The Lord's Supper as a Means of Grace (Dr. Richard Barcellos)

First time I met Josh, I didn't know what he looked like because he was in his mother's womb.

First time I met Josh's father, I knew what he looked like.! Pastor Butler and his wife were the first visitors we had at the first church I planted in 1990.

And seven years later we sent him up to Chilliwack and now we're here together doing this. It's been a delight to be here. I've been sending pictures back to my church and there are about four or five people that knew the butlers back in the early 90s.

And everybody's putting thumbs ups and hearts and things like that. My church sends me, approves all my travel so I can say, my church sent me to minister here. And my church has been praying for quite a long time for this.

We're very encouraged about what's happening here. May the Lord do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask and think. I've been assigned with a topic, with a task, and that is to preach a sermon on the Lord's Supper.

If you have the Bible, you can turn to 1 Corinthians 11. I'll actually end up trying to explain what 1 Corinthians 10, verse 16 means.

But I want to go to chapter 11 where Paul, as many of you know, Paul rehearses the words of institution, repeats them. The words that our Lord originally spoke on the night in which he was betrayed toward the end of the gospel of Matthew and Mark and Luke.

You can read about those. I think these follow Luke's order better. I'm not sure. Which would kind of make sense because Paul and Luke traveled and probably Paul was the apostle that put a stamp of approval on Luke's gospel.

But here are the words that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 11. If you know anything about 1 Corinthians, you know that several times he says, Now concerning, then he'll discuss an issue. Now concerning, then he discusses an issue.

Now concerning, then he discusses an issue. So he's addressing issues. The Corinthian church had some problems. All churches have problems, especially with members like you guys and me and everyone at my church.

We have issues. He's trying to address some issues. There was really abuse of the Lord's Supper between the rich and the poor. In the context of trying to correct their faulty practice, he says this in verse 23 of chapter 11.

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you. So he had already taught them about the Lord's Supper. That the Lord Jesus, on the night in which he was betrayed, took bread.

So there's this physical taking of bread by the Lord. He gives thanks. And when he had given thanks, he broke it in their presence. And then he said these words. These are the words of institution.

You, plural, take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner, he took the cup, gives thanks.

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. Now that word is, I accentuated it on purpose.

This is my body. This is my blood. I didn't know this until several years ago. I was reading up on the Lord's Supper and the history of it in the churches. And there was more ink spilled, more words written about the Lord's Supper in a polemic fashion, in a debate fashion during the time of the Reformation.

Then there was about justification by faith. There was a lot of disagreement on what does, primarily this word, what does the word is mean?

You know, like this is a room, right? I am the door. Does is mean the same thing with reference to the room and what Jesus said, I am the door?

How about this one? I am the vine. I am the vine. Pastor Butler knows I like to sound like John Gershner. If you know who R.C. Sproul is, John Gershner was his mentor.

If you wonder why R.C. Sproul talks like this and he loses his breath, go listen to John Gershner. He talked like that. So Gershner was talking about this one time. He says, Luther and Zwingli were going back and forth, fighting over the word is.

And Luther wanted to say more. Wanted the word is to carry more freight than it ought to. And Zwingli was kind of trying to pull back and say, well, it's a metaphor.

A metaphor is a word that signifies a thing other than the thing it normally signifies. Like, I am the vine. I heard Gershner say, Martin.

When Jesus says, I am the vine, that doesn't mean you pick grapes off of his arms. I am the door. He doesn't have a handle and hinges. It's a figure of speech. This is my, this represents my body.

Okay. This bread is a sign that signifies something other than bread. But there's something about bread we can learn about and take with us to the thing that the bread actually signifies.

This gives sustenance to our body. But Christ, as the bread that came down from heaven, sustains our souls. So there is an analogy between the two.

But the one is not the other. Bread, when the minister, ooh, you're the minister of TRBC, has the prayer of consecration, you don't peek up with your eye and go, wow, look at the bread becoming Jesus' body.

Okay, that doesn't happen. There's no transubstantiation. The bread retains its breadness. But by the institution of the Lord, here in these words of institution, it becomes a vehicle for something.

We call it a means of grace. A vehicle, an avenue, a channel, a pipe through which grace from heaven gets from Christ to his people.

We call the baptism and the Lord's Supper sometimes the two ordinances of the new covenant. An ordinance means something that's been ordained or appointed.

And in this case, it has dominical authority behind it, Lord in Latin. It is a lordly ordinance. Ordinance. But when we use the word sacrament, that's different than ordinance.

Ordinance is appointed by, in this case, Christ. A sacrament is something that is a means of grace. It's something appointed by the Lord through which he tinkers with our prayer is a means of grace.

He tinkers with our souls. By the way, when you pray, do we change God or does God change us? If we change God, we've got a pretty fickle God, don't we? God changes us by his blessing, according to his will, through prayer.

We don't change God. So when you read these words, we're not going to read them as if there's an equals sign there. Take, eat, bread is my body, or that my body becomes bread or something like that.

We're going to say, no, this is, bread is a sign that signifies a thing other than breadness. Namely, the assumed human nature of our Savior, something like that.

And then blood, or the cup, is a sign signifying something other than wineness or cupness. It's blood not only assumed, the word became flesh, but blood shed for the remission of all of our sins.

A signal or a sign of the remission of sins and cleansing of our souls. So that's how our confession takes it. In the 19th century, Spurgeon said this about the Lord's Supper.

He said, at this table, now listen to these words, Jesus feeds us with his body and blood. He could say that, and people in his congregation didn't go, we're going to eat?

What is that word called? Oral manducation or manducation, something like that. We're going to physically chew Jesus? That was a Luther thing. And the answer to that is, well, no. But these are visible signs, bread, cup, that signify something way better than breadness and cupness.

Namely, our Savior taking our nature, obeying in it, suffering in it, shedding his blood for us. So that when a well-taught congregation, and even the children sitting here can know, when Pastor Dan raises the bread, that bread is a sign signifying what God has done for us in the incarnation of the Son for us.

He took our nature to take on our duties. To take on our duties, to take on our liabilities, to bring us to God. Because we're so messed up, we need God to fix us. So that the elements become visible words to an educated congregation.

So you have to remind them, by the way. You have to impress their intellects with the truth. And we pray that God then, in the prayer of consecration, you pray that God then would take the knowledge that we have, and by virtue of the righteousness of Christ and the benefits of his body and blood, would bring those benefits to us at this time, because he's appointed to be such.

Now, that's 1 Corinthians 11. He's correcting their faulty practice. Turn over to 1 Corinthians 10, 16. It's not the longest introduction I've ever preached, unlike the morning preacher.

I get the pulpit last, so I get to throw those jabs at him. It's an interesting context here. 1 Corinthians 10, 16. It says this. The cup of blessing, now, informed Christians know, oh, he's talking about the Lord's Supper, right?

The cup of blessing, which we bless, is it not the, this is New King James, communion of the blood of Christ? If you have a Bible like mine, it has center margin notes at 1 Corinthians 10, 16, next to communion.

It says fellowship or sharing. Very interesting. The cup of blessing, which we bless, is it not the communion, the fellowship, the sharing of the blood of Christ?

The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? So, what is Paul doing here? He's obviously using the communion of the blood of Christ, the communion of the body of Christ, in a certain context.

The context starts in this case at verse 14. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. He's dealing with real Christians, syncretizing with the culture and doing things in their lives that actually is a form of idolatry, and they didn't realize it.

Well, we'll assume that they didn't realize it. So, he starts this section, actually, in verse 14. It goes all the way to verse, I think, 22. But before that, there's another context, and that's a wider context.

Beginning at chapter 8, verse 1, all the way through 11, Paul begins dealing with things sacrificed to idols. And then, right above, verses 14 and following, in verses 1 through 13, Paul refers to ancient Israel as an example of privileged people abusing privileges and committing idolatry.

And he admonishes the Corinthians, in light of that illustration from ancient Israel. He admonishes them to learn from ancient Israel, take heed, and be reminded of the faithfulness of God in the midst of temptations.

And after, in verses 23 through 33, after our section, 14 through 22, there comes another section where Paul deals with eating meat sold in the market.

And though they are free to eat such meat, there are times it is best for them not to, for conscience sake. But in our section, 14 through 23, idolatry.

That's what he's dealing with. And what's interesting is he kind of smuggles in an assumed knowledge of the function of the Lord's Supper to argue against these Christians committing idolatry.

So, this section, 14 through 22, deals with this topic sentence is verse 14, Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

And it's not an indifferent matter, like some of the other issues he was dealing with. You know, under some circumstances, you can take, you can, you're invited to somebody's house in ancient Rome, and somebody bought food at a marketplace where they got it from a pagan place, a pagan temple that was using it for sacrifices, but they bought too much.

People got a flat tire on the way. They didn't get flat tires back then, right? They couldn't make it or whatever. We had too much. They sold it back to the marketplace. Somebody bought it and invited you over to eat. And he said, depending on the circumstances, depending on who's there and all that stuff, yeah, you can eat that.

It's not necessarily a sin. So, that's an indifferent thing. It's wise to eat certain things or drink certain things in certain contexts and not to do that in other contexts. We all have to wrestle with that.

That's not what he's dealing with here. Whatever he's dealing with here, it's a no-no. It's a violation of the law against idolatry, of some form of worship. So, not indifferent.

So, having mentioned the fact of idolatry of some in ancient Israel, he now deals with the contemporary idolatry in the context of church members at Corinth.

So, this passage, verses 14 to 22, has a lot of questions, you know, and I'm not going to ask and answer all the questions.

I might ask more questions than I answer. But let me read it. Therefore, it's 14 to 22. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men.

Judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

Now, this is very interesting. Because before this, there's no mention of the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians. And we don't find out that he had already delivered the doctrine and practice of the supper to them before he wrote the letter until chapter 11.

So, he assumes they had a working knowledge, at least a rudimentary knowledge, the basic elements of the doctrine and practice of the Lord's Supper, and the nature of the supper as a means through which God does something to souls.

That's what I'm going to argue here. For we, verse 17, though many are one bread and one body, for we all partake of that one bread.

Observe Israel after the flesh. Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What am I saying? By the way, this word partakers and the word communion are very similar, but they're not the same exact words.

So, that's something to think about, which I might get to if I get back to my notes. What am I saying then? He says, that an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything?

Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons.

This is a big no-no. This is a form of idolatry that the Corinthians, let's give the benefit of the doubt, love believes all things, hopes all things. They were just ignorant of it. They didn't realize that this syncretizing Christianity with these pagan rituals was actually a form of idolatry and fellowship with demons.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. The only time it's called the Lord's table in the New Testament, by the way.

Or, do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? So, there's a lot of questions here. I'm not going to answer all of them. I want to concentrate on verse 16.

It's very clear, though, that this is dealing with idolatry. He's combating the sin of idolatry committed by some of the Corinthians by their participating in pagan religious meals.

That's what I just quoted somebody. So, we have to concentrate on the words he uses here. So, we're going to ask the question of what does this word communion translate in New King James in verse 16?

What does the word communion mean? And then, what is communion of the blood? And what is communion of the body? Okay, what does that mean? So, we have to ask the question, the word communion first.

Some of you know, it's the word is koinonia. You've heard that. A fellowship, sometimes it's translated. Participation is another translation. Communion here, that's why the Lord's Supper is by some churches.

We're going to have communion. And we'll define what that means. Some churches say, we're going to take the Lord's Supper. That's in the context, too. That's okay. Probably not best for Protestants to say, we're going to take the Eucharist, though it's fine to say that.

We're going to take that through which we give thanks to God for it, because we do give thanks to him for it. And that's all Eucharist means. I give thanks. But what does it mean?

Communion, fellowship. Especially that word fellowship. Let's go have fellowship. What does that word mean? And does it always mean the same exact thing in every single context it's used in? That's another good question, right?

Do words always mean the same thing in different contexts? I am the door. Close that door. Door means two things there, doesn't it? In one, it means the normal thing it signifies.

Don't close the door. I was kidding about that. In the other, it is a metaphor for something other than Jesus being a physical door. So, one of the ways to help us understand what the word means here is asking the question, is the word used elsewhere by the same author?

Preferably in the same book. And the answer to that is yes. It's over there in 1 Corinthians 1.9. So we're just looking at Paul's use of the word koinonia, communion, participation, fellowship.

Those are various translations. In 1 Corinthians 1.9, God is faithful by whom you were called into the, here's that word, koinonia, fellowship.

New King James translates it fellowship here. Interesting. And it's the same word. So I think, if I could talk to the, to the committee that was working on 1 Corinthians, I would ask them, why did you guys, I think I know the answer, but why did you translate it fellowship here?

And why did you translate it communion in 1 Corinthians 10.16? I think I know the answer. I'll let you try to figure that out toward the end though. So notice that Paul is not talking about the experience here of being together as Christians.

That's normally how we take it. Fellowship is a horizontal thing. We're having fellowship now. We're sharing in the things of Christ together. So it's a touchy-feely kind of thing. Right?

And we're all happy. That's one way to look at it. But here, the fellowship here is with God's son. Right? Look at it again.

God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. So here, it's more of a this way kind of thing.

We are somehow, some way, participating, I'll use that word, in the things that Christ has for sinners. Something like that. Now coming back to 1 Corinthians 10.16, one author says this, that in this context, koinonia has a vertical and theological priority of emphasis over the horizontal and social.

So let's read 1 Corinthians 10.16, 10.14 and following and push the horizontal and social view into it. And I think you'll see, well, that doesn't work. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

Verse 15. I speak as to wise men, judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ or the fact that we share together in the benefits of Christ's blood?

The bread which we break, is it not the fact that we share in the benefits of the body of Christ? Isn't it just this horizontal thing? For we, though many, and it keeps going.

So if you take it to be a horizontal thing, and he's arguing against idolatry, if we go down to verse 19, what am I saying then?

That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? Rather, that the things with the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.

And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. I do not want this horizontal thing between you and demons going on. I do not think that works.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. Why? Because something is happening, their souls are being tinkered with when they do these pagan festival ritual meals with others.

Something is not innocent about it. He says, flee idolatry, and then he deals with it. It's a form of idolatry. It's a form of opening yourself up to satanic activity in your soul.

And he uses the Lord's Supper as a contradistinction from it. Contradiction or whatever. Not a contradiction, but an analogy against that.

Why? Because just as something happens to your soul when you engage in these pagan ritual meals and you don't see it, they're not offering this stuff to God.

They're offering it to demons and demons are there. They're all over the place. So when you take the Lord's Supper, your soul's also being tinkered with, but not by demons, but by God.

Because the communion we have with the cup and with the blood of Christ and the body of Christ is a top-down vertical communion. It is a means through which the benefits of Christ get to the people of Christ through the means that Christ has ordained.

I think that's his argument. The horizontal argument for the word communion there doesn't work. The vertical one fits the passage, fits the anti-idolatry context, and I think it's actually what the best way to take it.

And I'm not the only one that's ever said that. Here's Charles Hodge someplace. It's a good quote, if I can find it. Here it is. He says, It is here assumed that partaking of the Lord's Supper brings us into communion with Christ, not merely with each other.

If this be so, partaking of the table of demons must bring us into communion with demons. This is the apostle's argument. So, how should we understand of the blood of Christ and of the body of Christ?

Notice that these phrases both modify koinonia, communion of the blood of Christ, communion of the body of Christ.

So, I think we could read it this way. Present communion derived from or dependent upon the blood and the body of Christ as its source, something like that.

The source of communion with Christ would be his blood and his body. Or we might say, the virtue of it, the benefit of it for us.

The source of the benefits we receive from Christ comes by virtue of his body and his blood. By virtue of his assuming our whole human nature, body and soul, and by virtue of his shedding his blood for the remission of our sins.

So that the Lord's Supper becomes a means through which the benefits of Christ get to the people of Christ as Christ blesses the supper. And that's why we pray that he might do that.

By the way, is the blessing of the supper always corresponding with the taking of the elements? And let me ask this.

Do sermons only get blessed as the words are coming out of the mouth of the preacher? Or can you drive home and go, Eureka! Do you guys say that here?

It's in California. Like, I saw it. I just, I understood it. And God opens up your eyes to the sermon on Tuesday. But you listen to it on Sunday and then you read a text that kind of corresponds with the message preached and you go, just text the pastor, did you mean this?

And the pastor says, were you listening? But he doesn't type it, right? We don't do that. We think carnally, but we act, you know. Oh, deer sheep, Roger. Yes, I meant that.

And then he texts me, Roger, that dummy, wasn't listening when I was preaching. Jim doesn't do that. I do that with Jim. Yeah, so, it's a good question.

It's a question that's been asked. Is the blessing of the preaching of the word tethered to the actual preaching of it or can God bless it over here? How about the supper? You ever thought of that?

Could God bless the supper as a means of grace to us on Monday evening 36 hours after we took it? Sure, sure he could. We pray that he blesses it when we're all taking it.

We want that. We want all of us enriched and nourished with the benefits of the blood and body of Christ all at the same time. But if God's pleased to hold that off for whatever reason, he's wise, and give it to us later, wonderful.

But give it to us, he must, or else we'll shrivel up and our souls will be like dried up raisins. So, the blood of Christ and the body of Christ refer to the benefits by virtue of which we're blessed, the benefits that come to us because he assumed our nature and did what he did in it.

So, when you see the elements, you should think assumed our nature for us and for our salvation. And when you see the cup, the blood, you should say, cleansing of my sin-sick soul.

I'm a poor sinner who needs solution to his plight and the only solution is a divine solution and God has revealed it. By the way, why do we have a Bible? Because God has a solution for our sin problem.

It's called the incarnation and sufferings and glory of Christ. So, when you see the cup, if you're educated properly, you immediately think shed blood, remission of all of our sins, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Not one ounce. Not even a slight possibility that there might be. If you're in Christ Jesus, somebody was condemned for you, so it's not going to come back on you.

Who was? The one who shed his blood, the one who assumed our nature, the one who assumed our duties, the one who assumed our liabilities, the one who is going to bring us back into the safe presence of God against all enemies and all odds and nobody's going to stop him.

Jesus. And in the supper, not only are we reminded of that, the supper is a memorial. It has us cast our minds on redemption accomplished, which is way back whenever, okay?

But it's also a sacrament or a means of grace. There's something about redemption applied as well when we take the supper. We think back to the accomplishment of it and then we pray that the benefits of its accomplishment would be poured into our souls so that our sin-sick, weak souls, our fickle souls would be made sweet or at least sweeter and we would be fortified and our weak knees would be strengthened.

You know, at our pastor's conference last fall, one of the speakers, Pastor Tom Hicks, kept calling us poor sinners. Us poor sinners. Us poor sinners need a dear Savior like the one we have.

And I've been using that in our church. Us poor sinners. We need Jesus. Us poor sinners. And the supper reminds us, man, do I need Jesus? How often do I need Jesus? Every second of my life.

So, I think Paul here is talking about present communion with the blood and the body of Christ occurs or we could say yeah, occurs at the blessing of God when churches properly commune or take the supper together.

So, this kind of communion, I have bold here so I must, I guess I should read it. That's why I put it in my notes. Bold means read. This is present communion with the living and exalted Lord of glory.

The communion must be with the present benefits procured by the broken body and shed blood for his body is no longer broken, it is glorified, and his blood has finished its shedding.

So, we don't say we're breaking his body, we're shedding his blood. That's not happening. That already happened. He's glorified. He's at the right hand of the majesty on high. So, it has to mean something like this. The things procured by his sufferings are here pictured by these elements.

And educated believers, disciples, baptized, formed into churches, those kind of people, when they see these things, they just need a few words to trigger their memories.

And everybody's thinking the same thing and we pray God now. We got it in our minds. You've impressed our intellects with the things that these words signify. Christ in glory having accomplished our redemption, he's got gifts, he's got blessings, he's got strength, he's got power, he's got forgiveness in his right hand for us.

Release it, give it to us through the means of grace should be our prayers. So, a couple things to think about. I was going to talk about sharers of the altars and sharers and demons, but, nah, we're not doing that.

This is another thing. Several years ago, I got tired of trying to make every sermon exposition, doctrine, and then application or something, so I call the end of my sermons contemplation because it sounds like we're smart or something.

This is an application. This is contemplation. What does that mean? We're going to muse over the things that have already been said, but in condensed form. A communing or sharing here is not horizontal, but vertical in 1 Corinthians 10, 10, 16.

If it was only horizontal, Paul's argument would not follow. He can't argue from, you guys are tinkered with demons through the pagan ritual meals to, when you guys are sharing your stuff together in Christ or whatever, things are happening.

It's got to be something like demons affect the people and God affects the people that are communing. Second, since believers already have communion with Christ through faith, the Lord's Supper must be viewed as a means to nurture what is already possessed.

One man puts it this way. This passage indicates that there is real fellowship between Christ and his people at the supper. The supper is a nurturing sacrament.

It is a means through which our hearts, our souls are enlivened, are rekindled, are strengthened, are fortified. Third, though it is not a converting ordinance, the supper is a sanctifying or soul-altering ordinance.

Like the word of God, like baptism and like prayer, the Lord's Supper is a means through which grace comes to us from Christ. It is not a means of special grace, as one person put it, but a special means of grace.

fourth, through the Lord's Supper, we receive something from Christ, the benefits of his body, the benefits of his shed blood.

We could put it this way. We are served something. Is it the Dutch tradition that talks about the divine service? It is, right? I think it is, yeah. The second Reformation Dutch tradition.

I like the way that sounds. Why do they say, let us enter into the divine service? Because it is not so much us bringing our best to God and offering it to him.

It is more like God is bringing his best in Christ to us through the means. We are served grace by the servant of all of servants. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

He is still serving us. He is dishing up grace for us to taste of and to be strengthened by. Boving said it this way, speaking of the Dutch, he not only gave himself for his own, he also gives himself to his own.

The supper is one of the means through which he gives himself to us. Also, we ought to look at the supper as an event through which we receive and not only give.

We are giving our attention, we are giving our hearts to the Lord and all that stuff, but it's more of an event of a top down kind of thing, like I said before. We come to receive and much less to give.

That which we receive is a top down gift from heaven to earth from our glorified redeemer to us, special delivery.

You ever think about that? God, give me grace. You're asking God to do something to your individual soul, or the pastor is going to say, to all the worthy partakers.

Do this, give them grace, remind them of their forgiveness of sins, strengthen their souls, invigorate them, help them to walk in this weary land that they're in, not your physical land, but the earth as it is unglorified.

That's a wonderful thing to contemplate. And I won't say anything more about 1 Corinthians 11, because you'll probably go there or text like it, but hopefully that helps explain the Lord's Supper as a means of grace.

Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your word. We pray your blessing on it, and pray your blessing not only on the word preached, but the word seen and tasted in the supper.

We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. As we heard preached this morning, we see Acts 2, 41 and 42 as prescriptive to the church, the word, the gospel having been preached and the word received with faith and believers being baptized and added to the church, and they continued in the means of grace.

So this evening, we will be focusing on the Lord's Supper. In the Lord's Supper, it's the renewing oath sign of the new covenant, and it's an ongoing celebration, a celebration partaking of Christ's benefits and spiritual nourishment.

It is administered by the church, it's administered to the church, and it's taken as a church. And this participation will be only for believers baptized upon a personal profession of faith who are members in good standing of a gospel church.

So if you have not already done so, please speak to us before partaking, having met these requirements. Now, as was mentioned in 1 Corinthians 11, it speaks of the worthy partaking and examining oneself.

starting in verse 27, it says, therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner may be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself.

And having examined yourself, when you see the sin that is there, seeing the sin is not to stop from partaking of the Lord's Supper, but in seeing the sin that is there, confess it to the Lord and repent and partake of the Lord's Supper.

And that is the point. It's that Christ's body was broken, Christ's blood was poured out for the payment of sin. And applying the benefits of Christ's death to ourselves.

It goes on saying, but let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. this bread, as was mentioned, it is not the physical body of Christ.

It does not become the body of Christ, but it is a sign that signifies Christ's body which was broken, which was crushed for our iniquities.

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the means of grace, your means through which you feed and nourish your people.

God the Son, we thank you that you took to yourself a body, and that that body was crushed for our iniquities, was broken, was pierced for our sins, that we may have remission of sins.

We thank you for the gospel promise that that sacrifice, that suffering, that death, was a substitute for God's people that we may be reconciled to God.

So I pray that as we partake, that you would bring the benefits of Christ's body broken for us through this means of grace, and that you would indeed nourish your people.

So those who we have spoken to who are believers baptized upon a profession of faith and members in good standing of a gospel church, I'll invite you to come forward and take some, receive the bread, and go back to your seat and we'll take it together.

So, yeah, you can come on. Yes. Turn in your hymnals to hymn number 192, and yeah, we'll sing, should we sing?

Yeah, we'll sing the first stanza as people, I think most people are familiar with the words to that one, so you can come up and grab. We're at it the same time. 192. Yeah.

Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, see him dying on the tree. Tis the Christ by man rejected, yes, my soul, tis he, tis he, tis he, tis the long-expected prophet, David's son, yet David's lord, by his son God now has spoken, tis the true and faithful word.

Amen. Amen. Amen. 1 Corinthians 11, 23-24. 1 Corinthians 11, 23-24.

It says, 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. I received the benefits of Christ's body broken for his people. Likewise, this wine, it does not become Christ's blood, but it is a sign which signifies Christ's blood which was poured out for his people.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the blood of Christ which was shed for the payment of sins for the people of God.

And we thank you for this means of grace through which in partaking of it, we are not only reminded of the payment, the full payment that was made to satisfy divine justice, to reconcile us to a holy and just and unchanging God, but also the nourishment which we receive by partaking of the benefits of Christ's death through this means of grace.

So we pray that you would bless this to us. we'll sing the second verse of Stricken Smitten and likewise if you could come forward and receive the wine.

tell me who hear him groaning was there ever grief like his friends who fear his cause disowning foes insulting his distress many hands were raised to wound him none would interpose to save but the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that justice gave amen in first corinthians 11 25 to 26 says 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 let's receive Christ's blood the benefits of Christ's blood shed for us and we'll continue to sing the remainder of stricken smitten ye who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil great here may view its nature rightly here its guilt may estimate mark the sacrifice appointed see who bears the awful load tis the word the Lord's anointed son of man son of

God here we have a firm foundation here the refuge of the lost Christ the rock of our salvation is the name of which we boast lamb of God for sinners wounded sacrifice to cancel guilt none shall ever be confounded who on him their hope have built amen a church partaking of the sacraments of the means of grace we pray

Lord that you would bless this to us and that you would not too quickly forget what we have heard today and what we have seen the visible sermon on the gospel through the Lord's supper and I pray Lord that we would indeed contemplate on these things throughout this week and it would cause us to be all the more heavenly minded throughout this week while we are in this wilderness and this earth and this pilgrimage so I pray that you would go with your people and that you would bless your people throughout the week we pray these things in Jesus name and the Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace amen amen thank you that's a small it is pretty good oh

I better stop recording Thank you.