You want to turn in your Bibles
to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. This section of scripture I want
to begin reading is verse 23, but to give you the context,
a couple of verses before this, the Apostle Paul had told the
Corinthians that they had been coming together not to eat the
Lord's Supper, but some had food and some didn't have food, and
those who had food were not waiting for those who didn't, and they
weren't sharing, and all of this was incorrect, and it was wrong,
and the apostle is correcting that. And this is what he has
in view when he begins in verse 23. He asks them in verse 22,
don't you have houses to eat and drink in? Do you despise
the church of God and shame them that have not? What shall I say
to you? Shall I praise you in this? I
praise you not. So this is a correction. He is rebuking the Corinthians. But as we have been seeing later
in chapter 15, the very error that he corrects serves as the
basis for great instruction and comfort to the Lord Jesus, to
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why this is
such a glorious chapter, because the Lord is in the context of
this error giving us this instruction. And I've entitled today's message,
Broken For Me, Broken For Me. We just saw in that reading of
scripture from Isaiah 38, and I want you to note those words. I'm just going to remind you
what it said here. He said in Isaiah 38, In verse 13, he said, I reckon
till morning that as a lion, so will he break all my bones. From day even to night wilt thou
make an end of me. That's what it means to be broken.
To be broken means an end was made. He was broken like a lion
breaks. And now the Lord Jesus Christ
was not broken in his bones. And the reason for that is because
we are His bones, and His people were not lost in His death, but
saved. And so the Lord is teaching us
that Christ's bones were never broken, His people were never
broken, but He was broken. And that's why this has to do
with the Lord Jesus Christ here in Isaiah 38, and also our salvation
by Him because He was broken. But in 1 Corinthians chapter
11, the Apostle Paul is going to take the error and the selfishness
of the Corinthians as a starting point to go back and teach us
about the Lord Jesus Christ. Now when we think about the Lord
Jesus Christ, we need to realize that scripture is like a spotlight.
There were undoubtedly millions of people on earth in the days
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And some of those are described
in their life and their circumstances. But all of them are described
in the context of the light that shined on him. So when the Lord
Jesus came, he was announced by John the Baptist. He was baptized
there at the River Jordan. And that baptism pointed forward
to his true baptism when he would undergo the immersion of God's
wrath for the people, for his people, for the salvation of
his people, for their sins. And then he was driven by the
Spirit of God into the wilderness where he was tempted and overcame
those temptations and rebuked the devil and told him to get
behind him. And then he sent his, he preached
the gospel, and he also sent his apostles, his disciples,
to preach the gospel. And when they did, Satan was
cast out. Even the devils were subject
to them. They remarked, and Jesus said,
I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. So the Lord Jesus
had come, and he put the devil, he destroyed the works of the
devil. He fulfilled what God gave him
to do in that. And so the light continues to
follow him, as it were, a spotlight in all that he did. He comes
to poor sinners. He comes to those who were plagued
in their heart and in their bodies with leprosy. He comes to those
who were blinded by their sin and in the pride of their sin,
and he opened the eyes of the blind. And he came to those who
had no ability to believe on him, who were lame in their feet,
and he healed the lame. and so many other things. A woman
had been bent over for 18 years, unable to straighten herself
up, and he touched her and she was able to stand up straight.
A man with a hand couldn't stretch it out, it was all weathered,
and he told him, stretch forth your hand, and his hand was made
whole just like the other, and he stretched it out. A woman
who was a widow had a son and the son died and was being carried
out in the coffin and the Lord Jesus Christ saw her and had
compassion on her, stopped the coffin and spoke to the dead
son and raised him to life again. And he spoke to Lazarus and raised
him to life. In all these things you see the
spotlight of the Lord Jesus Christ and all that he did in his ministry.
He went about doing good. He brought, wherever he went,
he brought with him mercy and compassion, the mercy and compassion
of God. He brought the wisdom of God
and he preached the good news of the gospel of his own kingdom,
the kingdom of God. And he announced that when he
came, he came to do the will of God. He came to do the will
of God, his father. And so the light was always on
him, wherever he went, God was there. He is God. God manifests
in the flesh. And so he preached, and so many
heard, and many believed, and the spotlight that God shined
on him became light to them, and they saw in Christ. God of
very God. They recognized in the man, Christ
Jesus, such grace and compassion. There was never any sin. They
could find nothing wrong with him. They were so drawn to him
that they sat at his feet and they longed to hear him. Thousands
at one time gathered to him with their children and they waited
until they were hungry and thirsty and had nothing because they
needed to hear him. This is who the Lord Jesus Christ
is. He had this, his character, his words, and his works were
so attractive to sinners that they were compelled to come to
him. That's very important that we see that. That Christ himself
brings with him all of the grace that God has for sinners. All
that we need, all that we lack, everything that we need but don't
have is found in him when he comes. When he speaks, when he
looks, upon us in mercy, when he listens, when he hears us,
when he takes all of God's will and fulfills it and takes all
of God's will and intercedes for us according to that will. It's all him, it's all him. And it's so attractive to us
as sinners, isn't it? And now what has happened here
in the context of this last supper, is that the Lord Jesus Christ
is gathered with his disciples. He had sent them out to prepare
for him to eat this last supper with him, and it was the last
Passover that was ever validly observed on earth. And the Passover
was, remember, that was that feast God gave to the Israelites
when God would deliver them out of Egypt. He was going to destroy
all the firstborn of man and beast in Egypt. It didn't matter
who they were. Their firstborn would be destroyed.
And God told Israel, now you take a lamb, of the first year
and you take it and you kill it and then you sprinkle its
blood on the post, the side post and the top post of your doors.
And then you get in that house where the blood is sprinkled
and you roast that lamb and you eat it, all of you eat that lamb. And when I see the blood, I will
pass over you. You see, it was all what God
saw in that lamb sacrificed and roasted and eaten by those in
the house where the blood was sprinkled. They were in the house
eating the lamb, trusting that God would see the blood and pass
over them, and God did. It was what he required. It was
what he provided. He told them to get in the house,
to sprinkle the blood. He told them he would look, and
they trusted his word. And so then we read in 1 Corinthians
5, 7 that Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. So the
Lord Jesus Christ clearly, when he gathered his disciples together
at that last Passover supper, he's teaching them, this is me,
sacrificed for you. And God sees my blood and passes
over you. That's where your faith is. It's in what God sees. It's in
the blood. We read in Romans 3 verse 25
that we have faith in His blood. Christ is the propitiation for
our sins through faith in His blood. Our faith is in the blood
of Christ, the one who offered himself in blood. And so then
also after God delivered Israel from Egypt, he took them out
into the wilderness, and there he rained down bread from heaven. And every day they went out and
they gathered it up, and they ate the bread in the morning.
And the Lord Jesus came in John chapter 6 and he said to them,
This was the first beginning of that chapter. He was preaching
and teaching, and 5,000 men with all the women and children with
them were on the hillside there, and they had nothing to eat.
And so the Lord Jesus Christ asked his disciples, give them
something to eat. They said, we don't have anything.
And Andrew said, well, there is a lad with five barley loaves
and two fish, but what are they among so many? And he said, make
him sit down. And then he took the bread, and he took the fish,
and he broke it, and he gave that to his disciples, and he
told them, now you give it to the multitude, and they did.
And they all ate, and they all drank, and there was so much
left over that they gathered together 12 baskets so that nothing
was lost of all that he broke. And then immediately he goes
into the exposition in John 6 to teach the Jews and his own disciples,
I am the bread of life. I'm the bread from heaven. Your
fathers ate manna and they died, but I'm the living bread which
came down from heaven, which if a man eat, he shall never
die. And now we see him in the light
is shining on the Lord Jesus Christ as the spotlight of God's
spirit, a drawing attention to the eyes of his people, to him
who is the fullness of the Godhead in a body. Here gathered together
with his apostles, his 12, there in that upper room to eat the
last Passover, which he was. And I don't think they understood.
I'm confident they didn't at that point. And so we have the
fact that throughout that wilderness sojourn, God fed Israel on that
manna from heaven and that he delivered them from Egypt by
the Passover, the blood of the Passover lamb. So that all is
pointing to the lamb, pointing to the sacrifice, pointing to
the bread of God come down from heaven. And the Lord gave them
this bread until he brought them into Canaan. And there they had
abundance of everything. And so he teaches us that not
only are we delivered from our sin through the blood of the
Passover, not only are we given Christ and Him crucified to live
upon during the sojourner of our walk in this wilderness world
as we live by faith on Him who was sacrificed for us, But this
is the bread God gives us until we enter that inheritance, that
eternal inheritance. In fact, this is the bread which
purchased that inheritance for us. And so his disciples are
gathered with him in the room, and this is the setting. And
he takes the bread, this Passover bread, and he breaks it. And
he gives it to his disciples, and he tells them, Eat, this is my body broken for
you. And so we understand that unless
his body was broken, there's no manna. Unless his body is
broken, there's no Passover. Unless God sees the blood and
gives us manna from heaven through the broken body of the Lord Jesus
Christ, there's no life in us. And there's no hope of heaven.
There's no eternal inheritance. There's nothing to live upon
in this world because there is no life unless Christ is sacrificed
for us, unless his body is broken. And there he gives it to his
disciples. Now they're taking the bread, assuming this is just
Passover bread. No, he says, this is my body
broken for you. He's teaching them, I'm the Passover. I'm the bread from heaven. You
have to eat of me. Without eating me, you have no
life in you." And then he also took the cup. He was about to
go to Gethsemane. He was about to drink the cup
that God had prepared for him to the dregs. The cup of bearing
our sin and bearing the wrath of God because of our sins. He
would drink the cup of God's wrath to the dregs that we might
drink the cup of his blessing freely. the cup that would, in
his blood, that would fulfill all of the eternal covenant that
God had made with Christ for his people and all the conditions
necessary to give them that everlasting life and to forgive their sins. He would do that in his blood.
And so he takes that cup and he gives it to them. He says,
all of you take and drink this. This is the blood of the New
Testament. He, as the testator, the one
who made this last will and testament, is giving his blood to show them
the testament now is put into force. And he was giving it to
them as if it was already accomplished, and yet he had not yet gone to
the cross to accomplish it. It was certain, it was sure,
it was done. This was the will God gave him
to do when he came into the world. This is what the Apostle Paul
is about to teach the Corinthians. We read in 1 Corinthians chapter
11, he says, for I have received of the Lord that which I also
deliver to you. The apostle Paul was an apostle.
Christ gave this to him. He received it from Christ as
Christ's ambassador to deliver the message that Christ gave
to him as the ambassador of Christ, speaking to the Corinthians as
if God did beseech them through him as Christ's ambassador with
the message of Christ and him crucified. That's what the apostle
said. I have determined to know nothing
among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And so he
says it here. I have received of the Lord that
which I also deliver to 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 he said, take, eat. This is my body, which is broken
for you. This do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also, he
took the cup. When he had supped, saying, this
cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye as oft 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 come. Now you can see here the Corinthians
had been coming together and some had food and some had no
food and those who had it were eating it, not waiting for the
others and they were shaming those who had no food and they
were bringing shame on themselves for doing so. And the apostle
directs their attention to the one under the spotlight of God's
word, the Lord Jesus Christ. The one in whom all the fullness
of God is, because he is God, and he's God in that man, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Broken for you, do it in remembrance
of me. Drink this, this is the New Testament
in my blood. Do it in remembrance of me. As
often as you eat it, as often as you drink it, remember me.
That's what he's saying here. Remember me. And so he's speaking
to the church, not as an individual, but as a group, as a congregation,
as the body of Christ. He's teaching them to consider
one another in their taking and eating it. That they don't eat
and drink this by themselves, they eat it and drink it as a
body together. Wait for one another. He says
in verse 33, tarry one for another. So in verse 27, wherefore, whosoever
shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily
shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. What
does it mean to eat this unworthily? He says in verse 28, but let
a man examine himself, so let him eat of that bread and drink
of that cup. What does it mean to examine
ourselves? What are we looking for? For
he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation
to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. So he explains it. For this cause many are weak
and sickly among you, many sleep. In other words, died. For if
we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when
we are judged, we are chastened to the Lord that we should not
be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when
you come together to eat, tarry, wait for one another. And if
any man hunger, let him eat at home, that you come not together
to condemnation, and the rest will I set in order when I come."
There's a lot to be discussed here, isn't there? But I don't
want to lose the spotlight. And that's the whole point of
Scripture. If you honestly look at Scripture, it doesn't matter
where you go in Scripture, if you're honest in the light of
Scripture, when you consider yourself, you will be found guilty. And you will be condemned. And
you'll be proven, you'll be exposed as someone who is a sinner. Someone
who can bring nothing to God because God is holy. Someone
who is so enslaved to sin that you can't change your nature. Your nature is irredeemable. It has to be put to death. The
sin nature must die. But we can't put it to death.
And we have to be given a new nature, a new heart. And so the
Lord is teaching us here, when you come to the table, that the
Lord has prepared to take his body broken for you and to drink
the cup that was the New Testament in his blood and drinking it
in remembrance of him, that we must come honestly. We must come
as the Lord has declared us to be. In the eyes of the Lord,
in ourselves, what are we? Scripture convinces us of our
sin, doesn't it? But we have this sinful nature
that clings so tenaciously to some sense that we can be acceptable
to God by whatever we read and whatever He's commanded that
then we therefore come in that sinful attitude in the pride
of our heart thinking that what God has told us to do, we'll
do. and then God will accept this.
Or maybe, since we haven't done it yet, someday we'll be able
to do it. Or perhaps, even though we never
achieve that goal, God will look at our intentions and he'll say,
there he means well, and therefore I will accept him. But all of
those things are just the response of a person living as if looking
at a mirage. of a fictitious possibility of
becoming what they know God requires of them. This is called that
sinful mind, that carnal mind that's at enmity with God. It
took the Apostle Paul, a life lived as a Pharisee, always trying
to keep the law. In fact, he says, I did. I was blameless before the law.
But now, when he saw Christ, he said, but those things that
I considered gain, now they're dung. And I forsake everything
to be found in Christ, not having my own righteousness. So this
is the way that God comes to us. And as the disciples are
sitting around the table and listening to Jesus, and they're
telling him, he's telling them, first of all, one of you is going
to betray me this very night. And they wondered at that, this
betrayal. Why did the Lord Jesus Christ
do this at the same night he was to be betrayed. Why? Why
was it that the Lord Jesus Christ allowed Judas into the company
of the 12? He knew he was the son of perdition.
In John chapter 13, verse 18, he says that he was. He knew
that. Why did the Lord Jesus Christ
allow Judas to get as close to him as a friend so that his betrayal
would come as it were by surprise and cut deeply as one he trusted
as he had befriended him. Why did the Lord allow all that?
Well, many reasons. First and foremost, because he
would fulfill scripture. He says in a few places, he says, but that
the scripture might be fulfilled. The scripture had to be fulfilled.
So whenever the Lord Jesus Christ did this, he did it in order
that the scripture should be fulfilled. That was the first
reason. He says, in Psalm chapter 55, he says,
it was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it.
Neither was it he that hated me. that did magnify himself
against me, then I would have hid myself. The scribes and Pharisees
were enemies of Christ, but they were open enemies. But Judas,
he pretended, but it was thou, he speaks of Judas in Psalm 55,
13, but it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, mine acquaintance.
We took sweet counsel together. We walked to the house of God
in company. You see, that's the nature of
the betrayal and what it did to the Lord. And so the Lord
Jesus Christ, when he told them that one of them would betray
him, he says, I know whom I've chosen, but that the scripture
might be fulfilled, he that eats bread with me has lifted up his
heel against me. And so the first reason that
the Lord Jesus allowed Judas to get close to him and betray
him was in order that the scripture might be fulfilled. But why was
it God's will that by the betrayal of Judas, Christ would be turned
over to his enemies, that it would hurt so much? Well, first
of all, it was because he suffered for us, for our sins. And it
was us who betrayed God and forsook Him. We're separated by our sins,
but it wasn't God's fault. In Isaiah 59, he says, your iniquities
have separated between you and your God. In Isaiah 50, the first
couple of verses, he says to Israel, he says, where's the
bill of your mother's divorcement? I didn't write it. He says, where
are the creditors? Where are my creditors that I
sold you to in order to pay off my debts? I didn't do that. But
your iniquities have separated between you and your God. It's
your fault. See, the problem is with us.
The salvation is with the Lord Jesus Christ. So the second reason,
therefore, that the Lord Jesus experienced this betrayal on
this night was because he was suffering for our sins. And this
betrayal hurt him because our betrayal against God should have
brought a forsaking from God of us. And yet the Lord Jesus
himself was forsaken of God. He was betrayed by this man.
But as King David experienced the betrayal of his friends,
Ahithophel and his own son Absalom, and as King David also suffered
the cursing of Shimei, a servant of Saul, and in those cursings,
King David trusted in the Lord for his mercy. He said, he told
Abishai, no, you don't kill him, God sent him to curse. He sent
Shimei to curse. Let him curse. Who can tell if
God will be merciful and turn his cursing into a blessing? And that's the third reason,
see? Not only did the Lord Jesus Christ do this to fulfill scripture,
and that fulfillment of scripture would be to offer himself with
our sins and for our sins and to receive in his own person
the suffering our sins deserve from God, but in order to show
that in all of our sin, God viewed our sin as his enemy and he would
destroy our sins, he would turn our evil intent for the blessing
by his grace. Joseph told his brethren, you
sold me here. It was an evil intent. You meant
it for evil, but God meant it for good. And so he echoes this
in Acts 2.23. You by wicked hands have taken
and killed the Lord Jesus Christ, but it was according to the predetermined
will and counsel of God. that you should do so. And so
God turned the evil into good for his people. He works all
things together for good to them that love God, to those who are
the called according to his purpose. So that's the other reason. And
all of this was seen in the betrayal of Christ by Judas. It had to
come this way because it was all part of scripture, it was
all part of his sufferings, and it was all necessary for our
salvation. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
with the spotlight of all that he is and all that he would do
and all of his grace and his mercy to sinners there with his
disciples is taking the bread and saying, you see this bread?
This signifies the breaking of my body for you so that the bread
of heaven and life by that bread would be given to you. And that's why he mentions it
here, the apostle. That same night he was betrayed,
he took the bread. And notice in verse 24 of 1 Corinthians
11. And when he had given thanks,
so not only did Christ take the bread and break it, before he
broke it, he gave thanks. And don't miss that. I love that.
I love that. He gave thanks to his father.
Thank you, Father, for giving me your will to do to break my
body for the salvation of my people. That's what he's saying
here, isn't it? When he broke the bread on the
hillside to feed the 5,000 with the women and children, he thanked
his father and then he broke the bread and he broke the fish
and gave it to his disciples. And so the Lord Jesus, he thanks
his father Thank you. He's worshipping his God and
his Father that he would allow him as a servant of Jehovah to
give himself for the life of his people. Breaking his bread,
his body. And then he says here in 1 Corinthians,
he says, now you take it and eat it. This is my body which
is broken for you. how I long so many times as I've
read this in my life, I want to say, with the gift of God,
that this is for me. Have you ever thought that? Have
you ever considered that? Lord, I want to be able to come
to you in prayer and say, this body that you broke was broken
for me. How can I say that? How can I
say that God, the Lord Jesus Christ, broke his body for me
and take it and eat it and believe it? Isn't it presumptuous? Why are we reluctant to believe
that? Well, I think it's because of
who we are, isn't it? Every time we think, well, what's
necessary for me to get over this hump? to get beyond this
point where I can actually say, Lord, your body was broken for
me and come to him in the honesty of his word and his spirit and
say, it's for me. What's going to get me beyond
this point? And we begin to, well, I know that I haven't given
myself to whatever as I ought to, to prayer and to reading
and meditation and exhortation, whatever it is. I keep falling
short, so I never have that confidence. And that's nothing more than
looking for a reason in myself, is it? We don't look for the
evidence of grace before we come in confidence to Christ or to
God through Him. If we were to do that, we would
be looking for the effects of God's grace instead of the cause
of His grace. What is the cause? Well, it's
His own will. It's Christ's work. It's Christ's
body broken. You see, the only thing we can
ever find in ourselves is sin, if we're honest with God in Scripture.
If you look for something else, you'll be blinded by your pride
if you find it. If you find something within
yourself, first, you've looked in the wrong place, and secondly,
you're deluded. You're deceived, because finding
some reason for confidence in yourself is finding the cause
for grace in yourself, and that can never be. You can never come
to God Having confidence in your confidence, that's circular.
That's faith in your faith. It's looking for a cause in yourself
for God to give himself in love for you. You can never earn God. You can never earn the gift of
his son. You can never earn Christ's love.
You can earn nothing from God. And besides that, think about
it. When you heard the gospel, you weren't looking for the truth
of the gospel. The truth of the gospel always
comes to us when we're blind in our understanding because
of our sin, when we're dead in our sins, when we're not seeking
God, as according to Romans 3, there's none that seeketh after
God, when we have no righteousness. In fact, when we have no strength,
when we were without strength, then Christ died for the ungodly. And God commended his love towards
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
And when we were enemies, God reconciled us to himself through
the death of his son. Even when we were dead in sins,
for His great mercy and His great love were with He loved us, He
quickened us together with Christ. Grace always finds us as sinners. And so we come to God only as
sinners in ourselves. And then, with the grace of God
from Scripture, we have the warrant of Scripture that Christ Jesus
came into the world to save who? Sinners. In 1 Samuel 25, verse
25, Abigail says her husband, Nabal, had that name because
he was a foolish man. As is his name, so is he. Foolish,
Nabal, that's what his name is, and so he is, a fool. And we
say, well, if the Lord would just give me a name, I could
tell me my name is there in the Lamb's Book of Life. He has. He's given you the name of everyone
in the Lamb's Book of Life. Jesus Christ was given by God. He says in John 3.16, for God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. And the
world there means all those so named by God according to their
nature. Sinners by nature, sinners by
practice, ignorant, blind, foolish. They wear the name of their character. And that's the name God describes.
He gives us the name of His elect. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, the ungodly, the enemies of God, those who
had no strength, those who were undeserving and ill-deserving,
and the Lord Jesus Christ came for them. The only warrant we
have to take Christ's body as broken for us is that we are
described by his word as sinners. We don't bring anything. And
our sin is to our shame. It doesn't bolster up our confidence. It withers us, it cuts us and
humbles us and makes us nothing before God. It plants our face
in the dust and we say, I have nothing. God, be merciful to
me, the sinner, you see. That's what the gospel does to
us. It brings us low in order that
we might see Christ as our all. And so we come to Him, we say,
God has done this. God offered His Son. God received
His Son. God saw the blood. And God gave
that bread broken, Christ Himself broken for sinners. That's me. And even though my faith has
unbelief mixed in it, I'm looking to Him as all of my faithfulness
before God. And though I have no righteousness
of my own, Christ is my... Because when Jesus Christ comes
and he's sitting with his disciples in that room and the spotlight
is shining on him, all of the faith and all of the repentance
and all of the worthiness is found in him. And we are simply
recipients as those who have no life unless he gives his body
for us and thanks God for it and offers himself for us in
worship for our salvation, broken for me. And he says, do this in remembrance
of me. Remember him. In all of your
coming to God, don't think of anyone else. Remember Christ.
In all of the You're trying to work up some, can I come to the
Lord in my current condition? I'm such a wretched sinner. I've
committed this sin over and over again and I don't seem to have
any power of it. That's when you come. Come. Remember Him. Remember Him to
God. And it says in Isaiah 43, put
me in remembrance. Of what? Of Christ. Lord, cause
me to remember you, you see? This is coming to him for the
grace to do what he's told us to do, and without him we can
do nothing. So Lord, cause me to remember
you. Help me to see that all that God has for his people who
are themselves nothing but sin is in the Lord Jesus Christ,
and in him, in the fullness of God. Nothing can be added to
Him that's in God because the fullness of the Godhead is in
Him bodily. And you are complete in Him. That's what He's saying. Remember
me. Remember me to God. Remember me to your conscience.
Remember me when you gather together with the body of Christ. Remember
me. My body broken, my blood, which
is the New Testament for you made in my own death. That's
what he's saying. Remember me. Remember me in the
sweetness when you saw how compassion towards you as a blind and helpless
and wounded and broken and lame and dead sinner came to you and
you saw, oh, I see, it's not about me. It's what God thinks
of him. That's what it is. God has provided
him and Christ took that bread and broke it in thanks because
he's the fountain of living water. The fountain opened for sin and
for uncleanness, and as the fountain, he is only satisfied when he
gives himself for those who are utterly deprived of any water
and any bread. And he gives himself to them,
and then the fountain reaches the one who is utterly empty,
and he's glorified. He's glorified. Faith looks to
Christ. Christ tells us to look to him. Looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith, look unto me and be ye saved, all
the ends of the earth. Behold, mine elect. We see Jesus,
that's what he's saying here, look to him, come to him, call
on him, cry to him, but how shall they come to him whom they have
not heard? How shall they call on him of
whom they have not heard or have not believed? And how shall they
believe if they haven't heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? How shall they preach except they be sent? Lord, send
a preacher, cause me to hear the gospel. of your broken body
and your shed blood for sinners. By the will of God, to the glory
of God, for their eternal salvation, cause me to hear it and believe
it. Lord, give it to me." So we come to him. And he that comes
to me, the Lord says, I will in no wise cast out. I came down
from heaven to do the will of my father, and this is the will
of him that sent me. Everyone who seeth the Son and
believeth on him has eternal life. And I'll raise him up at
the last day. Take this. It's broken for you. Do it in remembrance of me. But
what about this part here? He says, whosoever shall Eat
this bread and drink this cup of the Lord. Unworthily shall
be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine
himself, so let him eat that bread and drink of that cup.
You see, what he's saying here is what he says later on. He
says, examine yourselves whether you be in the faith or not. Know ye not that Christ is in
you, except you be reprobate? And that's found in 2 Corinthians
13, I believe. I'm trying to find it in my notes,
and I'm going from, yeah, it's 13, verse five, I think. Yes.
2 Corinthians 13, verse five. Examine yourselves whether you
be in the faith. Prove your own selves, know you
not of your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you, except
you be reprobates. You see, the examination we perform
is the examination of the light of God's word, the gospel. And
what does the gospel find us? The gospel proves us to be sinners,
doesn't it? And you never rise above that,
not in yourself. The gospel tells you you need
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet it also tells
us that faith must come from Him. The gospel says there's
no life in you, but the life is in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The gospel says that there's no righteousness in you, but
in Christ is the fulfillment of all righteousness. The gospel
says Christ came into the world to save sinners. But if we don't
understand these things, then we're going to come some other
way. We're going to go the broad way that leads to destruction. We're going to come like those
who are told, well, if you eat this bread and drink this cup,
That's eating and drinking Christ, and so you have heaven. And people will be dying, and
they'll bring in a priest, and they'll say, can you give me
some of this bread and this wine so that I won't sin anymore after
I've taken that, and we'll be all good to go. I mean, after
I eat that and drink that, as long as I don't sin anymore for
a while, until I take it the next time, things are OK. You
see, this is all so wrong, so horribly wrong. Eating and drinking,
eating Christ is not a physical activity. It's a heart action. And it's taking what He said
concerning what He did in His sacrifice of Himself by faith,
by God-given heart faith in Christ crucified, and trusting only
Him as all of my acceptance before God. You see, if Christ is all,
and He has given us this boldness to come to Him, and to come by
His blood to God, even in His holiness, then I don't need anything
else. If you have anything else, then
you're not coming. If you trust something else,
or something in addition to Christ, that's not coming by Christ.
You can't have faith plus works. It's either faith alone, or it's
works alone. Because God gives grace only
through faith, not through works. It's either by grace or it's
by works, and not the two. The two won't mix. You either
come by Christ alone or you come by yourself. And if you come
by yourself, then you're without life and naked before God. And
that's what it means to examine yourselves. I was told, and I
believed it. Well, now you need to make sure
that you're living appropriately. Because if you're not, you know
who you are. You don't be taking it this week.
Wait until you come back and you're doing better. You know
that kind of talk? That's the talk of religious
nonsense. When sinners came to Christ,
they didn't wash first. They didn't remove their sin
before they came because they couldn't. There's only one fountain
that washes us from our sin is Christ. So that's what that's
talking about. What about this next part? He
says, if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But
when we are judged, we are chastened to the Lord that we should not
be condemned with the world. Now, in this count, I want to
just quickly refer you to 1 Peter chapter 4. In 1 Peter chapter
4, He says this about judging. He says in verse 6, for this
cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead. That's
interesting. That sounds like Ezekiel 37. God told Ezekiel, now you see
these dry bones in this valley? I want you to speak to those
bones. And you command those bones to get up, you know, move
around and live. And Ezekiel, so, okay, so he
preaches to the dry bones. And the Spirit of God came upon
those bones, and they were brought together bone to bone. And he
preached again, and then flesh came, and they stood up a whole
army. That's what this sounds like,
doesn't it? For this cause was the gospel preached also to them
that are dead. That's us. That they might be
judged according to man in the flesh, or to men in the flesh,
but live according to God in the Spirit. What he's saying
here is that when the gospel comes to us, it's God's sending
it through men that he might judge us by that gospel, we're
dead, that we might live according to God in the Spirit. And that's
what the gospel does. It finds us to be in ourselves
nothing. and directs us to Christ in order that in embracing Christ,
what are we doing? We're glorifying God, we're giving
credit to Him for His truth and His righteousness because this
is the only way. God chose to glorify Himself
in the salvation of His people according to strict holiness
and justice is by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel
always comes to us and causes us to judge ourselves unworthy.
to judge ourselves, I can't take this because of what I am. There's
no reason in me. That's true. The reason is found
in God's Son. And so this is what it means
to be judged to the Lord. And so he closes with this, now
wait for one another when you come. Wait for one another because
the Lord has one body and those people all eat and drink of the
same sacrifice. This is our life. Christ is our
all. And we preach this to one another.
When we preach this, he says here in verse 26, for as often
as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show, and it
really means declare as preaching, the Lord's death till he come.
Each one of us, when we take that bread, And we eat it as
Christ's broken body given to us. Not because in eating that
we're actually taking of his body, but we're doing it to signify
what's going on in the inside. That by faith that God has given
to us, we're looking only to Christ. We're coming only to
him. And we're trusting him alone, and we don't have anything else
that we can hope in. And we take comfort not in our
sin or not in our righteousness, but in Christ's sacrifice for
us by the will of God. And so we're proclaiming that.
We're declaring, this is all my hope, that Christ is my acceptance
before God. He's the Passover. He's my manna,
the bread from heaven, the bread of life. And in the soul of a
believer, there's this constant feeding upon Christ. You know what food is like. If
you go without it for a while, you get hungry. And if you don't
eat, you end up getting so hungry that you're weak and die. And
a believer gets weak and gets hungry and dies if they don't
have Christ. And by faith, going out to him
and coming to God and asking him, Lord, receive me for Christ's
sake, give me more of him. And the same thing with a cup.
A thirsty sinner has nothing to drink and we can't go without
water very long. Christ is the water. He says,
whoever thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. And out of
his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Because the Lord
Jesus Christ is the fountain of living water. And he gives
his spirit that we might see in him. We have life because
he shed his blood for us. Everything comes to us by faith
in his blood. And so what we do outwardly is
a remembrance. It's a calling to, it's a preaching
of the gospel. It's calling to remembrance in
doing this, what he said to his disciples and says to us. You
take of me by faith, drink of me by faith. My blood is the
New Testament. It was finished for you, broken
for you. This is all your salvation. And
we say, amen. Amen. This is it. This is all
of it. And we're so thankful, aren't we? All right, let's pray. Father, thank you for your word.
Thank you for the gospel, for the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior.
We trust him. We find no reason in ourselves
for any confidence. We find all reason, every reason,
for full confidence and full assurance of faith in him. What
a blessing it is to have your word to tell us to come to you
just as we are, and to look to Christ, though we are sinners
in ourselves. To him who is the fountain open
for sin and for uncleanness, to him who is the bread of God
from heaven, the Passover sacrifice for us, give us, we pray, the
Lord Jesus Christ, with all the grace that he has, and give us
this faith to trust him. Help us to do what we do to preach
him. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.