We come, once again, to do something
that we are commanded to do in the Scriptures. It is not an
optional thing, but it is something that the Lord Jesus delivered
to His disciples, and He said, Do this in remembrance of Me. Over in I Corinthians 11, Paul
says this, For I have received of the Lord that which also I
delivered unto you. Now that was the reason that
the Lord gave the truth that He gave to Paul was so that he
might have it to give the saints. That is the reason
the Lord gives men spiritual gifts, is for the benefit of
the body. The Lord does not give men spiritual
gifts for their own sake, but He gives them to men so that
they might benefit the body. Now, quite often men think that
they are that they've been given spiritual gifts and they consume
it upon themselves. They say, well, this is for my
benefit. No. The quarter one scripture says
the Lord has given to every man these gifts to profit the whole. The body is to be profited by
those gifts that the Spirit of God gives, and so it is by that. that the Lord is pleased to give
to His people such things as He would have them to have. And
so Paul said, For I have received of the Lord that which also I
delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in
which He was betrayed, took bread. 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 sucked, 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 ye eat this bread
and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." We've talked about this many
times, but this is really the heart and soul of the gospel. This is indeed why the church
primarily gathers together, is to remember the Lord's death
until He comes. That's why He told us to come
together, because you see, in doing that, the body is strengthened. There is no other way that we
are strengthened except that our focus be on Jesus Christ. And as we take this bread and
this wine, our focus is solely on that which He has performed.
And that is what always is to be our focus. Now that is the
place, and again, If you get to wondering whether or not something
is proper to do in the assembly of the saints, that is the question
that needs to be asked. Does it give glory to Christ
alone? And if it does not, then it ought
not to be done, and it is a thing that is superfluous. So why do
we come together? to take this bread and this wine,
it is for one reason, and one reason alone, to remember the
Lord's death until He comes. And so he said each time that
we do it, we do show the Lord's death, or we do manifest it. And by manifesting it in a carnal
way, this is carnal, it's of the flesh, it's of the earth,
there's nothing spiritual, Here in this bread, this is made
out of flour and water, and I don't know what all's in there, but
it's just carnal stuff, and it's here on a plate that somebody
made in a factory somewhere where they make plates, and it's sitting
on a table that was made by somebody. Somebody chopped a tree down
and cut up the wood and carved it out and polished it up and
painted it, and it's sitting here before us. And the wine,
somebody grew some grapes, and those grapes were picked by somebody,
loaded in a truck probably, hauled off to a factory, and they squeezed
the juice out of them, and then they made it into wine. And here
it is, sitting here in front of us. And it in itself is of
the earth. It is nothing unusual. You could
really go anywhere, probably any country or place on earth
and find these very ingredients and there they are. So there
is nothing unusual about it. But it becomes very unusual when
the Lord tells us to do it. in remembrance of Him, because
it becomes something that becomes forbidden for a man to eat of
it or to drink of it, except that he do it with that
recognition. Now, why is it that he says,
as he goes on to say, in this book, for he that eateth and
drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself,
not discerning the Lord's body, not having regard to what this
represents. Now, he told the Corinthians,
he said, you come together and it's not for the right reason.
You come together to eat. Anything wrong with eating? No,
we do it all the time. It's a good thing. I enjoy it,
as you can tell. Eating is a good thing. But he
said, when you come together, he said, this is not to eat the
Lord's service. He said, you're not coming together
for the right reason. He said, you're coming together
because you like the food. We don't come together because
carnally we like this food that's here. We're not here because
we're wanting to fill our carnal appetite. That's not the purpose
of it. And so if we come here for that
reason, some people come because it's, well, it's just an expected
thing. We're supposed to do it. And
that's what you do. I remember as a young kid, one
of the reasons I wanted to be baptized was I wanted to be able
to take the Lord's Supper. Now, I didn't have any spiritual
reason for doing that. I just wanted to be able to do
it because everybody else was doing it. And the only way you
could do it, you had to join the church and be baptized. And
that was good enough for me. I wanted to do that. And I joined
up. And sure enough, I could do it.
It didn't mean any more to me after I did that than it did
before. Because I had no understanding of it. I had no spiritual knowledge. I had no concept of what it was. But Paul said, the Lord said,
as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show
the Lord's death. You manifest it. Because He is
that One who is the center, the sum and the substance. of this
sufferer. And if you don't have regard
to Him as who He is, then you have no business whatsoever taking
this. But regardless of who you are
or where you came from or how you got here, if in your soul and in your very
being You have a desire to magnify Christ Jesus the Lord. And the
death that He died on Calvary's cross is a precious thought in
your mind. Then He says, Come. Because you
see, that's what it is to examine yourself. Why do you want to
take this? Or why would you not want to
take this? Because if Christ is that One
who is precious unto you, then indeed this supper is made for
those who desire to remember His death till He comes. Now,
if we remember His death, what do we remember first? When we remember His death, we
must remember the One who died. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
the world and He walked among men, and if you had been there
and walked among men and seen Him, you would not have recognized
that He was anything special. There is no beauty in Him that
we should desire Him. There was nothing special. I
know in all the movies and all this, he's this great charismatic
figure, you know, and he stands out in the crowd and all of this.
He didn't stand out in the crowd, except when he opened his mouth,
except when he went about doing good. You see, he did stand out
in the crowd, but he stood out in the crowd because he was a
perfect man. And he went about doing those
things that were good, and there was no guile found in his mouth.
So we remember this one, who he was. Who was he? He was one born of a virgin,
the Scripture says. He was without sin. And he walked
among men as a man. But who was he? He was that one who formed the earth, the heavens, the stars, the angels,
all those things that are in existence are those things which
His hands have made. Remember His death. Oh, remember the One who came. He was not a mere man. He was
a man. He was fully man. He was not less than man. He
was not a special man. He was a man. But He was more than a man because
He was and is. the eternal God. The Scripture
says that He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And we
will remember that fact that He is the fullness of the Godhead
bodily. That is, there is no way that
a man could ever have seen God except that Jesus Christ had
come into the world and walked among men. Do you realize that? You see, God inhabits eternity. We are finite beings. He is infinite. There is no way
that we could ever have any fellowship with Him or any knowledge of
Him or any understanding of God except that God who is rich in
mercy did come and walk among us. And He dwelt among us full
of grace and truth. No man has seen God at any time
but Jesus Christ who is in the bosom of the Father. He hath
declared Him so that we see Him as He walks among men, as that
eternal God who is seen fit to reveal Himself unto men. But
we see Him as that One who would undertake to save a people that
He loved before He created anything that you and I could possibly
see with our carnal eyes. And there was no cosmic necessity that caused Jesus Christ to come
into the world. Now, I've heard the gospel proclaimed
and taught sometimes and in fashion that there was like some necessity
that was laid upon God to send Jesus Christ into the world to
redeem sinners. There was no necessity outside
of God Himself and that which He would purpose that would cause
Him to do anything. And certainly the redemption
of men is not the response to some cosmic necessity that was
laid upon Him. Now what are you going to do?
No. You see, He purposed to save
His people just as much so as He purposed to come into the
world made in the likeness of sinful flesh. It was according
to that which He determined to do. Oh, what a glorious thing,
dear brethren, that this One who came into the world. You
see, that's why it is that when He stood before Pontius Pilate,
and Pilate said, Don't you know that I have the power to crucify
you? He said, You don't have any power
at all. He said, I have the power. He said, I have the power to
lay down my life. And I have the power to take
it again. Oh, remember this one, dear brethren, who came into
the world with no necessity upon him except that he would demonstrate
the love that he had for those whom he chose in Christ from
before the foundation of the world. And how would he do it? He'd do it in such a fashion
that overwhelms the senses of men. You see, we know what it
is, to some extent at least, to suffer. Do we not? I mean, we're not all acquainted
with the same level of suffering, and we certainly have not been
acquainted with His suffering in the level that it was, but
we have some understanding of it. We have some understanding
of what it is to die. Though we have not died, we have
certainly all had those who were dear to us and we've loved and
we've seen them die and their breath be taken from them and
we can no longer have their fellowship and friendship and we know what
that is. But you see, the one thing that
we have never known, and by the grace of God we will never know,
that our Lord Jesus Christ did know, was what it is to be cast
out of the presence of the God of glory. I don't know how that is. I can't
wrap my mind around that. But yet that's what He did for
us. You see, He bore that which we
deserved. And He would demonstrate to us
what we deserved and what He did to Jesus Christ. Why? Because He loved us with an everlasting
love. And what do we do when we come
here today? We remember His death until He comes again. Dear brethren, it was a real
death. It was attended with all the
sorrow and the sadness and the finality of what death is. And it was even a worse death than any man could ever You see,
the wicked are going to be destroyed, the Scripture says. But they
are going to be destroyed not having any love whatsoever for the God of glory. The wicked
are going to be destroyed in the love that they have of their
own self. and of their own way and of their
own religion and of their own pathway, whatever it is, they
are going to be destroyed in the midst of that. But you see,
Jesus Christ tasted death for His people as a man who loved the God of glory. The Scripture
speaks about that there are some that will say unto him in that
day, Lord, have we not done many wonderful works in thy name?
And he will say to them, depart from me, I never knew you. And
surely that is an awful thing. But dear brethren, those men
who are cast away in such things as that have had some satisfaction
in the walk of their religion. But you see, Jesus Christ desired
to do one thing, and that was to please His Father. And the one thing that he desired
more than anything else in all the world was taken from him
because he became sin in the sight of his father. And he hung
on Calvary's cross in the Lord and he said, My God, my God,
why has thou forsaken me? Because you see, God did forsake
him. He did forsake him. He turned
his back on him. The heavens became dark and the
angels fell on their faces and they said, Oh God! Remember his death until he comes
again because dear brethren that is what he said to do. He is
the Savior's And were it not that in His purpose He did rise
from the dead, we would have no salvation. But you see the
glory in the death of Christ. is that He proved who He was.
Because just as real and as sure and as absolute as the death
that He undertook for us was, just as sure as that is, absolutely
in the time when it pleased Him, He took that life right back
into His own body! And He came out of the tomb as
a triumphant, glorious victor. whose death we remember, because He's coming again. He
said, till He comes, I'm coming back. How do we know? Because
this same one said, if it wasn't so, I would never have told you
this. The Lord doesn't play games.
The Lord doesn't play games with those whom He loves. But what
He tells them, He will do. And He says to them, I will come
again just as surely as I gave My life for you. So I will take you to be with
Me. Oh, what a glorious thing! May
we remember the Lord's death, remember the One who died, and
remember why it is that He did die. Because He loved us with
an everlasting love.