Remember his strong rebuke of
this church in Corinth regarding the way that they observed or
maybe better to say didn't observe the Lord's table. He said it
would be better if you didn't meet at all rather than do what
you're doing. And how's he gonna teach him?
How's he gonna correct that if he can? How's,
the Lord gonna use him to teach them better, to teach them the
right way. Paul's gonna tell them what the
Lord did and what the Lord said. That's all we do, that's all
we do. We come to find out who the Lord
is, what he did, what he said, and rejoice in him, rest in him. And when he had given thanks, Let's think about that word thanks
for a moment. Before he even broke the bread,
he gave thanks. And Christ is our master, our
teacher in all things. So everything he does and says
is a lesson. When he had given thanks, he
break it. Notice the wording. It doesn't
just state two facts. It doesn't say he gave thanks
and then he broke the bread. They're not just two things that
he did in the language here. The giving of thanks is directly
connected to the breaking of the bread. When he had given, the way he
broke the bread was that when he gave thanks, he broke it. And before we ever take anything
from the Lord or use anything, we should first be thankful for
it. I'm not talking about a religious
ritual. I'm not talking about, you know,
religiously chanting some pre-memorized words, you know, and things like
that, like religion would do. I'm talking about an attitude. I'm talking about a way of life.
Whenever we take something to ourselves, let's remember who
it belongs to and who gave it. The Lord gave us that. It's his
and he gave it to me. I caught one of God's fish. I ate one of God's potatoes. I'm about to drink some of God's
water. That should be our attitude, always giving thanks in all things
to the Lord. Now, the spiritual lesson, as
always, is the most beautiful. The giving of thanks here in
this description of what our Lord did and said, the giving
of thanks is bracketed by the bread. Starts with the bread. He took bread, he gave thanks,
and he broke the bread. All of our thanksgiving and our
gratitude and praise and adoration has to do with the sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that we have, we have
in him, because of him, for him, to Him, of Him, through Him,
and to Him are all things. It's for His glory. Everything
He's given us has to do with Him and what He did on Calvary. It's in gratitude for Him giving
Himself. His body being broken for my
sins. If not for him and what he did,
the very food I eat is not life, but just a prolonging of death
before the second death. Without Christ crucified and
gratitude in our hearts worked in us by God for his precious
blood, the plowing of our fields is an insult to God rather than
the humble worship of God that it should be. Above and beyond all else we
give thanks for the bread and the wine The body of the Lord
Jesus Christ And his precious blood Paul said
God forbid that I glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ That's what's pictured here he
gave thank he took bread he gave thanks And having given thanks,
he broke bread. Because of his person and work,
our person and work are accepted before God. Because of who Christ is, I'm
a son of God. Because of what Christ did, I'm
God's good and faithful servant. And he says to me, well done,
because of what Christ did. He break, he break the bread. The breaking of the bread pictures
how that Christ was broken for our sin. It pleased the Lord
to bruise his son. And that word bruise means to
crush. It pleased the Lord to crush
his son and him breaking it rather than passing it around. You might
think at a table like that, that the bread would be passed around
and everybody would break off however much they, depending
on how hungry they were. No, that's not what happened.
Because you see, this is the gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ
laid down his life and no man took it from him. He broke the
bread. He gave himself for all for whom
he died. He gave his back to the smiters.
He made his soul an offering for sin. The pleasure of the
Lord prospered in his hand. And he said to them, take, take. There can only be a taking if
there's a giving. Listen to Psalm 145, 16. This
is such a beautiful verse of scripture. Speaking unto the
Lord, the psalmist says this, thou openest thine hand and satisfiest
the desire of every living thing. The Lord Jesus, the same night
in which he was betrayed, he took bread and he break it and
he handed it to them. He gave it to them. And when
they took hold of it, he didn't hold onto it and grasp it and
make demands. He didn't whisk it away real
quick and impose conditions. He opened his hand And the spiritual
message of Psalm 145, 16 is symbolized in that he gave the bread, they
took it, and he opened his hand so that they could take it. And by making his soul an offering
for our sins, by breaking his own body under the wrath of God
that was due us, Christ satisfied the desire, the need, the hunger. He is the one thing needful for
those who live. Everybody that lives. And he's
the one that has the prerogative of life. He said, as the father
quickeneth whom he will, so hath he given authority to the son
to give life to whomsoever he will. He opened his hand and they took
eternal life from him in symbol, in picture. Remember, he said,
when you do that, you show forth my death until you come. When they took that bread, that
symbolizes him opening his hand and us receiving eternal life,
the one who is eternal life, who has the words of eternal
life, whose precious blood. gives life eternal. And in that symbol, in the recreation
of that giving, we take in our hearts, we remember his gift,
the unspeakable gift of God in giving us his son. That's the
bread is the Lord, his body, his person. And in our hearts, we receive
and we remember. We remember the gift. We remember
the freeness of it. We remember that he gave when
we had nothing to pay. We remember that he did everything. He was the good Samaritan. He
came where we were. He poured in the oil. He poured
in the wine. He lifted us up. He took us to
the end. He paid for everything. and said,
if he ever owes anything more, I'll take care of it. We remember the freeness of the
gift and we remember that it's only by God's grace that we took.
Turn with me please to Psalm 116. I want us to look at these
couple of verses together. Psalm 116 and verse 12. Psalm
116, 12. What shall I render unto the
Lord for all his benefits toward me? Who wants to think about
that for a second? Let's do something for God. Let's
give something to God. That's the thought here. Look
what all he's done for me. What am I gonna render unto him?
Let's give something back. People that get rich, they say,
I wanna give something back. Let's give something back. You
know, when the Psalmist thought about that, what would I give
the Lord? How would I repay him? What can I render under him?
You know what his conclusion was? I will take. That's what's gonna happen, isn't
it? I will take. What you're gonna
do is keep on taking. Because he's the giver and you
don't have anything to give back. If you thought you did, He wouldn't
take it. He doesn't need you. You need Him. You don't give
Him anything. He gives and you take. The psalmist
understood that. He said, what I'm going to do
is I'm going to take the cup of salvation. Instead of trying
to render anything unto Him, what pleases the Lord? You doing
something for Him or you taking? receiving by his grace, by his
enlightenment, by his irresistible grace working on your heart,
you receiving by faith that he gives the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why God has a universe,
not so you can give him something that you come up with down here. He has a universe that he might
give so you know what we're gonna do by his grace take Take I Will take and I'll call upon
him He's not calling on me for anything He calls me, but he didn't call
upon me What are you gonna do for the
Lord Well, in thanksgiving to him for all the blessings that
are ours in Christ, we realize that we can't really give God
anything. If you think about what he's done for us, before
there was ever a world, he gave. If you want to please God, don't
give him anything. Take. Take. Everything that we might do for
God anyway is really Him doing something for us, we know that.
What pleases God is Christ, and we don't give, we receive. He
doesn't call upon us, we call upon Him for all things. That's what He delights in. In the gospel, we're takers. When the Lord healed the woman
with the issue of blood, virtue went out of him, and she was
the recipient. God doesn't benefit from the
exercising of our will in salvation as though we add something to
him, but we benefit from his willingness to save, Matthew
8.2. We don't give him our heart in the sense of doing him some
kind of a favor. He gives us a new heart. And
when the scripture speaks of us giving our heart, Proverbs
23, 26, it's that new one that he first gave that we give back
to him in the sense of love, not in the sense of enriching
him in any way. We are the ones enriched. But we do love him because he
first loved us, and hence the next verse in that Psalm. I'll
pay my vows unto the Lord. We do want to serve him, don't
we? But we take. And we serve with what he gives. Oh, Lord. Who are we that we
should be privileged to give back just a little bit of what
you've given us? We're takers. And that's the
Lord's will. That's the Lord's way. What would the Lord want with
my wretched, sinful, old man heart anyway? Absolutely nothing. He said, take, eat, eat. Now this is the physical symbol
or equivalent of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. By faith,
we partake of him. We don't just store up knowledge
about him in our head. We take him That's what's taught in John
56 53 When the Lord said unto them 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 They were talking about manna
from heaven. We don't need that manna from heaven. That was just
a picture of the one thing needful We need him. We must partake
by faith of him. This eating of his body, which
is what our Lord calls the bread in the next phrase of our verse,
is symbolic of Christ in you being the hope of glory. Bread
represents food. All food is called bread, often
in the scriptures, and Christ is the food of our soul, the
life of the soul. Man shall not live by physical,
earthly bread alone. That's not life. But by every
word that proceedeth from the mouth of God. Every word is Christ. Every word points to Christ.
Every word of God reveals Christ. It is Christ to whom we resort
and have no other, because He has the words of eternal life.
That's why we can't go anywhere else. And what is eaten, what is eaten,
it permeates our whole being, doesn't it? It vitalizes, it
satisfies. It's more than just what we need.
It's what we want, isn't it? Food. It doesn't just keep us
alive, we enjoy it. Maybe more than anything. Delicious
food. That's what Christ is to us.
And it's take, eat. It's so simple, isn't it? It's
so beautiful in its simplicity. It doesn't say take, argue. It
says take, eat. Someone who has tasted that the
Lord is gracious has no desire to debate about what's food and
what's garbage. You already know what food is.
You've tasted that the Lord is gracious. You just want others
to know that. That doesn't happen by arguing.
It happens by the preaching of the gospel. It doesn't say take or leave.
It says take, eat. What we say last week, I believe
it was, there are no decisions to make at the table. There's not a single decision
that you need to make at the table. When the Lord tells you
to do something, your response better not be, well, I've got
a decision to make. In the garden, is that what happened?
You know, Adam and Eve, the Lord said, Every tree of this, all of the
wonderful bounty of this garden, this tree of the knowledge and
good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. Did that make them
sit down and go, man, we've got a decision to make. Not the correct response. Not
advisable. So let all false religions stop
invoking that response. Salvation is not a decision.
There's no decision to make at the table. This is my body, he
said. This is my body. Take, eat, this is my body. Turn with me to John chapter
6. Please. John chapter 6. Verse 30. They said, therefore unto him,
what signs showest thou then that we may see and believe thee. See and believe thee. You remember the psalmist said,
I believed to see. What I see is because I, by God's
grace, believed. The flesh is the other way around.
They want to see something so that they might believe. What
dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in
the desert. As it is written, he gave them
bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said unto them, verily,
verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from
heaven, but my father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which
cometh down from heaven and giveth life. You see the significance
of bread? Giveth life. That's what bread symbolizes
now. You can't live without eating. Then verse 34, said they unto
him, Lord evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them,
I am the bread of life. Think what a powerful truth that
is. This bread, he gives life. He gives life, eternal, everlasting
life. And they said, give us some of
that. He said, I am that. Is that simple? Is that hard
to understand? They didn't get it. You're not gonna get it without
his grace. He's got to reveal it to you. You know what they
said to that? When he said, I am that bread,
you can't have life unless you partake of me. They said, how
can this man give us his flesh to eat? You know, that's the Catholic
Church in a nutshell. And when I say Catholic Church,
I mean all false religion. How can we figure out a way that
he's giving us his flesh to eat? Oh, we'll just come up with something
and say that it turns in, magically turns into nothing. Just like these blind as a bat
religious Jews, they're still harping on the physical. It's
got to physically be something or it's not something. Christ gives physical bread. They live, they physically lived
on that bread, but Moses didn't give them that, the Father gave
them that, but also, The true bread, the true bread is Christ
himself. And the father gave him to be
the life. of those that He loved from eternity. I am the bread of life. Look
at verse 35. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. That's
just two ways of saying the same thing. That teaches us this.
Coming to Christ is believing on Him, trusting Him. seeing
that he is what you need, not a free meal ticket that some
of them came to him for. That's not what we need. You
don't ever need to eat again in this world physically. It'd
be nice if you're gonna live, you probably should, but what
you need is Christ. Verse 36, but I said unto you
that ye also have seen me, and believe not, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me. Boy, that sounds certain, doesn't
it? You come to me, he said, you'll have life. If you come
to me, you won't ever need anything else but me. And everybody that the Father
gave to the Son shall come to him and never need anything else. and him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. That's the sheep. My sheep hear
my voice and they follow me. He's not gonna run off a sheep.
For I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will
of him that sent me and this is the father's will which hath
sent me that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing
but should raise it up again at the last day. Now those who
come and believe are those that the father gave the son. So what
we need to do is figure out if God gave us to the son, no. The gospel message is belief
on the Lord Jesus Christ. And know this, the reason you
believe is because you're one of his sheep. And this is the will of him that
sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth
on him, may have everlasting life. And I will raise him up
at the last day. The Jews then murmured at him,
because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.
And they said, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father
and mother we know? How is it then that he saith,
I came down from heaven? Jesus therefore answered and
said unto them, murmur not among yourselves, no man can come to
me except the Father which hath sent me draw him, and I will
raise him up at the last day. Your human reasoning is a waste
of time. Quit doing it, he said. Quit
doing it. If the Father doesn't draw you,
you're not gonna come to me. If he does, you are. It is written in the prophets,
and they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that
hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me. If the Lord of glory had taught
you of Christ, you wouldn't be murmuring about this. You'd be
bowing. You'd be looking. You'd have cast your soul on
the Son of God that you might live. Not that any man hath seen
the Father, verse four, save he which is of God, he hath seen
the Father. Verily, verily I say unto you,
he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread
of life. You see what kind of life he's
talking about? Everlasting life. Everlasting. Your fathers did eat manna in
the wilderness and are dead. That bread can't give everlasting
life. This is the bread which cometh
down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which came
down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread,
he shall live forever. And the bread that I will give
is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. You
see what he's saying? When he broke that bread, that was him
giving himself. Sinners might have everlasting
life not complicated but but impossible to grasp apart from
grace Hebrews 10 4 through 14 we have
to look at it Hebrews 10 for Hebrews 10, four, look at this
beautiful, think about our text now what the Lord's doing. He
said, take, eat, this is my body. Hebrews 10, four, for it is not
possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away
sins, wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, sacrifice
and offering, thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared
me. That was the point of the sacrifice
and offerings. They could never put away sin,
but they showed forth this truth, that a body has been prepared
for the Son of God. Verse six, unburnt offerings
and sacrifices for sin, that has had no pleasure, not in those,
not in obedience to the law, not in the physical ritual of
that. But then, when God had no pleasure,
it looks like we're all going to hell, then said, Christ, lo,
I come. Not so fast. In the volume of the book it
is written of me, to do thy will, O God. What is the Lord's pleasure? To crush his son for his people. Above, when he said sacrifice
and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin, thou wouldest
not, neither hadst pleasure therein, which are offered by the law.
Then said he, lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away
the first. that he may establish the second
by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. You see that? We're sanctified
by the offering of Christ. This is my body which is broken
for you. That's sanctification. That's
you being holy in the sight of God. and every priest standeth daily
ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can
never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered
one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of
God from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his
footstool. For, why did he sit down? For
by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. How were they sanctified again?
Through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Christ crucified is salvation. It's not an offer of salvation.
It's not the availability of salvation. Christ crucified is
salvation. Broken for you, for you. We speak of substitution for,
though that word is not in the Bible itself, as far as I know,
the doctrine of substitution is the heart of the gospel. It's
the heart of the gospel. As good a definition as any for
the word substitution is this, for you. Think about three things
quickly with regard to this. It refers to at least three things.
Instead of you, For you means instead of you. The punishment
for sin is due unto us by nature. We are by nature the children
of wrath, Ephesians 2, 3, and that wrath is the breaking of
the bread, the breaking of the body of Christ. Instead of us,
for you, in your place, here's substitution for Christ also
hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that
he might bring us to God. being put to death in the flesh,
but quickened by the spirit. You see that word for, or hear
it? You didn't turn there, but you
heard it, didn't you? The just for, instead of, that's
the first consideration. That's our text now, the just,
the righteous, the holy one, the spotless lamb suffered for
you. That's the beautiful message
of the table. You notice it wasn't for any
other reason than to bring you to God. That's why he did it,
to bring you to God. If the just one suffered for
you, the unjust, in order to bring you to God, then you are
or shall be brought to God. For in our text, for, for, for
also means for you in the sense of motivation, for you, I did
it for you. The sense of love, because of
you, I did it. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten son. You see that word for in that
sense? It also means for the benefit of. For you, this was
not done to get a response or anything else, to get anything
from you, it's done for you. For you. We know that God has
to do this for himself before he can do anything for you. We
also know that it's for you. He made that clear, by the way,
in John 17 in his high priestly prayer, this is for God. God's gonna show mercy because
that's who he is, but he don't have to show mercy on you. That's
grace. That's unmerited favor. And that's favor that you didn't
merit or even want, but he gave it to you anyway. And you're
gonna praise him forever for it. Well, I need to decide. No, that was done for you. The
matter has been decided for you. Is that okay with you? God decided
to save you instead of throwing you in hell. Is that all right
with you? That he didn't consult you in
that decision? Well, I need to choose. No, that
was done for you. You've not chosen me, I've chosen
you. Well, I need to do good though. No, no, that was done
for you, for you. You're going to want to, but
you don't need to. Aren't you glad? It's a good
thing. It's a good thing you don't need to. Remembrance. This do in remembrance. Don't do this
to be saved, but because you are saved. Remember
how he saved you freely, sovereignly, To the uttermost. To the uttermost. Don't do this
to receive grace from the Lord. Do this because you have received
grace from the Lord. Because of God's free grace to
you in Christ. Remember, remember. Remember Him. What else are you
gonna remember when you're eating bread and drinking wine? That's
all you're doing. What's gonna come to your mind? Remember that he did it for you,
in your place, because he loved you, and that because he did,
you're saved. Remember that. Because it is Christ that died,
you are uncondemnable before God, and for no other reason. and nothing and no one can separate
you from the love of Christ who died for you. It is Christ that died. No separation
ever is possible. And for no other reason, the Son of God and His precious
blood You see the table, the table is the gospel. It's the
Lord calling us over and over as often as we do it to remember
how simple and how beautiful and how all-inclusive salvation
is in Christ. God help us, God bless us in
it. Amen, let's pray.