Okay, Matthew chapter 26, beginning
at verse 26. As they were eating, Jesus took
bread, and blessed it, and break it, and gave it to the disciples,
and said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he took the cup,
and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all
of it. In other words, all of you, drink
it. For this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed
for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will
drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine. I will not drink
henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink
it new with you in my Father's kingdom. And when they had sung
a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives. Now, in 1 Corinthians
chapter 11, if you want to turn there, Paul follows very closely
to the account Luke gave in the gospel according to Luke. And so we will actually follow
along the account given in 1 Corinthians 11, beginning of verse 23 to
the end of the chapter, verse 33. 1 Corinthians 11, beginning
in verse 23. Paul writes to the Corinthians,
there was problems in the Church of Corinthians where people were
coming to the Lord's table. They were just coming and eating
and not waiting and getting drunk and it was a terrible thing they
were doing and Paul is correcting that and he gives them the instruction
here. He says, For I have received
of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you. that the
Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread. And when He had given thanks,
He broke it and said, Take, eat, this is My body which is broken
for you. 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 often as ye 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. Wherefore, 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, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that
cup. For he that eateth and drinketh
unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning
the Lord's body. For this cause, many are weak
and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge
ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are
chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with
the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when
you come together to eat, tarry one for another." That means
wait for one another. We're going to pause there. And we're gonna go through these
verses here a little at a time. I just want you to see this.
It says in the very beginning here, in verse 23 of 1 Corinthians
chapter 11, Paul says, for I have received of the Lord that which
I also delivered unto you. Paul was an ambassador of Jesus
Christ. He was an apostle, someone Christ
sent. That's what apostle means, someone
sent. He was an ambassador as an ambassador is to a king. King
has an ambassador. He sends the ambassador to the
people designated by the king to take the message of the king
to those people. And so Paul was sent by Christ
with a message. That message was the gospel.
And he was sent to preach the gospel. That was a message. He
said in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 2, he says, I've determined not
to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And in 1 Corinthians 1.17, Paul
said, For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the
gospel." The message the King, Christ, gave to Paul was the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And so Paul
is a faithful messenger. And there's nothing that we want
more than a faithful messenger. If the one who is sent by Christ
simply tells us what the Lord said, that's a faithful messenger. And so he says, This is what
he says, "...that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was
betrayed, took bread." Now, the same night He was betrayed, we
read about that, and sometimes we read through the Gospels,
especially toward the end, and we see what's happening there
with Judas, with Peter, with the others. and John, and the
high priests, and all these things, and Pilate, and we get caught
up in those characters. But we should always remember
that the account is given to us to teach us about the Lord
Jesus Christ. So here, when he says, that same
night that he was betrayed, he's showing us, first of all, that
though he was betrayed by a friend, yet he loved his friends to the
end, with a love greater than which there is none." The Lord
Jesus Christ, in the dark backdrop of Judas' betrayal, He loves
His people with a love that doesn't fail. And that endears us to
Him all the more when we see what He's done for us. He gave
his back according to Isaiah 50 verse 6. He gave his back
to the smiters. He gave his face to them that
pluck off the hair and the beard. He suffered because he was betrayed
by a friend. We think about that. We think,
well how could the Lord Jesus who knew all things... allowed
Judas, or even called Judas his friend, since he knew he was
a son of perdition, and he knew he was going to betray him, he
knew his end, he knew that one day he would suffer for that
great sin, an indescribable suffering. How could the Lord Jesus befriend
this man? And that's a mystery, isn't it?
You can't explain everything in the Bible, but it's true.
And I believe that this was part of the Lord's sufferings. We
might ask the same question. Well, why did Jesus give Himself
into the hands of His enemies? Why was He even born into this
world and suffer anything at all? He knew it was going to
cost Him this pain, this suffering, this betrayal, and the forsaking
of friends and family and His own God. Because it shows us
that knowing what was going to come upon him, and he even told
Judas, we saw last week in John 13, go do quickly what you're
going to do. that He actually gave Himself
to suffer for us, and He allowed Himself to entrust to Judas things
that He would only entrust to friends, and He actually, it
says in Psalm 55 and Psalm 41 and Psalm 109, all these other
Psalms about Judas and Jesus, it shows that He actually suffered
because of that. Ahithophel was the counselor
to David. But when Absalom came in and
overthrew Jerusalem, Absalom, David's son, Ahithophel, David's
trusted counselor, betrayed David. He gave his wisdom to Absalom,
David's son, his enemy. And so that was like Judas betraying
Jesus, that was actually a foreshadowing of that. And Absalom was loved
by David, and yet Absalom, his own son, turned away from him
and caused David great grief. David cried out, Absalom, oh
my son, Absalom, Absalom, would to God I had died instead of
thee, oh Absalom, my son, my son. So the Lord Jesus allowed
Judas to become close to Him. It says in Psalm 55 that He went
to accompany with Him to the house of God. That He took sweet
counsel together with Judas. So we see in all these things,
even though it's a mystery to us, how the Lord could know in
advance what was going to come upon Him. Yet He allowed Himself
to suffer the betrayal of a friend in order to show us what He had
He had to give to save us from our sins. You see in all this
how the Lord endears Himself to us that He would suffer this
punishment, the betrayal of a friend. He says in one of those Psalms,
I can't remember which one, if it had been an enemy who had
done this to me, I could have endured it, but my own trusted
friend. And so we see that. And so that's
one of the things I see in that is that though he was betrayed
by a friend, yet he loved his friends to the end with a love
that's greater than any other love that could possibly be imagined. And though he knew all things,
yet he gave himself to become the friend of Judas in order
that his betrayal might be all the more a suffering. Because
it was ordained by Scripture. God said in Scripture, this is
what's going to happen. When Jesus did these things,
He was doing it in order to fulfill Scripture. So that's a couple
of things there. The Lord knows what's going to
happen. He did it all to the will of God to fulfill Scripture.
He actively, mentally, and with His words and with His actions,
He went about to do the will of God, fulfilling all of Scripture
when He did it. And that was one part He had
to fulfill. Because it was God's will that He suffer. And He gave
Himself to that. It was a willing, involuntary
obedience to God in His will. But also, you see here that the
Lord turned the betrayal of Judas into a blessing. And this is
the amazing thing about God's grace. He takes the evil intent
of Judas, the evil intent of the chief priests, and the elders,
and the scribes, and the Pharisees. Just like Joseph's brothers,
their evil intent, casting him into a pit, selling him to slavery,
and then him rising to power according to the will of God
in order to save those who betrayed him. Who turned him over to his
enemies. And so the Lord turns the curse
into a blessing for His people. Remember King David's words and
his life was a prophecy of the life and the words of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Remember Shimei was sent to curse
David and David told this soldier who wanted to go out and kill
Shimei for that. David said, no. The Lord sent
him to curse me. And if the Lord sent him to curse,
maybe the Lord will turn his curse into a blessing. So we
see that. Judas' betrayal of Christ was
the means by which Christ was delivered into the hands of his
enemies and suffer in order to save us from our sins. And so,
again, we see all of that. We see that in the sufferings
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The obedience. His obedience
to death. And how God turned His betrayal and His sufferings,
which His enemies meant for His ruin and His destruction. He
turned it into our everlasting salvation. And so many things
we could talk about this betrayal of Judas, but he does say this
here in 1 Corinthians 11, that was the same night in which he
was betrayed, it calls to our mind what the Lord suffered for
us, how His love was faithful even though the love of all others
was unfaithful, even this man who betrayed Him. How could Judas
sit there at the table and take this from his hand, spend all
these years with him, and still stab him in the back, as it were,
and go out and betray him? Because sin is in our heart by
nature, and unless the Lord keeps us from it, we do the same thing.
Then it says here in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, that it says, he
took bread. The Lord Jesus, he took bread.
Now, they were there eating the Passover. You know what the Passover
was. It was that sign, it was that
event actually, that they observed the Passover to remember the
event when God delivered Israel from Egypt. When God gave them
the lamb and said, take the lamb, kill it, sprinkle his blood on
the doorposts above and on the side, and then inside the same
house where the blood is sprinkled, eat that lamb roasted with fire.
and eat with it unleavened bread." And so they did that. They ate
the unleavened bread and they ate the lamb. And this night,
the Lord Jesus Himself actually, with His disciples, ate the Passover. And it was the last Passover. The last valid observance of
the Passover feast in all of history. The same night that
he ate the Passover, he was taken as the Passover Lamb, 1 Corinthians
5-7, Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. But the Lord
also does a transition here at night when the stars are shining
and the night progresses. It gives a transition from the
night time to the morning so that the stars fade and the moon
fades into the light of the rising sun. And that's what happened
with the Passover. The Passover was given by God
for those centuries. And then it faded like the stars
at night fade away when the sun begins to rise. Because now the
Lord replaces the Passover with the Lord's Table. The Passover
was for the nation of Israel. The Lord's Table is for all of
the Church of God, Jews and Gentiles. The Passover was to celebrate,
or was to deliver Israel out of Egypt, out of the bondage
of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. and to bring them into the land.
And that pictures our salvation, doesn't it? Christ, our Passover,
sacrificed for us. He redeems us out of the hand
of Satan and from our enemies who hold us in bondage, our sin
and God's law. And He delivers us into the land,
the eternal rest of our salvation in Christ. All because of the
Passover. But here the Lord gives His own
body and blood and He replaces that with this. And so the transition
here is given to the church. And it wasn't given to the disciples
only who were there present at that time. Those twelve disciples
were not the only ones to whom the Lord broke His body and shed
His blood and gave it to them. It was for all of those who believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the next thing he says
here, it was on that same night when he took that bread. And
it says, 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. When he had given thanks, Notice
who is doing the action in this account. The Lord Jesus Christ
Himself. Supper is ended, the Passover
is now over. The eating of the roasted lamb,
the eating of that unleavened bread for the Passover is now
over. And then, after that, He takes the bread, this unleavened
bread, and He breaks it. He took the bread. When He took
the bread, He blessed the bread and He gave thanks for the bread.
He gave thanks to His Father. And when He gave thanks to His
Father, He was asking His Father to take not just this physical
bread, but His own body, which would be broken, and bless it
to His people. So that the reason for which
He died would be for their salvation. That would come to fulfillment.
That God would give them, for His broken body would give them
the salvation that He would obtain by it. that God Himself. And He thanked His Father. Remember
what it says in Psalm 40 and Hebrews chapter 10? A body has
thou prepared me. God the Father prepared His Son
a body so that His Son could fulfill the will He gave Him
to do. I come to do thy will, O God. Thy law is within my heart. And
so when the Lord Jesus takes the bread, He blesses it and
He thanks His Father. That His Father would give Him
a body so that He might break that body. And in breaking that
body actually save His people. He says He took it, He blessed
it, He gave thanks for it, and He broke it. His life wasn't taken from him.
He gave his life. He laid it down. The soldiers
who came with Judas in that company, they demanded, they came for
him with torches and lanterns and swords. And he said, Whom
seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth.
And he said, I am. And they immediately went backward
and fell down. Judas with the company. He had
power over the soldiers. He demonstrated His power over
them when they came to take Him. He was giving Himself. He gave
Himself for us. He gave Himself for our sins.
He gave Himself to redeem us from all iniquity. The words,
He gave Himself, are used over and over in the New Testament,
because He gave Himself. He broke His own body. He laid
His own life down. How did the Lord break His body?
And why did He have to break His body? Because it was in a
human soul and body that we sinned. And so God had to. It says in
Leviticus 17 verse 11 that the life of the flesh is in the blood. And the blood couldn't be shed
unless the body was broken. Look at Psalm chapter 38. Over and over in scripture, the
Lord refers to His body suffering because of our sins. He says
in Psalm 38, this is an account of the Lord Jesus Himself praying. It was spoken by David by the
Spirit of God in prophecy, but it was fulfilled when the Lord
Jesus prayed it in His own heart. Verse 1, O Lord, he prays to
his father, rebuke me not in thy wrath. He's speaking now
as the mediator. Under the wrath of God as our
substitute. He says, "...neither chasten
me in thy hot displeasure, for thine arrows stick fast in me,
and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness..." Where?
"...in my flesh, because of thine anger. Neither is there any rest
in my bones, because of my sin." Now, he calls He says, He says,
My sin. But the Lord never sinned. His
mind, His thoughts, His words, His actions were as pure as God
in heaven. He had no sin. His body and His
human body and His soul were created by the Spirit of God
and indwelt by the Spirit of God without measure. There was
no sin in Him. And yet he says, my sin. Why?
Because he was made sin. And he owned that sin. He was
made by God. God hath made him to be sin for
us. 2 Corinthians 5.21. That's the
mystery, isn't it? How could the one who is Nothing
but holy be made my sin, which is unholy." Verse 4, he cries
out in agony. For mine iniquities are gone
over mine head as a heavy burden. They are too heavy for me. My
wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I
am troubled. I am bowed down greatly. I go
mourning all the day. For my loins are filled with
a loathsome disease. Only a body can suffer disease. And there is no soundness in
my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken. I have roared by reason of the
disquietness of my heart." You see how his body was broken?
I am broken. His body had to, he had to be
pressed in his soul by the weight of our sin and the guilt before
God and the shame of our sin. And all that, we can't even imagine
what that is like. We have some inkling of it as
sinners when our conscience afflicts us. But to think of the Son of
God who knew no sin, who was made sin for us, that is incomprehensible. experience we can never really
fathom. But here the Lord says, He took
the bread, He blessed it, He gave thanks for it, and He'd
break it. And this is what He says in verse 24. He says, Take,
eat, this is my body which is broken for you. this do in remembrance
of me." This is my body, which is broken for you. It's my body. It was the body of the Lord of
glory given to him. It was a holy body. The body
of the one who is God. The body of the one who is man.
Who in himself is our mediator. And is broken. Broken for you. When we read this, it's imperative that we take
these words into our own soul, by the grace, by the Spirit of
God, by His grace, and we hear these words as if the Lord Jesus
Christ was giving us that bread into our hand, from His hand,
and says, take, eat, This is my body which is broken for you."
I can't believe it, can you? His body broken for me? Who am I? I am a sinner. That the Lord would break His
body? What does that mean about my sin? I couldn't deserve the
Lord of Glory breaking His body for me, could I? Doesn't it speak of the dreadfulness
of my sin and the incomprehensible, immeasurable grace of God that
He would say, this is my body broken for you? I look for reason
in myself and I find none why he would break his body for me.
In fact, it's for the very reason that I look for reason in myself
that I doubt it could be for me. Don't you think that? How
could it be for me? I'm a sinner. The law demands
that I keep all of the law, all of the time, perfectly. And yet
I break all of the law, all of the time. I'm nothing but sin. I have no... I have every reason
to expect God's judgment. And God would be just in punishing
me for my sins. There's only one reason He wouldn't.
That's if He found a reason in Himself. And provided a reason
for Himself. And satisfied His own reasons.
And magnified His own glory in doing it. For me? I can't find a reason
in me. And if I were to look, it would
be a sin. I can't expect to find a reason
in me. No, the reason has to come from
His heart. And this is what He's doing here.
The entire account here is drawing the focus of our attention to
the Lord Himself. He takes the bread. He blesses
it. He gives thanks. He breaks it.
He gives it. And then He says, you take it.
You eat it. It's for you. My body, broken,
for you. For me. Don't you want that to
be Don't you, would you, is there anything else that you could
desire in time or eternity? In all of your life, through
all of the difficulties and the troubles of your life? If everything
were as bad as it could be, if the Lord said this to you, wouldn't
it sustain you? This is my body, broken for you. And yet this is exactly what
the gospel is, isn't it? This is exactly what the gospel
is. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. This is the gospel. Christ died for our sins according
to the scriptures. For our sins. That's why his
body was broken. The only ones who can find any
comfort in those words are sinners. I mean those who have nothing. to claim but their sin and their
guilt before God. If God looks to me to find a
reason in me to save me, I will never be saved. If He even makes
my salvation conditioned on me in the smallest way, even for
a moment, I cannot be saved. And if my assurance of salvation,
if taking these words of Christ and taking them into my own bosom,
if my assurance of salvation depends on something I find in
myself, I will never be assured of my salvation. I will forever
be in trembling, fearful, trepidation and doubt. Don't you find it
so? Don't you find that every time
you want to take the words of Christ and say, those are mine.
He spoke that to me. There's a reason for doubt. There's
always a reason for doubt, isn't there? There's only two reasons
why we would think that. Number one, we think that the
Lord has to look to us for something, to find a reason. to give us
that assurance or to say that these words are ours. But we'll
never find it there. We'll never find it. I don't
care if we live a hundred lifetimes and we live it as a believer.
We'll never find the reason in ourselves for that assurance.
Don't you find it in your experience? Every time you begin to think
that you can find that cause in yourself, you find that that
was another dark, empty... a cavern. You went down that
path and there was nothing there. And you come back and you say,
again, again, the Lord teaches me I'm nothing but sin. Or we
might say that the reason I doubt it is because I don't know if
the Lord is willing to save me. Is it God's will? Am I one of
God's elect? Did the Lord Jesus Christ actually
die for me? Did the Spirit of God actually
give me birthed me as a child of God. Did He give me life in
my soul? Don't you doubt those things? It's either something
in me or I doubt something in Him. But turn to 1 Timothy. I want you to see this. What if I could tell you, what
if I told you, hold your hand at 1 Timothy and turn back to
1 Samuel. What if I told you that if I
could show you, in Scripture, your name written there, that
the Lord wrote your name there and said that the Lord Jesus
Christ came for you to die and save you. Would that give you
comfort? Would that assure your heart
before Him? Look at 1 Samuel chapter 25. This is the way that
God uses names in Scripture. And he says in 1 Samuel 25, Abigail speaks to King David.
Abigail was the wife of Nabal, who had treated David and his
men so rudely. In verse 25, let not my Lord,
Abigail says to David, I pray thee, regard this man of Belial,
which is a man of the devil, even Nabal. Verse 25, 1 Samuel
25. Let not my Lord, I pray thee,
regard this man of Belial, even Nabal. Listen carefully. For
as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and Folly
is with him. You see that? The name of a man
is who he is. What his name is, that's how
he is. If his name is Nabal, then folly is with him because
he's a fool. Look at 1 Timothy 1. Here is
God's promise. Here is the gospel in a single
sentence. Verse 15. This is a faithful
saying, and worthy of all acceptation,
that Christ Jesus came into the world To save sinners. That's my name. Sinner is my
name because sin is with me all the time. But what does this
say? This is the gospel. Why did Christ
Jesus come into the world? To save sinners. Now we might
think, well, but you don't know how bad my sin is. I do the same
sins all the time. and I don't have any power over
them, and I know that they're wrong. What do I do? What do I do? It's like I have
to go back as if I'm a lost, unconverted man and throw myself
at the feet of Christ and say, God have mercy on me, the sinner. I've never been, I've never been
what I ought to be. And I don't think I'll ever be.
I have no reason to be able to come to you. Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners. And Paul says, of whom I am chief. I'm the chief and he came to
save sinners like me. He came to save sinners. This
is his name. This is who he is, a sinner. And that's the only, that's where
you find your name. Do you find your name written
there? James 2.10 says, if we've broken the law at one point,
we've broken it all. Have you broken the law at one
point? Or have you broken it all? Jesus Christ came into the
world to save sinners. This is my body broken for you. Is there anything there that
would prevent you from finding a reason? God describes the character
of those He saves right there in that promise. to save sinners. Do you know
that if I find myself to be the chief of sinners, it doesn't
give me any comfort? It doesn't give me any comfort
to be found to be a sinner. There's no merit in being the
chief of sinners. If a criminal in court says,
I did it, I did it, I'm guilty, what do they do? I'm glad you
admitted it, now you can go free. No, not at all. Now that you've
admitted it, all you do is validate the sentence we're about to give
you. And they send you out, and they put you in jail. They would
do whatever the law requires to sinners. So there's no comfort
in it, there's no merit in it, and there's no reason. I don't
take comfort in being helplessly unable, powerless against my
sin. And I don't use it as an excuse
to go on sinning. I'm glad I'm a sinner. Now I
can just do all the sin I want because I'm just a sinner. I
can do whatever I want. No, it doesn't. It gives me no pleasure
to be a sinner. I sin far more than I can tolerate. That's the reason it bothers
me. Because God has given me a nature
that finds sin loathsome in every way. But this text teaches me
That I cannot and will not accept, I cannot and will not believe
the gospel unless it's all of grace. Doesn't it? In Galatians
3, 21 to 24, it says that God gave us the law in order to shut
us up under sin. Until Christ came. until He gave
us faith in Him. He kept us in a prison of our
unbelief, a prison in our sin, a self-made prison, by the way,
because the law kept us in by saying, do this and live. I can't. Well, then you have to die. Not
one blessing for me, no, not one. A failure in every way. But then we find that in this,
this verse, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
we know that if He saves, it must be for what He finds in
another. He must find our salvation in
Christ, our Redeemer, our Substitute, our Ransom, our Surety. He found
one. Is it possible that God could
find someone who could actually keep His law? And not only keep
it from the heart in all of his life, but could it also bear
my sin away from me, and bear the punishment of it under the
curse of God? Is that possible? Would God do
that? If He did, It would be for His
glory. He'd have to do it for His glory.
And that's what the Lord Jesus is saying here. Take, eat, this
is my body broken for you. He's the one. God found Him.
And in finding Him, He found an acceptable substitute for
His people. And He accepted Him. He provided
Him. And when the Lord gave His body
broken for us, He received it for us. He received it for us. And then He goes on in 1 Corinthians
11. He says, do this in remembrance of Me. When the Lord gives us
His body broken for us, there's two reasons that He gives us
here. The first one is this, do it in remembrance of Me. Remember
Me. That's what the scripture is
intended to do for us. It's a scaffolding. Everything in scripture, all
the history, all the laws, all the sacrifices, all the prophecies,
all the parables, all the healings and the miracles, they're simply
a scaffolding upon which the Lord Jesus Christ is lifted up
to the eyes of sinners. He says, this is my body broken
for you and we see our Lord. He says, remember me. Remember
me. Take it, eat it, remember me. It's broken for you. Take it
to yourself. Know that it's for you. And then
in verse 25 he says, after the same manner also he took the
cup when he had supped, after the Passover, saying, this cup... is the New Testament in my blood,
this do ye as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me." The
cup. He took the cup. What was in
the cup? There was wine in the cup. And when he took that cup,
he held it up and he says, this cup, not the cup itself, but
the contents of the cup, this cup, the wine in the cup, is
the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you. What is the New Testament? The
New Testament is the everlasting covenant. It's called the New
Testament, but it's older than the Old Testament. It was established
from eternity. Hebrews chapter 13 verse 20 says,
Now the God of peace brought again
from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of
the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.
He calls it an everlasting covenant. And Moses in Exodus 24 took the
blood of the animals and when he gave the law to the people,
the people said, all that the Lord has said we will do. And then Moses took the blood
and he sprinkled it on the people. He took water with the blood
and sprinkled it on the people, on the book, and on the vessels
of the ministry. In other words, by doing that
he sealed that covenant to them. You agreed to do your part, God
agreed to do his part. He gave you the law. Here's what
you do for blessings. Here's what happens if you disobey
cursings. And you agreed to it. And so
the blood sealed it. And the Lord in Hebrews 9.15
and following teaches us that the Lord Jesus Christ was the
mediator of a better, a new testament, the everlasting testament, a
covenant of grace. He calls it a testament though,
because there's two kinds of covenants. There's a covenant
where two parties enter into an agreement and the blessings
come to the one, the party that fulfills the conditions. That's
the old covenant. Moses went up into the mountain.
God gave him the law and two tables of stone. Moses brought
the law down and he says, here, this is the covenant. Now keep
it. And they said, we will. And he
says, alright, sprinkle the blood. It's sealed to you now. It's
put into force. But the Lord Jesus, as the mediator
of the new covenant, He did not go up into heaven in order to
get the law to bring it down to us that we might keep it.
He went up into heaven. He didn't go up into heaven at
all. He was in heaven. It was an everlasting covenant. And
He made the covenant in Himself. He was the covenant head. He
did all the conditions stipulated in the covenant. He agreed to
fulfill for his people that he might bring the blessings, he
might obtain the blessings in doing so for them. And then he
says to his disciples, this blood, this cup, is the New Testament
in my blood. which is, it's shed for you.
So he says, in doing this, that he himself had already entered
into an agreement with God, and his blood now fulfilled the conditions
God required, which was to take away our sins. Romans 11.27,
this says, Romans 11.27 says, this is my covenant, when I shall
take away their sins. And throughout scripture, Ezekiel
36, Jeremiah 31, 2 Samuel 23-5, Isaiah 55-3, all these scriptures
speak of an everlasting covenant in Christ's blood. And so he
takes that cup and he says, he takes the cup and he says, this
is the New Testament. This cup is the New Testament
in my blood. And there's some churches, if
you came out of a Catholic church, they teach something called transubstantiation. Which means that somehow Christ
is, his body and his blood is actually in those elements. He's
not. He said, this cup is the New
Testament in my blood. He says, this is my body. And
when they say, well see, he says, this is my body. This is my blood. So he meant, this is really that. I have a picture at home in my
study that was taken when my son Ian got married. If I showed
you the picture, I'd hold it up and say, this is my son, this
is my wife, this is my daughter, this is my granddaughter. And
you wouldn't think, oh, they're actually there in that picture,
would you? You'd say, that's an image of
them. That represents them. It signifies
to them. Jesus said, I am the door. Nobody goes around looking
for a pen that holds sheep with a door on it and says, oh look,
there's Jesus. He's that door. Or, I am the
true vine. He says he uses these things
in grammar, it's called an elliptical statement. A phrase where you
leave out those unimportant parts in order to emphasize with an
economy of sentence what you really want to emphasize. So
that the thing that's important is immediately in front of you.
You say, this cup is the New Testament in my blood. It brings
everything else goes in the shadow and suddenly you see this is
Christ's blood. Not in the element itself, but
it represents it. It signifies that. Throughout
scripture this is done. Jesus told the meaning of the
parable. He said, the tares are the children
of the wicked one. The field is the world. The wheat
are the children of the kingdom. I'm the good shepherd. He wasn't
a keeper of physical sheep. He was a keeper of God's people.
So throughout scripture the Lord does this. He says, "...unless
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die." He's not a piece
of corn. He's not a seed. But He's called
a seed. He's called a corn of wheat.
He says, "...if I be lifted up from the earth, I'll draw all
unto me." And it explains it. On the cross. Because everything
in scripture points to the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. But if we were to say that, in
fact, in 1 Corinthians 10, the chapter before this, it says
that the Israelites were in the wilderness and they ate that
spiritual meat. which was the manna. And they
drank from that rock, that spiritual drink, which was the rock that
Moses struck with his rod. But no one in the wilderness
or since ever thought Jesus was actually in the manna, or he
was actually the water that they drank, but it signified The manna
signified that God would give his son from heaven to earth
in a body which would be broken, and that breaking of his body
would be our spiritual life. And the law would strike him
as Moses struck the rock, and out of him would flow the water
of life, the gospel, which would teach us It would be the Spirit
of God also teaching us that in the blood of Christ is our
life. So these things are to teach us that. So don't be intimidated
by the Catholics or the Lutherans who say, well, the Catholics
say, he's in the host, he's in these things. No, he's not. Jesus
was standing right there when he gave the bread to his disciples. If they wanted to eat his body,
right then would have been the best time. But He didn't do it
that way. Of course not. That's ridiculous.
Only someone intent on changing the truth in order to manipulate
it for their own reasons would do that in a deceitful manner.
And to try to convince people. And that's exactly what religion
does. Religion takes the holy things, the simple things of
God and perverts it and makes it complicated. And they obscure
the truth. Do you know when God gave the
law? That Moses face was shining when he came down from the mountain.
So he had to put a veil over his face so people wouldn't be
afraid. But that veil represented the
fact that in hiding his face when God gave the law, God didn't
reveal himself to the people through the law. It had to come
through Christ. Well that's what religion does.
They go back to the law and they obscure the truth. By adding
traditions and giving you this hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo and
idolatry and stuff. And these things that God has
done. And it hides the truth from us. Strip it away. This
body, this bread represents the Lord Jesus Christ. It's that
simple. And the fruit of the vine that's in that cup represents
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we get so distracted on those
things, we'll miss the truth here. He says, take it. This
cup of the New Testament is shed for you. This cup is the New
Testament in my blood. This do ye as often as you drink
it in remembrance of me. Notice he didn't say as seldom
as you drink it, but as often. We should do it often. We should
do it often. And as often as we do it, why?
We do it to remember Him, remember me. 1 Corinthians 15, just a chapter
over, Paul says, "... Brethren, I declare to you the
gospel which I have preached to you, which also you have received,
and wherein you stand, by the which also you are saved, if
you keep in memory what I preached to you, unless you have believed
in vain." When the gospel comes to us in power, it burns a hole
in our heart and stays there. And yet we have to be reminded,
that's how sinful we are. Why would the Lord give us something
to remember Him if we didn't have any problem with our memory?
He gives us this in order to help us remember. This is the
important thing. Remember me. Remember Christ and Him crucified. Then he goes on, he says in verse
26, "...for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup..."
What happens? "...you do show the Lord's death till He come."
all the time of our life until the Lord either comes in our
death or comes in glory and takes us home, what are we going to
be doing? We're going to be preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified
as all of our life. We take the bread, we take the
wine, we drink it, we eat it, we drink it. And when we do that,
we're preaching. We're telling, we're telling,
this is all my hope. All my hope For eternity, to stand before
God in judgment, all of my answer in my conscience is that when
Jesus died, He died for me. Isn't that it? I don't have another
hope. I don't have additional things
that I'm trusting. And verse 27, Wherefore, whosoever
shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily,
shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let
a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and
drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh
unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning
the Lord's body." Now, I used to think, like I was told, when
we took the Lord's Supper, that you need to examine yourself
So that if there's any sin in your life, and you haven't taken
care of that sin, that you don't eat, don't drink. Because that
would be eating unworthily. Is that really what's meant here?
Does it mean that we somehow, by giving careful attention... to
the things we ought to do. We make ourselves worthy to take
the bread and the wine. Is that what that means? Because
if it does, I'll never be able to take that bread and wine in
good conscience. I can never do that. When you
first came to the Lord, did you come without your sin, or did
you come with your sins? If you were a sinner, Then Christ
Jesus came to save you. But if you don't have sin, He
says, I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
It was the diseased, the dying, and the dead. It was the blind,
and the lame, and the halt that Jesus healed. It wasn't those
who were healthy. They didn't have a need for a
doctor. Only sinners have need of a Savior. And there is in
the Lord Jesus Christ a perfect match... between a sinner and
Him. Because He is my salvation. He is the Savior of sinners. And so a sinner, as I heard a
long time ago someone say, in all the nakedness of his need,
and the Savior in all the plentitude of His grace, come into direct
embrace And there is a perfect match between the Lord Jesus
Christ and that sinner who has nothing and deserves only wrath
from God and comes to Him and says, Lord, I have no reason
to expect mercy, but have mercy, look upon your Son, receive me
for His sake. Lord Jesus, consider what you've
done and save me. And so it says,
examine yourself. Now in Acts 13, in Acts chapter
13, I'm going to take you to a verse there. Because this verse
helps me understand this unworthy thing. It says that right after
Paul had preached this sermon, you should read this sermon,
it starts in verse 16, I'm not going to read it. But it says
that after he preached this sermon and told them what they did,
because they were ignorant, they killed the Lord of Glory. And
they crucified the Lord Jesus Christ. They actually fulfilled
Scripture because they were ignorant of who Christ was and what He
came to do. And they fulfilled the Scripture
that said that they would murder Him. And after he preached the
Gospel to them, And he told them in verse 38, "...Be it known
to you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are
justified from all things from which you could not be justified
by the law of Moses." And then he says in verse 40, "...Beware
therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the
prophets, which says, Behold, you despisers, and wonder and
perish, for I work a work in your days, a work which you shall
in no wise believe, though a man declare it to you." So he warned
them, if they didn't believe, they would be fulfilling the
scripture not only of killing Christ, but also of those who
would not hear the gospel even though a man declared it to them.
And then it says in verse 44, The next Sabbath day came almost
the whole city together to hear the Word of God. And when the
Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy. And they
spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting
and blaspheming. Then Paul and Barnabas waxed
bold and said, listen carefully, it was necessary that the Word
of God should first have been spoken to you. But seeing you
put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life,
lo, we turn to the Gentiles." How are they unworthy? They did
not believe Christ. They put it from them. They understood
the gospel that was preached, and yet they hated it. They were self-content in their
own self-righteousness. It was deception. They had no
righteousness, but they thought they did. They thought that God
was pleased with them. Even if they didn't think God
was pleased with them, their envy rose up within them and
would not allow them to receive the truth of the gospel as sinners.
When we examine ourselves, look at what he says a little later
on in verse 31. 1 Corinthians 11 verse 31, "...for
if we 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." What happens when we judge ourselves? Well,
if we're honest, we're going to come to the conclusion that
we are guilty before God, aren't we? Look at 1 Peter 4. I want you to see just one verse
over here. 1 Peter 4. This is a verse that seems difficult
at first when you first read it, until you realize what the
gospel does. 1 Peter 4, he says, in verse... Well, what he's doing here is
he's telling us that we used to do these things that the Gentiles
did with impunity. We just did them. There was no
restraint. He says in verse 4, they think
it's strange that you don't run with them still to do the same
excess of riots, speaking evil of you. You're not coming out
with us to do what we normally do? No. I have a different master
now." So they think it's strange that you don't do it. Verse 5,
"...who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the
quick and the dead." That's the Lord Jesus Christ. Every man
is going to give an account. He says, "...for this cause Verse
six, for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are
dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh,
but live according to God in the spirit. That's the verse.
The gospel is preached to sinners who are spiritually dead, that
they might live to God in the spirit. So when we judge
ourselves, and God actually judges us up in ourselves to be nothing
but sin. We have to confess. Sin is in
everything I do. Everything I think and say and
do is full of sin. I do the things that I would
not, and I don't do the things I ought to do. Oh wretched man
that I am! The spirit lusteth against the
flesh, and the flesh against the spirit, so you can't do the
things you would. That's our condition. And it's a hateful
condition. It's a shameful thing. Judging
ourselves, if we confess our sins, that's agreeing with God
about ourselves. He's faithful and just to forgive
us our sins. So when we examine ourselves
to see if we're worthy to take the Lord's table, we find, according
to scripture, and in our own conscience, no, I'm not worthy
in myself, but the Lord Jesus Christ gives His body and blood
in order to make me worthy. Now look at John chapter 6. where
Jesus is explaining what he does, what he did when he came from
heaven and gave himself body and blood. He says in John chapter
6 verse 51, 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. What is the bread? His flesh.
What does it do? It gives life. To who? To all
throughout the world who eat that flesh. And then look at
verse 56. Very important verse. He that
eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and
I in him." When we eat Christ, how do we eat Him? Well, we don't
eat Him with our mouth, not on our body. We eat Him with the
mouth of our soul, which is the ear that hears, the heart that
believes. That mouth and that hearing ear
and that mouth that allows us to eat is faith given to us by
the Spirit of God. And when we, in our heart, as
sinners, go to Christ, as sinners, taking from Him His promise that
He came to die and save sinners, and we depend upon Him for our
entire life, then we're eating Christ. The One who is the Savior
and the sinner in all of his need come together and there's
this communion, this intimacy. where the sinner is fully dependent
upon Christ for life. And Christ, who is the fountain
of life, finds his fulfillment in giving himself to sinners
for their life. He says this to the woman at
the well, give me to drink. She says, why should I? Why are
you talking to me? I'm a Samaritan. I'm a woman.
If you knew the gift of God, you would have asked of me and
I would have given you living water. And throughout the entire
account between him and the Samaritan woman, She's, he uncovers and
exposes her to be a sinner. And she ends up saying, he's
the Messiah. And she realizes that he's the
one who saves her from her sins. And at the end of it all, Jesus
says, my meat is to do the will of him that sent me. He asked
her for a drink. He drank in giving her salvation
out of himself. When the Lord Jesus gives life
to us, when we are giving faith in Him, there is this communion
between the Savior and the sinner. He dwells in us. We dwell in
Him. He is in us. There is this union. Do you see that? So back in 1
Corinthians chapter 11. The only way we can be worthy
to take the physical elements of the Lord's table is if God
gives us faith so that in our soul we're taking of Christ by
faith. God Himself gives us faith to
partake of Christ as sinners, to find our life in Him. We come
to Him and say, Lord, in your word you said, this is my body
which is broken for you. I don't know how to take that.
I don't know how to take that to myself. I don't know if I
can take it. Everything in me will not allow
me to rest in that statement. Because I'm always looking for
something more. But you have to come as a sinner
who can't provide anything more. And you say, if Christ died,
if He said the Word, His Word is enough. Lord, speak the Word
only. Say it to my soul. I am thy salvation. And so the Lord says it. When
we examine ourselves, we find, and he says, let a man examine
himself, verse 28, and so let him eat. When we examine ourselves,
we judge ourselves, I'm guilty, I can only be saved by what the
Lord Jesus Christ has done. So let him eat. So let him eat. Because if you don't judge yourself,
as needing, as having only one thing to come before God by,
the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are unworthy to come to the Lord
Jesus Christ. You're unworthy to take the elements.
You're unworthy to come. You're unworthy for everything.
You've made yourself unworthy. But when we're judged, we're
chastened. of the Lord that we should not
be condemned with the world." When the Lord chastens us, we
need it, don't we? But it's a blessed thing. It's
a blessed thing. So I've entitled this message...
What did I entitle it? Christ Broken For Me. Because
these words just ring from Scripture in my heart. And it becomes my
prayer. He said, the Lord Jesus, eat,
this is my body which is broken for you." I can't say that to
your soul. But the Lord says it to sinners.
And He's given you His Word. Is there anything? Do you think
that the Lord Jesus Christ actually achieved what He came to do?
Did He actually obtain eternal redemption? Did He actually make
full remission of sins by His blood? Did He actually reconcile
us to God? Is His blood our peace? Is His
obedience our righteousness? Did He secure eternal inheritance?
Did He sanctify His people forever by His one offering? Did He perfect
them forever? Is there anything His blood did
not do and obtain for us? I'm convinced that He did it
all. I'm convinced there's nothing for me to add. I'm convinced
He did it for sinners. And I'm convinced that as a sinner,
He said, He that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. So I, in my heart of hearts,
I'm looking to Christ only. And I'm trusting Him only. Are
you saying that that makes you worthy to take of the Lord's
table? Yes. God-given faith has put Christ
in my heart. I take of Him and He lives in
me according to His Word. I don't see it. I can't put my
finger on it. I can't tell you, oh, there's
a certain feeling you get when the Lord's in you and you're
in Him. There's no feeling. It's just
His Word. It's just the evidence that I need a Savior and the
testimony of Scripture that He is my Savior. That's all I have.
I need no other argument. I need no other plea. It is enough
that Jesus died and that He died for me. Let's pray.