The Scriptures say, Then Jesus
said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat
the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have
no life in you. Let's pray together. This evening, we ask you, in
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, would you bless this Word? Lord,
bless it, we pray, to your honor. Bless it to the comfort of your
people. Teach us. Help us to hear. Help us to hear
afresh. Help us to hear with joy and
with anticipation of Him that all of the redeemed shall see
by sight with joy. For it is in Christ's name we
pray, Amen. Our Lord set forth to indisputable
truths in the Scripture. Number one, he set forth that
man by nature is dead in trespasses and sins. And secondly, he set
forth that salvation is by the grace of God Two things, man by nature is
dead and God is sovereign in salvation. We are dead spiritually from birth. We are born spiritually
dead. Now listen to the words of our
Lord, Except ye eat, the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His
blood, you have no life in you." That last part right there, you
have no life in you. Now, he uses terms that we understand. We understand eating and drinking.
We know what that is. It's partaking. being filled. But before I'm able to eat or
drink, I've got to be alive. And if I can eat or drink, then
I'm not dead. So we've got a problem here. Except you eat and drink of the
flesh of the Son of Man." He's talking about His humanity. What He came into this world
to accomplish, to do, to perform. My meat is to do the will of
Him that sent me. Now here's the problem. Except
you eat, you're dead. And you're born dead, so how can you eat? Dead. Dead under the sentence
of the law. Dead to any knowledge that I
need to eat or drink. Dead in ability. And this truth about being dead,
born dead, that truth right now, that a man or woman is born dead
in trespasses and sins, is to you that believe a very profitable
thing. Let me tell you how it's profitable.
It's because it causes us to remember, to remember the mercy and grace
of God. It's to remember where we came
from. Listen to this Scripture, Isaiah
51.1, Hearken to Me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye
that seek the Lord, look unto the rock whence ye are hewn,
and to the hole of the pit which ye are digged." And the next
verse explains that. Look unto Abraham your father. He said, look unto the rock,
the little r, rock. Look to the rock whence you are
hewn. He later says, look to Abraham.
And then he said, in the first one, look to the hole from the
pit from which you're digged. The second verse still gives
the explanation. Continuing, and unto Sarah that
bare you. For I called him alone, and blessed
him, and increased him. This is what he's saying. Remember
where you came from. You were born dead in trespasses
and sins. You did not come forth from your
mother's womb speaking truth. You came forth speaking lies,
spiritually dead. Now except you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. But our problem is we have no
life in us to begin with. And in ourselves, we are unable. He said, remember Abraham and
remember Sarah. Remember the rock from which
you're hewn and the pit from which you're digged. Go back
and read Abraham and Sarah's physical state. When they were almost 100 years
old, God told them, He said, you're going to have a son. Sarah
laughed. She was past the age of childbearing. Abraham almost approaching 100
years old. That's impossible. Nothing's impossible with God.
He said they were to bear a child according to promise of my power. Now, you remember where you came
from. Any time that you start to think, boy, I tell you what,
I'm here believing the gospel of God's grace. I've been here
10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, 60 years. I've been faithful all
these years. You have by the grace of God.
You remember the rock from which you've been hewn. Except you
eat, you have no life in you. But remember, you had no life
to start with and had no ability to eat. Here's the second point. Salvation in spiritual life is
by the grace of God. Except, and oh what a great exception
this is, This is what it comes down to right here. The Lord
has set forth the standard, except you eat the flesh of the Son
of Man and drink His blood. Eating and drinking is obviously
a sign, an evidence, of life. We don't eat and drink in order
to have life. Life is evidenced because we
do eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood. The
Lord is not setting forth some rules and regulations in order
for us to become alive. He's setting forth the evidence
of what He has done for us. When we were down in Mexico last
time, we were driving around and I noticed that they were
building some little huts. I mentioned this time before. They were just little things
about that size, maybe a little bigger, and they had palm leaves
all over them. They built them out there in
the yard of these churches. And I asked Cody, I said, what
are they doing? He said, well, he said the Day
of the Dead is coming up. Right around Halloween is what
it was. Day of the Dead. And what they do is they prepare
a meal. that a person that was deceased,
they prepare their favorite meal. And they'll prepare that meal,
and on the Day of the Dead, they'll bring that meal and they'll set
it inside that little hut and leave it there. And they allow
the dead person to enjoy the savor of it. And then afterwards,
someone comes and gets it and they eat it. Well, here's the problem. Number one,
since they're dead, you know they can't eat. They have no ability to eat. But these people, They don't
truly believe that they're dead. They're making a meal for them.
These people can't eat, and the people bringing it to them don't
think that they're really dead. And man by nature doesn't believe
that he's truly dead. He truly believes that he has
the ability to eat. Except ye eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink His blood, thereby evidencing that the Spirit
of God has imparted life in you." Except you are eating and drinking. Except you are feasting on the
flesh, the life Christ, except you are eating by faith of the
life that He lived, whereby the righteousness that is imparted
to you is the righteousness wherein you stand before God Almighty,
justified before God, except by faith you're eating of His
life. Except Almighty God has given
you a heart that truly believes. I believe that when He came into
this world, He came into this world to redeem me. And that
the life that He lived, His faith, His faithfulness, He was the
man, Christ Jesus, who by faith Obeyed God, obeyed God's law
and earned as my representative before God Almighty that life
that God Almighty accepted for me. Except you eat of His flesh
by faith and drink of His blood, meaning that by faith I believe
that when He died, He died as my substitute. That my guilt
was on Him. That I died with Him. That He
was made what I am by nature. Sin. And that His blood atoned
for my guilt. Except you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man. Except you're eating that. except
your drinking of that blood, you're dead. If you're eating
of anything else except the flesh of the Son of Man and the blood
of the Son of Man, this evening we're going to partake
of the Lord's Table. And what we're going to do is
we're going to eat the God-ordained expression, the ordinance that
sets forth what we do by faith. The Lord's Supper. In those elements
right there, there's no life in those elements. There's no
life. There are some in this world,
there's many in this world, many in this vicinity that actually
believes that the host, the piece of bread that they actually eat,
they actually believe that that actually becomes, when that priest
blesses it, that that actually becomes the body of Christ. Mama, am I right about that?
That when that priest blesses that little piece of bread, that
actually becomes the physical body of Christ. And that when you eat it, that
is salvation. Except you eat by faith the flesh
of the Son of Man. Except you drink by faith, His
blood, His life and His death, except Almighty God has given
you a new heart. You can eat all the bread that
could ever be made and perish in your sins. May the Lord be pleased to teach
us, to reveal to us, for by grace Are you saved through
faith and that not of yourselves? It's the gift of God. I'm going to ask the men if they'll
come forward at this time and we'll eat of the Lord's Supper.