must also include, because this is the background to Galatians. First of all, that Paul has been condemned by the law of God.
[3:58] That's how it is for every sinner. Every one of us here, as we come before God. As sinners, we are condemned by the law of God. You remember in Adam, first of all, that God gave Adam an instruction.
[4:12] What you could say is a command. That he could eat of all the trees of the garden. Except this one. This tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.
[4:23] In other words, when Adam broke the command of God not to eat of that tree. The law that God had given him was broken. And the sentence of that law was death.
[4:34] Death. That death that God had said would come if he broke his law. Had actually happened. And when God gave the moral law.
[4:46] Which you find summarized, as you know, in the Ten Commandments. Which you actually take not just individually, but all together as a package. If you break one, you break the whole law.
[4:58] As Paul is actually saying here in another passage in Galatians. In other words, when you and I sin, we break the law of God. Whatever kind of sin it is.
[5:10] And Jesus shows that sin is not just what you do outwardly in your actions. Sin is something that begins in the mind and can be perpetrated in the mind. And need not go beyond your mind to be a sin.
[5:21] Sin is something that begins in the mind. And whenever we sin, we break the law of God. And the law pronounces the sentence of death upon us. And the only way that we can get back to acceptance with God is for this broken law.
[5:37] And its penalty and its condemnation. Its sentence to be applied successfully. And we can't do that. Why can't we do that?
[5:51] Well, we try our very hardest. This man did. He tried his very best to keep the law of God as perfectly as he could.
[6:02] And he thought before he was converted that that was sufficient to make him righteous with God. When Jesus met him. When Jesus taught him. When he came to realize that that in fact wasn't the case.
[6:14] That his righteousness by the law was nothing more than self-righteousness. And therefore it was offensive to God. That's when he came to realize that the righteousness he needed was already provided by what Christ had done.
[6:29] And when Christ became his. That righteousness became his. That righteousness that the law demands became his.
[6:42] Now you and I can try as hard as we like to keep the law of God by our own efforts. And many of us did that. We tried to cut certain sins out of our lives when we came to realize that we needed to be right with God.
[6:56] We said to ourselves, well I'm not going to do this anymore. And I'm going to go for the rest of my life as much as I can. I'm going to go and I'm not going to do this. I know it's wrong so I'm going to stop it.
[7:08] But before you knew where you were you'd done it again. And the sense of your guilt and your conscience came to hit you. And you realized, well I can't do this. I just can't keep the law of God.
[7:18] In fact, the more I try to keep the law of God. The more it condemns me. Because I'm adding sin to sin. And that's really the sense of that great cry of the apostle in Romans chapter 7.
[7:34] A chapter that deals with the law of God and our relationship to it. In chapter 7 and verse 24. Paul cries out, Oh wretched man that I am.
[7:46] Who shall free me from the body of this death? What's he talking about? He's talking about his inability to keep the law hard though he might try. The law keeps on condemning him.
[7:58] So he's saying to himself, how am I going to get away from this? Where is the answer to this prison in which I find myself? Where is the answer to the condemnation that the law brings out over me?
[8:10] How can I get out of this? How can I be free from this? Oh wretched man that I am. Who's going to free me from this? But he answers the question. He doesn't leave the question unanswered.
[8:24] Because in the next breath he says, I thank my God through Jesus Christ. Now that doesn't mean that he's thanking the Lord through Christ.
[8:35] What he's saying is, I thank my God through Christ I am set free. Through Christ I'm released from the bondage that I'm in under the law.
[8:50] Through Christ I'm released from its sentence. Through Christ I've come to realize, I've come to realize that it's in Christ and through Christ. That the sentence of the law is lifted because he took it for me.
[9:04] He experienced it for me. He died the death that the law demanded. And that's what you find here in Galatians.
[9:16] Not only are we released from that curse of the law because Christ was made a curse for us. But as we'll see tonight, we are actually not just set free, but we are brought into the status of adopted children of God.
[9:32] We are given a new status. We are released from the sentence of the law in order to be children of God, sons of God.
[9:44] You may remember an illustration I used quite some time ago when there were some sheep in the Glebe. And on a communion morning, as I was going to preach actually in Kindloch, on a communion morning I went down and one of the sheep had actually overnight got caught in a piece of loose barbed wire.
[10:03] And the thick wool of the sheep had meant that the wire had got caught so much up in its fleece that it had been for all its attempts at getting itself free, the more it had tried to get itself free, the more the barbed wire had tightened and dug into its wool.
[10:20] It was impossible. The more it struggled, the more the noose tightened. The more actually it got caught up. And it needed someone to go down there, take the wire, bring it off, tear it away from the wool or tear away some of the wool.
[10:39] And of course, as soon as that was done, the sheep just bound it off. It was free. But you may remember I said that without realizing it, as I was tearing away at the wool and the barbed wire, I'd cut my hands.
[10:51] I didn't really feel it at the time, but when I looked at both my hands, they were streaming with blood, not seriously, but just small cuts. But there was loads of blood there. And it reminded me, just powerfully, as I was about to go to Kinloch to preach at a communion service, this is what Jesus did for me.
[11:07] I was bound up in the barbed wire of the law and its sentence of death. And for all my struggles to set myself free, it only tightened the noose.
[11:20] But when he came, he set me free. How did he do it? By taking my place. By taking the wounds for me.
[11:34] By shedding his blood. By taking the sentence of the law. And meeting that in my place. That's what you're remembering today in the Lord's Supper.
[11:46] that condemned by God's law. You come to be released by what Paul says here is, I have been crucified with Christ. Now let's look at that.
[11:57] You've been released. He's been released. He's saying from the sentence of the law, from the sentence of death, from the condemnation that he has as a sinner by being united to Christ in his death.
[12:08] I have been crucified with Christ. Yet I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. Now let's look at that from the perspective of faith.
[12:20] Faith is one of the great things in Galatians, of course. When you believe in Christ, when you come to place your trust in him, which really is the essence of what faith is.
[12:32] Faith is not just a matter of believing in your mind that something is true. Faith is the action of your soul coming to rest upon something or someone in this case that you trust.
[12:44] That will bear the weight of your life. that will carry you safely through God's examination and into eternal life. And that is what Paul is saying.
[12:55] I have been crucified with Christ. What that means essentially is this, that what he has done for me, God actually regards it as if I had done it myself.
[13:10] I have been crucified with him. The death that he died, as it is acceptable to God, as a ransom, as an atonement for my sin, God looks upon that because of my relationship with him as if I had done it myself.
[13:24] As if I had died that death. As if I had met the terms of the law which I couldn't do in myself. But God says, ah, you have met it because you're joined to my son who has done this for you and in my place.
[13:37] And when he rose from the dead, I rose from the dead in him. I was connected to him in his resurrection. Therefore, it's as if I had come successfully and triumphantly out of that grave myself.
[13:52] What a wonderful thing it is to be united to Christ. Because when you're united to Christ, that's in fact what happens. Everything that Christ has done passes over to you.
[14:03] And God regards you as if you had done it yourself. Look at what it says there in verse 19.
[14:15] I, through the law, died to the law so that I might live to God. Now Paul is not dealing there with his own attempts to keep the law. He knows that was a failure.
[14:26] Again, it's all about Jesus. When Jesus came into the world, as chapter 4 puts it so wonderfully, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.
[14:38] He put himself in my place. He put himself under the condemnation of that law, under the requirement of keeping that law perfectly for his people. You can put it this way.
[14:49] The life that Jesus lived was a life that perfectly matched the requirements of God's law. He never broke it. He always kept it.
[15:01] Every single second of the life he lived as a human being in this world, from his birth through to the time that he left it, the left of the world, he never, ever sinned.
[15:13] He never broke God's law. He always maintained it. He always upheld it. He always met its demands. In that, God sees me as if I had done that myself.
[15:26] He kept it for me. He lived successfully in relation to the law of God. And because I believe in him, because my trust in him by faith has made him my own, then his success becomes my success.
[15:40] It's as if I had done it myself. That's the life Jesus lived in relation to the law. And the death that Jesus died in relation to the law is also an answer to the law's demands.
[15:59] It's the death that God insisted on needed to take place if we were to be saved. The sentence of death that the law pronounces.
[16:10] And remember, it's spiritual death. It's eternal death. It's the death that is hell. Damnation. Nothing less does the law require.
[16:24] And that's what Jesus died. When Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ, he doesn't just mean his physical death on the cross.
[16:35] He means the spiritual death. The eternal death that Jesus died. That Jesus actively died on the cross. My God, my God, why?
[16:47] Have you forsaken me? That forsakenness is the forsakenness of hell. It's the darkness of hell. It's the lostness of hell. It's that that Jesus died.
[16:59] Why did he die this? For his people. Paul is saying, for me. He gave himself for me. And that becomes my death.
[17:11] It's as if I have died that death that he died because my faith is in him. because I've accepted him for what he is. Because that is the basis of my hope.
[17:21] Because he is my boast. He is my life too. Because God accepts all of what he has done as if I had done it myself. Because I am united to him in all of that.
[17:36] And that's what Paul means when he says, I, through the law, died to the law. It's through the law as the law was fulfilled in Christ, in his life, and in his death.
[17:48] And through the law as Christ lived it, and through the law as Christ met his sentence in his death, Paul died to the law. The sentence of the law is gone. The condemnation of the law is gone.
[18:00] Why? Because Jesus has taken it for him. Has met it for him. Has experienced it for him. The law, as far as Paul is concerned, has been accomplished.
[18:10] In Christ. And now he's regarded as having accomplished it, as if he had done it himself. Christ keeping is his keeping.
[18:25] Christ fulfillment is his fulfillment. And here, really is the wonderful thing. You can put it this way. By faith in Christ, I am as acceptable to God as he is.
[18:42] Isn't that amazing? How acceptable to God is Jesus Christ his son? Well, he tells us, doesn't he, at a number of stages in the gospels, in the life of Christ, a voice was heard from heaven where God the Father declared, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
[19:06] What does that mean? It means that God absolutely delighted in him. And it means too that if I am in him and by faith in him, God delights in me as he delights in his son.
[19:29] I am as acceptable to God in Christ as Christ himself is. And you may think that's going too far.
[19:42] No, it's not. That's why Jesus died. The death he died. So that you and I might receive, as we'll see tonight, the adoption of sons.
[19:57] That we might be brothers of our elder brother, Jesus Christ. And all together in the family of God.
[20:08] What a wonderful thing you're remembering in the Lord's supper as you remember the death of Christ. You remember your own connection to him.
[20:19] That you are crucified with him. That you have been crucified with him. That through the law you died to the law. So that you might live unto God.
[20:32] It's all about him. It's all about what he has done. But by faith it's passed over to us. And that's why he now goes on to say that so that it's no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.
[20:47] Now that's rather strange to look at first of all but what Paul means is that by faith in Christ Paul has no separate existence from Christ.
[21:01] He cannot think of any single part of his life any single aspect of his life where he is detached from Christ where Christ does not feature as joined to him and he to Jesus.
[21:15] Jesus. And now that's what he's saying about having died to the law and to sin and having a new life in Christ. But it's not just a matter of that he lives now by faith in Christ.
[21:29] What he's saying is quite amazing. It is no longer I who live that by that he means not the I that I used to be. That person is gone.
[21:40] or that that person in that state is gone. It's now a new creation. It's a new person. And what he's really saying is that not only is he joined to Christ and has life in Christ but actually Christ lives in him.
[22:07] Everybody here today is a Christian. That's true about them. It's not just apostles. This is not just for somebody who had the capacity of understanding the spirituality the level of experience that Paul had.
[22:24] Every single Christian young and old experienced inexperienced they all have this great truth that Christ lives in them. Now you might say that's a mystery of course it's a mystery but it's a fact.
[22:40] How does it take place? How does Christ live in us? By what means is it that Christ lives in us? How is it through being crucified with Christ and by faith joined to him?
[22:55] How does he then come to live in me? Well for that you've got to go to other parts of the Bible and I'm just going to go to one of John's passages in the gospel of John chapter 14 where very interestingly John is dealing there with Christ coming to live in his people but he also mentions the commands Christ himself mentions the commands there he's talking of course to the disciples this is what he says John 14 at verse 21 whoever has my commandments and keeps them he it is who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him Judas not Iscariot said to him Lord how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world Jesus answered him if anyone loves me he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him there's so much in that beautiful words wonderful truth if anyone loves me he will keep my word you see
[24:12] Paul died through the law he died to the law the law was kept for him by Christ and in Christ he's regarded as having kept it himself and Christ is saying if you love me you will keep my commandments you'll be joined to me so that as you look towards fulfilling my commandments you'll see I fulfilled them for you and you live a life of holiness as you seek to put sin to death practically all of that comes into it but he says my father will love him and we will come and make our home with him and it's a passage that immediately then goes on to speak about the Holy Spirit that's the key to it because being crucified with Christ or having been crucified with Christ and living by faith in Christ therefore having Christ come to live in us you can't separate that from the Holy Spirit actually coming to live and occupy our hearts there's the mystery of it one of the greatest if not the greatest doctrine of all is that of the
[25:22] Trinity the being of God God as the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit immensity mystery blessedness and yet the Trinity occupies your heart as a home we will come the Father and I said Jesus by the Spirit who will come and we will make out home with you you have the Trinity in your soul you have the occupancy of God and God has been pleased to make sinful little me a home for himself no wonder he's worthy that we should remember him because this is what it means when you remember Christ in his death and of course you can follow that out in the lives of
[26:24] Romans I'll just mention it in passing you can follow it through yourselves more fully later on Romans chapter 8 which again talks about of course the answer to Paul's wretched man that I am who shall free me from this body of death well Jesus Christ is for what the law could not do God sent his son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin to condemn sin in the flesh but you notice the next thing in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit and through the chapter he goes on to speak about if the spirit is in you and if Christ is in you because it amounts to the same thing two persons distinguished from each other and yet each of them occupy the soul of the justified and that's why you have it in
[27:28] Galatians chapter 5 coming back to Galatians and in verse 18 it's a verse which troubles us at times because we don't feel that it applies very much to ourselves where he says that those who belong to Christ chapter 5 verse 24 those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires sometimes you'll say well it doesn't feel like that to me at all I still know the flesh in its power and its workings I'm still drawn aside sometimes to sin and I have to confess my sin before God every day what does he mean that they that are Christ have crucified the flesh well the same as you have in chapter 2 I have been crucified with Christ Christ has broken the power of sin the dominance of sin why do you hate sin why do you not like sin why do you want to overcome sin why do you want ultimately to be rid of sin because you are crucified with Christ because you see that the sin that still remains in you is a contradiction to what you actually are as justified and forgiven and accepted in
[28:46] Christ that really is the essence of holy living the root and the connection that we have with sin has been broken we are now transplanted onto Christ we grow from him and from him we receive the energy by the spirit to kill sin to put sin to death I have been crucified with Christ it is no longer I who live no longer the one I used to be same individual but a very different person spiritually it is Christ in fact who lives in me and it is a mystery and it is a wonderful mystery that when you come today to the table you take the bread and you take the cup that represents
[29:47] Christ to you and you show forth the death of Christ by doing that as the Bible says as you remember Christ in by these elements let me put it this way you're not remembering a Christ who is external to you don't think of him as somebody who is utterly detached from you though you're doing this for his sake and by his commandment the Christ you remember by doing this with these elements is the one who's living in you you're remembering the death of one who's alive in your soul whose life in your soul is the means by which you live spiritually whose presence in your life is as a result of what he did in his death and you're using that connection that connection of faith the connection faith makes with Jesus it's as active in the Lord's
[31:00] Supper as anywhere else that connection is active in your remembrance because it goes out to him not just as he was crucified on the cross not just as he's now in heaven in his person in his body but also as he is in your heart as he occupies your soul as he's made a home for himself so you can say I have been crucified with him so it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me and the life I now live I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me the significance then of being united to Christ may the
[32:01] Lord bless these thoughts on his word to us now we've been looking at the significance of union with Christ or being united to Christ briefly as we come to now what we usually refer to as the fencing of the Lord's table we can look at the significance of faith in Christ from the same verse as we've been looking at earlier I have been crucified with Christ it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God he says the life I now live in the flesh by in the flesh he means in the present life as we are now in this life in my new circumstances but still in this world but you notice he's using the word now the life I now live in the flesh it's a contrast to the life he once lived what he's conscious of in saying now is that things are now new
[33:05] I'm a new creation this whole new chapter in my life began when Christ changed me when he apprehended me when he took hold of me and I realize he's saying now that it's his righteousness that gives me my acceptance with God so when you come as a communicant to the Lord's table that's what you're conscious of you have this now in your life the table of the Lord is for those who are now able to say but the life I now live you know of a contrast you know of a change maybe not as clear to you as it is to other people maybe you can't follow other people when they're explaining given their testimony as to how the change happened in their experience that's not the important thing none of us can follow anybody else in every detail exactly the important thing is that we're able to actually say with thankfulness to
[34:06] God the life I now live I'm not living the life I used to live the life I now live how do I live it well I live it by faith in the son of God faith in this person with whom I've been crucified that's what really brings in the connection faith makes with him it brings all that he did into my possession and for my benefit and faith as you know is not just believing something to be true believing things about Jesus that are true and accepting them as true acknowledging that they are true there is that to it certainly and faith also involves looking ahead to things that you believe in the promise of God will yet take place although they've not yet happened things in the future for God's people the second coming of Christ for example the resurrection of our bodies the final judgment you believe faith accepts the truth of
[35:12] God's word the truth of God's promise and says I believe that to be true I accept all of that to be true and you accept everything that the Bible says about Jesus and about yourself every verdict this brings out on you and what you like naturally what you are as a Christian you believe all that you accept it to be true you acknowledge the truth of it faith has all of that but even more than that faith is a matter of trusting it's a matter of leaning your weight the weight of your person not just talking about physical things here we're talking about spiritual and moral things you lay all your weight every single thing that you have in your person as an anxiety as a concern as a need you lean all of that you take everything you carry it like like the man in the pilgrim's progress who had this burden on his back you take them to the cross you take them to
[36:21] Jesus crucified and the burden rolls off your back and disappears into the sepulcher you trust in him you lean on your weight and you say of him this is everything I need for my acceptance with God that's the message of Galatians as we've been seeing and God is not going to require anything more of me than what is provided for me in Jesus Christ and therefore as I believe in him as I trust in him I accept God's own word that I am acceptable to God in him and therefore you come to the Lord's supper the Lord's table by faith in him the life I now live I live by faith in the son of God as faith in him it's not faith in your ability it's not faith in your experience it's not faith in somebody else who's helped you along the way it's not faith in how much you pray it's not faith in your extent of believing it's not faith in your faith it's faith in the son of
[37:34] God faith in him and you know that you're accepted not because of your faith not because you believe in him you're accepted because of him because of what he's done because of who he is to God and by faith in him that's become your position God accepts you as he has accepted him in other words you come to the Lord's table and you say it's true I'm not good enough for this of course you're not I'm not worthy that I should sit here of course you're not you're not coming there because you're good enough because you've worked yourself up into a state of goodness you're not coming because somehow now you're worthy or more worthy than you were years ago or yesterday you're not coming because you're good enough or because you're worthy you're coming because he's good enough and because he's worthy and because you know that his goodness and his worthiness has become yours because you live by faith in him you're connected with him you've been crucified with him you're coming claiming everything the Bible gives you the right to claim that is yours in
[39:05] Christ and you say to God Lord in myself I come as a poor sinner but Lord I come boasting in my Savior Lord I come crucified with him Lord I come as the richest person in the world because I have my Lord as my treasure that's how you come so today if you're coming by faith in the Son of God you're coming with all you need not in your faith but in him and if you're not going to be at the table today and trying to reason to yourself it's because I'm not good enough God is saying to you I know that that's why I gave my son that in him you would be good enough for me we need nothing else nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy I claim and so we come now by faith in the son of
[40:14] God it's customary for us to read our warrant for the Lord's supper as we come to observe the supper in first Corinthians chapter 11 and at verse 23 for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this 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 whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord but let a person examine himself then and then so eat of the bread and drink of the cup and so on and we'll follow that pattern that the
[41:17] Lord has set for us in giving thanks Lord our gracious God once again we give thanks for this occasion for all that it means to your people for the blessings that you have promised in attachment to it that you will make it a means of grace for the nourishment of your people we pray Lord that you would help us now to focus our mind upon the one who gave himself so readily for us that you would enable us Lord to truly seed you in these elements that are now sanctified from a common to an ordinary use we give thanks for the love that you displayed as you continue to love your people that you displayed it particularly in the way that you gave yourself to the death of the cross we pray Lord also that we will indeed meet with you at this time as the living
[42:21] Christ and help us to realize something of that great mystery too that as we remember the Lord in his death so we are conscious of fellowship with the Lord in his life we thank you Lord for all that you are to your people for the blessings that you have brought to us as a reward and as a benefit and as a result of your own sufferings Lord help us too to take these elements to ourselves not only with thankfulness but with a brokenness of spirit for you suffered for our sins you died that agonized death so that we would be set free from condemnation so that we would come ultimately at the very apex of your redemption to know God himself wiping away all tears from our eyes we thank you for the many tears you shed for the way in which these tears themselves were strong crying and supplication as your word tells us were part of your atoning sacrifice and were themselves regarded by the father as valuable as contributing to the offering of the
[43:49] Lord of himself Lord we thank you for that suffering we acknowledge that we caused it Lord was your will to suffer for us it was our sin that gave rise to it forgive us we pray for how we still sin against you give us we pray daily to apply ourselves to the ministry of your spirit and help us as we come to this sacrament to do so with a resolve that we will continue to strive after holiness and more of your likeness in that regard so bless us now we pray accept us freely for Jesus sake amen just very briefly before we come to partake of the supper we've been thinking in that passage in Galatians of the significance of being united to Christ and in defencing the significance of faith in
[44:50] Christ I want to just spend a few moments thinking of the significance of Christ's love and when we've taken the supper we'll give a few moments to the significance of the way in which Christ continues to be for us our saviour the significance of Christ's love and the significance of his law Christ's love I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me two things the fact of his love and the act of his love the fact of his love he loved me a love that was complete a love that was entire a love that lacked nothing a love that kept nothing back a love that you cannot add to a love that you don't want to take away from it is a complete love he loved me there is an eternity for you in these words a love that came from eternity that came into time a love that reaches forward into eternity a love that follows you right through to the end of your course and on into eternal life he loved me and then there is the act of his love the demonstration of his love as nowhere else he gave himself for me what did he give himself to well he gave himself to sufferings to bearing sin your sin my sin he gave himself to the cross and the accursed death of the cross he gave himself to the wrath of god against him he gave himself willingly he gave himself entirely he gave his whole self he kept nothing back his love was entire his giving was entire he loved me he gave himself for me and it was for me he gave himself for me and as it is with the fact of his love so it is with the act of his love it is for me as if he was loving no one but me his love for me individually you say was so complete it's as if nobody else in the whole world was loved but me and so it is with his giving he gave himself for me oh he gave himself for his church he gave himself for the entirety of those he came to save and that will be evident in glory when all the saved are with him that he gave himself for me as well as for his people in their completeness how precious to you today that he gave himself for you as if there was no one else to atone for but you and yourselves the love which is for the whole world the giving which is for all his people it's also for me doesn't matter who you are today what you bring to this table what your experience has been in life so far doesn't matter your age doesn't matter how different you are to other people doesn't matter how you say others are so far ahead of you in the
[48:49] Christian life what matters to you now is this for you as an individual with all your faults that he knew would be in with all your failures with all your worries and all your anxieties and all your lack of faith and all your complaints all the things you have to contend with in this life it's enough for you that he loved you and gave himself for you we read in the night in which the Lord was betrayed that he took bread and gave thanks when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you this do in remembrance of me in like manner after the supper he took the cup saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood this do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me
[49:56] I want to address a brief word to those of you who are not at the table today I did this the last time I hope it was of benefit to you I wanted to do it this time even from the point of view if I left it out that you might think that we were no longer concerned for you we love the fact that you're here we appreciate the fact that you're here it's gratifying to have your presence at the communion we mean that most sincerely but we would love you to have more than you've had today we would love to have seen you with us at the Lord's table you will have had your own thoughts they're private to yourself as it should be you would have had many questions I'm sure in your mind many things that you considered about yourself about your relationship to God as you observed the sacrament and heard his word you know the reason yourself that you weren't at the table that's private to yourself too was it because you're not yet saved well if so remember that this
[51:26] Jesus that we've been considering and remembering remember that this Jesus is for you too he came to save all who are lost that's me and you and I hope you leave this communion today if you came unsaved that you will leave it with the theme of our communion fresh and new in your heart Jesus and I and if it was because you are saved but think you're not yet ready or fit to come to his table well remember this what we were considering through the service Jesus is enough for you you need no more you have everything in him don't dishonor him by giving the impression that there's not enough in him for you and staying back from his table say in your heart and act with your feet
[52:42] Jesus is mine and I am his and I have everything I need in him I pray that God will bless you as you leave this place today it is my heart's desire and the desire of all here who love the Lord that you will be with us next time if God spares you to remember him in his death