Let's open our Bibles again to
Genesis 18, the passage we read just a minute ago. I've titled the message this
evening, Fellowship with the Lord, beginning in verse one
of Genesis chapter 18. And the Lord appeared unto him
in the plains of Mamre, and he sat in the tent door in the heat
of the day. And he lift up his eyes and looked, and lo, three
men stood by him. And when he saw them, He ran
to meet them from the tent door and bowed himself toward the
ground. He said, my Lord, if now I have found favor in thy
sight, pass not away, I pray thee from thy servant. Now, one
of these men who appeared to Abraham, excuse me, is a pre-incarnate
appearance of Christ. This is the Lord appearing in
human form before he was born in Bethlehem. And I know this
is the Lord himself because what he says in verse 10, He said,
I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of
life. And lo Sarah, thy wife shall have a son. Now only the
Lord could promise he's going to give life to somebody. And
of course we know that Isaac was born. Only he did come, the
Lord did come back and give life at the time appointed. So this
has to be the Lord. And if you look back in chapter
17, Abraham recognized this as the Lord because he'd appeared
to Abraham before in verse one of chapter 17. And when Abram
was 90 years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said
unto him, I am the almighty God. Walk before me and be thou perfect. Well, this is the same person
who appeared to Abraham before. So he recognizes him. He knows
this is the Lord. And we'll get to this later on
in chapter 19. The other two men were angels. These are the
angels that went to Sodom. And the Lord appeared to Abraham
at this time for a reason. to commune with Abraham. That's
why I've titled this Fellowship with the Lord. Communion. Communing
with the Lord. In verse 33. And the Lord went
His way as soon as He had left communing with Abraham. The Lord
Himself came at this time to commune with Abraham. To have
this time with Abraham. Now that's a special time. Any
time the Lord condescends to come and commune with his people. It's a special time. And that's
what happened here with the Lord and Abraham. Now all these years
later, we read these Old Testament accounts of the fathers communing
with the Lord Jesus Christ, talking directly to God. Think of that. We read the New Testament accounts
of the disciples and the apostles. They had time where they communed
directly with the Lord Jesus Christ. He taught them the gospel
directly, face to face. And we read these stories, and
we think, I sure would like to commune with the Lord that way.
I can't tell you how often Janet said, I wish the Lord would just
come and sit right down here at my kitchen table and tell
me what's going on. What a special time. We think,
oh, I would have loved to have that, to commune with the Lord
that way. Well, you know what? We can. We can. Believers can and do
commune with the Lord. Not physically now, not physically,
but by faith. The way that we commune with
the Lord today is around the sacrifice for the sin of His
people. That's why I thought it would be good for us this
evening, a good time to observe the Lord's table, this communion,
the commune with the Lord while I'm preaching on this subject.
But if you look over at Exodus chapter 25, Now, if we're going
to have communion with the Lord, the Lord's going to have anything
to do with the likes of you and me. It's going to have to be
through the sacrifice of Christ. The sacrifice that takes away
our sin, our communion, our fellowship with God has to all be around
the sacrifice of Christ. And that's what God tells Moses
here when he's giving him the instructions for building the
tabernacle in verse 21 of Exodus 25. And thou shalt put the mercy
seat above upon the ark, and in the ark thou shalt put the
testimony that I shall give thee, and there, above that mercy seat,
above the covering of the broken law, there, I will meet with
thee and I'll commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from
between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony
of all things which I will give thee in commandment under the
children of Israel. The Lord communed with his people
above the mercy seat. Above the mercy seat, where the
blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled, where the sin of the people was
atoned for, with the blood on the mercy seat. That's where
the Lord communed with his people. And that's not changed from then
till now. This is how the Lord communes
with his people. It's around the sacrifice of Christ. It's
in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And our text this evening,
back in Genesis 18, gives us several pictures of that, I think
will be a blessing to you. Number one, we have communion
with God at the cross of Christ. In verse four, Abraham says,
let a little water, I pray you be fetched, and wash your feet
and rest yourselves under the tree. Abraham had his visitors
rest here under the tree, in the shade tree, while they waited
for him to get everything ready to get them something to eat.
Now this was the heat of the day. John Gill said he kind of
figures Abraham got up early in the morning Got a bunch of
his work done, you know, and now it's the heat of the day.
Now that's why he was resting in the tent door in the shade.
Nobody's, you know, out working it. Hot, hottest time of the
day there in the desert. So the practical reason Abraham
had them wait under the shade tree there was the shade and
the heat of the day. But the reason Abraham had them
sit there under that tree is that tree is a picture of the
cross, Calvary's tree. I was the only one here when
this happened. Isaac got here to sing and he
practiced two songs. And I was hoping you'd sing that
one, because I'm going to quote it right here. The song he just
sung. Jesus keep me near the cross,
there a precious fountain, free to all, a healing stream flows
from Calvary's mountain. You see, it's at the foot of
the cross. That's where we have communion with the Savior, because
it's there. He was crucified for our sin.
That's where his blood was shed. That's where we can have communion
with God. But now we don't have communion around a physical wooden
cross, a representation of the structure of the cross. That
would be idolatry. When we talk about the cross,
we're talking about the message of the cross. When we talk about
the cross, this is what we mean. Not the wooden structure, you
know, was it an X or was it a T or, you know, was it just a pole?
That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about
that structure. We're talking about what did Christ accomplish
there? The cross is not just a physical structure, it's the
message. What did Christ accomplish? What does this bread and wine
represent? What is it he accomplished with
his broken body and his shed blood? That's what we mean when
we talk about the cross. And if you look at Galatians
chapter four, I'll show you that. Galatians chapter four. I'm sorry, Galatians 6. That's
better. Galatians 6 verse 14. But God
forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto
the world. Now Paul's not, not glorying
in that hunk of wood that was used to kill our Lord. What he
means is believers glory in what Christ accomplished by whom the
world was crucified to me and I'm crucified to it. What is
it that Christ accomplished when he died on the cross? So much,
so much in me. I glory in how the blood of Christ's
sacrifice has cleansed me from all sin. His blood put away all
of the sin of all of his people at one time by one sacrifice. Well, I can glory, and I can
brag on that, can't you? I glory in how the death of Christ
has saved me. Saved me from God. Saved me from
God's wrath against my sin. My substitute suffered it for
me. So I don't have to fear that. I brag on that. I glory in that. What a relief to be able to live
this life not fearing death and not fearing judgment. I glory
And how the death of Christ for my sin, it accomplished something. It did something in me, made
me the righteousness of God. He made sin. I might be made
the righteousness of God in you. I glory in that. I don't understand
it. I don't understand how that happened,
but I sure do believe it. And I glory in it. I glory in
how the death of Christ satisfied God's judgment for me, his justice. I'm free, free from condemnation,
free from worry about condemnation. Somebody can't use the fear of
condemnation and the fear of death as whips to try to drive
me and motivate me because the death of Christ made me free
from that. Don't you love being free? Somebody can't put you
under a guilt trip and try to motivate you to do all this religious
stuff. You're free. Glory that the freedom, the freedom
that God has given his people by the death of Christ. what
he accomplished on the cross. And the place the believer finds
rest, rest for our souls, peace for our heart, is being near
the cross. Being so near the cross that
we're just right there in the shade of it because we're so
close to it. And again, you know I'm not talking physically here.
I'm talking spiritually. I think there's a lot of reasons
that believers enjoy the Lord's table so much. It's such a special
time of worship. We take that wine that represents
his shed blood and take that bread that represents his broken
body. Spiritually, by faith, I mean, you're right there, aren't
you? Right there in the shade of the cross and what he accomplished
and how we remember. Oh yeah. This is my home. This is my only hope. The only
way somebody like me could be saved. The only way a dead sinner
like me could have eternal life is in what Christ accomplished
in His death for me. It's so special. I find that I find rest for my
soul when I'm hearing the gospel of Christ. When I'm hearing the
gospel that declares who He is, what He did, why He did it, and
where He is now. Suddenly all the burdens of this
world become a whole lot less. They just fade in significance. And I find peace from my heart
when I'm hearing the gospel of Christ preached. That's the cross. It's telling what Christ accomplished
on the cross. And that's what we'll be remembering
here in just a few minutes when we take this bread and this wine.
All right, number two, we have communion with God through the
blood and the water that flowed from the wounded side of our
Savior. Now look at John chapter 7. We read there where Abraham
said, now let me fetch you some water for you to wash your feet
and be refreshed. Well, that water Abraham fetched
is a picture of Christ, the water of life. Our Savior tells us
about that water. John 7 verse 37. In that last
day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying,
if any man thirst, let him come and be endured. He that believeth
on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers
of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit,
which they that believe on him should receive. For the Holy
Ghost was not yet given because the Jesus was not yet glorified.
Now John tells us here what the Lord, what the Lord tells us
what he means when he said this. Whoever's thirsty, let him come
to me and drink. Well, drinking is a picture of believing. Because
the Lord immediately said, whosoever believeth on me, but the drinking
is the picture of believing whoever it is, whoever it is, wherever
they're found, whatever their background, whoever it is that
believes on Christ has eternal life. Right? Whoever it is. Well,
how do sinners like you and me get this water? Isn't that what
the Samaritan woman wanted to know? You're telling me about
this water? Tell me where I get this water, she said. I don't
have to come hither and draw it. Well, I'll tell you where
we get this water. You don't draw it from a well.
You don't get it in a bucket. You don't turn on the tap and
get it out of the tap. The Lord gives us this water when we're
communing with him through the preaching of the gospel, through
the preaching of his word. That's how the Lord gives life
in the new birth. It's the seed of the word. being
preached, and He gives life through that, through the preaching of
Christ. You just almost can't overstate
the importance of what we're doing here tonight, what we do
on Sundays, preaching the gospel. When the gospel's being preached,
we're not just listening to idle words. These are the words of
life. This is the word that the Holy
Spirit gives us and gives us, uses to give us life as we commune
with the son of God, commune with Christ by believing on him.
When we hear the gospel being preached, the water is for drinking. This word is being preached is
for believing. Believe it. Believe on Christ. And if you can't believe, ask
God to give you faith to believe. But this water, you know, it's
also used for washing. Abraham gave these three men
water and he told them one of the things they could do is refresh
themselves by washing their feet. And you know, that must have
felt good. I mean, I don't know how long it is these men walk,
where they, when they appear from heaven, how close they appear
to walk before they got to Abraham. I don't know. But however long
you walk through the desert sand in open-toed sandals, It's gonna
feel good to put your feet in water, isn't it? Well, you know,
that's the believer. The believer has been washed,
been made holy in the blood and water. That blood and water that
flowed from our Savior's side when that Roman soldier pierced
his side with his spear. That blood and water is the double
cure. Blood to justify, water to sanctify, water to make holy. Now you remember when the Lord
washed his disciples' feet and he got to Peter. And our brother
Peter, one just like us, he said, Lord, you're not washing my feet.
This is not right. You're not washing my feet. And
the Lord said, Peter, I've got to wash you. If I don't wash
you, you have no part of me. And Peter said, wash me all over.
Wash my head and my toes and my body. And the Lord told him,
you're washed now, Peter. You're washed. He that's washed
needeth not save to wash his feet. Peter, your soul is clean. Your soul has been purified.
You're holy and clean. But our feet get dusty, don't
they? As we walk through this world, our feet, the dust of
this world, the corruption of this world, everything of this
world sticks to us and needs to be washed. We need to be refreshed. And I tell you, for the believer,
nothing is more refreshing than coming to the surface and having
a drink from the water of God's Word, having the Spirit apply
it to our hearts. There's nothing more refreshing.
I think I was talking with a pastor friend of mine earlier this week,
and they live in a place where they don't have a Wednesday night
service. He's asking, do you have a Wednesday night service?
I said, yeah, we do. I said, it's my favorite service. It's
my favorite service of the week. When I wasn't preaching, when
I was sitting in the pew, Wednesday is my favorite service of the
week. Because you come in here directly from being out there,
being in the world, trudging through dusty, hot sand and open-toed
sandals, dragging yourself through it to get here, and nothing is
more refreshing to the believer than having your feet washed
in the water of God's Word. It's so refreshing, my flesh
would cling to the dust of this world. It craves it, it desires
it, it wants it. And it's so refreshing to the
new man to have the dust of this world washed off. Have your feet
washed. And I tell you how that happens.
How is it that we're refreshed, that we have our feet washed?
When we're reminded of Christ. When we commune with Him through
the preaching of the gospel. I bet almost every person in
this room has said this to me at one point or another. I was
so tired. Oh, it's been a day. It's been
a week. I was so tired. And I thought,
I'm not going tonight. I'm too tired. I can't make it.
I'm not going. But I drug myself in here. And
now I feel like I could run a marathon. I'm so refreshed and encouraged.
Why? The washing of the water. It
washes your feet and refreshes you. That's the water that Abraham...
And that's how we commune with our Savior. Number three, we
have communion with God over the broken body of Christ. I
look back here in our text, verse five. Abraham says, you rest
yourselves here under the tree and I'll fetch a morsel of bread
and comfort ye your hearts. After that, ye shall pass on.
For therefore are you come to your servant. That's why you've
come to me. I can do this for you. And they said, so do as
thou hast said. Abraham hastened into the tent
under Sarah, and said, make ready quickly three measures of fine
meal. Knead it and make cakes upon the hearth. Now you know,
everybody here knows what that bread represents. It represents
the humanity of Christ. His body, his body, his fleshly
body. Now you think what a miracle
it is that the son of God took on him a fleshly body. You think
he's spirit, he didn't have a body, but he took on him a fleshly
body. I mean, it's one of the greatest
miracles mankind's ever heard of. Surpassed probably only by
this miracle. Why he took on flesh. He took
on flesh so that he could be the representative of sinful
men and women. Of the worst of the worst. The
Lord of glory became a man, took on him a body. So that body could
die. And not just die, Suddenly, but
a body to be broken, a body to be tortured and broken as a sacrifice
for the sin of his people, a body to be broken to satisfy God's
justice against the sin of his people. And that's what we're
remembering tonight before the bread is distributed. I don't
know if you all can see it from from where you're sitting, but
that bread comes in sheets. Wayne's going to take that bread.
He's going to break it. Everybody here is going to hear
that bread breaking. What a vivid reminder of how
our Savior's body was broken. Broken. Broken for the sin of
His people. And that bread is distributed.
And you take it and we pray. And you put that bread in your
mouth and you teach. That's the body of our Lord being
crowned under the justice of His Father, under the wrath of
his father, his body. He took on him a body so that
his body could be broken as a substitute for me. See, when you take that
bread, this is what you're saying when Christ died. He died for
me. He's my substitute. His death
put away my sin. This is what I'm publicly claiming. He's my only hope of salvation. He did that for me. When it came
time, when his hour was come, the father gave his precious
son, his beloved son, into the hands of wicked men and women
to do with him as they pleased. And we saw Sunday in our lesson
Sunday, this is man's will, destroy Jesus. He gave his son into the
hands of men and the will of man was to break his body. to
beat his face with their fist, to blindfold him and then hit
him and say, prophesy and tell us who hit you. I can just imagine just a bloodthirsty,
just frenzy. They grabbed the hair of his
beard and pulled it out by the roots. Pilate took a man he said
was innocent and had him scourged with a cat of nine tails. just
that thing just raked across his back, pulling the flesh away
from his body. They made him a crown of thorns,
mocking him as king, and they shoved those thorns down into
his precious scalp. Then they took him and they nailed
his hands and feet to a cross, stuck him up on it, and mocked
him while he died. And then, after he'd already
given up the ghost, just one more act of meanness, a Roman
soldier shoved a spear into his dead body. Just for pure meanness
sake, that's the will of man. God help us and deliver us from
our will, don't you reckon? But that was the body of our
Savior being broken when he made his soul an offering for sin. As bad as those physical sufferings
are I just described, that's just the tip of the iceberg compared
to his soul sufferings. His body was broken when he made
his soul an offering for sin. But that bodily suffering was
real. Because you know, after he rose,
his body still showed the evidences it had been broken. There are
scars in his hands and his feet. He said, Thomas, put your hand
in my side. Be believing. Doubt not. The scars from all
those beatings and all those piercings are theirs evidence
that his body was broken for sin. Someone once said, the only
evidence of sin that there'll be in heaven is the scars in
his precious body, as his body was broken for sin. Now, the
Lord Jesus Christ is the bread, the bread of life. And whoever
eats his body has everlasting life. And just like drinking,
eating means believes on Whoever it is that believes on Christ. Whoever it is that believes that
all I need to be saved is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's all I
need. That person's saved. Anybody who believes, I don't
need to add any of my good works to Christ in order to be perfect.
That person who truly believes that is saved. Anybody who believes
I don't have to do something to help put my sin away or start
sinning less in order to be saved because the blood of Christ's
sacrifice paid the whole debt in full. Anybody who believes
that, anybody who believes on Christ that way is saved. Now, when we hear Christ preached,
we hear Him preached, He's enough. He's all I need. He's all you
need. And by God's grace, we believe
it. That's community with God. That's community with God. And
our Savior gave us this table, the special way to remember His
sacrifice. and to be able to publicly confess,
all my hope, all my trust is in Him, is the Lord's table.
And we take this bread and this wine, that's what we're saying. He's all I got. And I don't want
anything else. He's all my hope. And remembering the Lord in this
way, that refreshes us, doesn't it? To be able to remember His
sacrifice for me, to have these vivid reminders This is what
the Savior went through to save the lives of me. That refreshes
our souls, doesn't it? And you know why it refreshes
us? Because it's communing with God around the sacrifice of His
Son. It refreshes us. Now I know this,
we can't commune with the Lord around our good works, can we?
But we sure can commune with the Lord around the sacrifice
of Christ. What He's done for us and how we trust Him. All
right, here's the last thing. We have communion with God in
the Lamb's Lamb for sin. Verse six. And Abraham hasted
into the tent unto Sarah, or I'm sorry, verse seven. And Abraham went unto the herd
and fetched a calf, tender and good, and gave it unto a young
man, and he hasted to dress it. And he took butter and milk and
the calf, which he had dressed, and set it before them. And he
stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. You and I cannot
commune with God apart from a blood sacrifice. I know Abraham didn't
offer a lamb as a sacrifice here. He killed the lamb to be eaten.
But that lamb is a picture of Christ, the lamb of God, who
was sacrificed for the sin of his people. Christ, our Savior,
is the lamb of God. When he began his public ministry,
and how John the Baptist identified him, behold, the lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world. And he took away the
sin of his people from all over the world. When he shed his blood,
he was sacrificed in their place, shed his blood to put away their
sin. Here's the thing about the sacrifice of the lamb. We'll
use the Passover lamb as an example. You know, they took that lamb,
they separated out from the herd and they watched it for 14 days
to make sure the lamb was without blemish. You know, it's not good
enough just to have a lamb. It's not good enough to have
a lamb without blemish, without spot. It's not even good enough
to take the lamb and kill it. The blood of the lamb, if we're
gonna be saved, must be applied to our hearts. In order for us
to be saved, the lamb must be eaten. Remember, eating is a
picture of believing. Christ must be taken into our
hearts by faith so that he become part We become part of it. Part
of us. You know, in John 6 when the
Lord said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in
you. I think one of the reasons He
used eating there as an illustration of faith and belief is when we
eat something, it becomes part of us. It becomes part of our
flesh and bones and blood and all of the cells of our body.
Well, we believe Christ. He becomes part of us. We become
part of Him. We have union with Him. So when
the father looks at the son, he doesn't see any difference
between the believer and the son. He sees him as one. Earlier
this week, I ate me a big old steak. Big steak. Biggest one I had on me. Big
potato. Bunch of vegetables. Now when
you all look at me tonight, you don't see where there's Frank
and there's some steak and there's some potatoes and there's vegetables.
You see there's Frank. That steak's already become part
of me now. I had to loosen my belt just to prove it to you.
It became part of me. We believe on Christ. He becomes
part of us. We commune with the Lord and
we hear from God and we hear that Christ's sacrifice is all
we need and we trust We trust that sacrifice is all I want.
He's all I need. That's communing with God. In
closing, let me give you this. I think this will be a blessing
to you. Abraham states here the desire, the heart's desire of
every believer. In verse three, he said, My Lord,
if now I found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from
thy servant. Isn't that your heart's desire?
Oh, if I found grace, in the sight of the Lord. How do I know
if I found grace in the sight of the Lord? I can't tell you
how desperately I want to know. I found grace in the sight of
the Lord. How do you know? Well, the answer
is very simple. It's because Christ was crucified
for you. Was Christ crucified for your
sin? Did his sacrifice put away all
your sin? Is he your only hope? Well, I'll
tell you this. We just talked about all the
things that our Savior went through when He was sacrificed, crucified
for His people. If the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed
Himself for you, for your sin, certainly you could say, yeah,
I found grace in His sight. I didn't deserve that. He did
that even though I didn't deserve it. That's grace. And if you
found grace in God's sight, this is His promise to you. I'll never
leave you nor forsake you. And if we found grace in his
sight, he's going to enable us to commune with him. To commune
with him because when we hear the gospel preached, he's going
to enable us to believe it and to commune with God. Abraham
told him in verse 5, and you take these things and comfort
ye your hearts. But if you found grace in the sight of the Lord,
hearing the message of the cross, Hearing the message is what Christ
accomplished on the cross. That comforts your heart. That
comforts your heart, then this table is for you. Because the
only way it'll comfort your heart is if you believe on Christ.
If that describes you, then this table is for you. All right,
Wayne, if you men would distribute the bread. giving the instructions for the
Lord's table, the Apostle Paul writes 1 Corinthians 11 verse
23. For I have received of the Lord
that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the
same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given
thanks, he break it and said, take, eat. This is my body, which
is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me. Jonathan, would you give thanks
for the bread? I'm a little bit worried about it. Thank you. I was just
looking at it. I think this is a good thing. I mean it. I love it. I mean
it. I love this. I think this is
a good thing. I really love it. Thank you so
much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you
so much. Mr. Chairman, we are glad that
you have come to vote on this bill, which has been voted on. Yes, it is still on the table. It's still on the table. Five votes, all in favor,
say aye. Aye. Any seconders? I just really
need to know. See, see, see, see, see, see,
see, see. Paul continues, after the same
manner also he took the cup when he had supped, saying, this cup
is the New Testament of my blood. This do ye as often as you drink
it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till
he comes. Wayne, would you give thanks
for the wine? I'm going to go ahead and get
started. I'm going to go ahead and get
started. I couldn't even begin to tell
you how many times I've served the Lord's table. It never gets
old, does it? Such a simple thing, unleavened
bread and wine, such a simple thing. Every other simple thing
in life. Not this. Why? This community. Isaac, you come lease in the
closing.