into 1 Corinthians 11. And we're going to go. We're
going to kind of go verse by verse on verse 24 or not verse
by verse, we're going to go kind of line by line. I have five five things I briefly
want to say. Tonight, concerning the bread,
the title of the message is Remembering Christ. That's what the bread,
that's what the Lord's Supper is all about. It's not about
remembering a doctrine or something that happened. We're actually
remembering him. He told us, remember me. So hopefully
in this, we will be able to remember him. In verse 24, we read, And
when he had given thanks, He break it. He break the bread. He break this one loaf that he
had. And he said, Takey, this is my body, which is broken for
you. This do in remembrance of me. I have five points. The first. The first is that
he gave thanks, and this was actually the most surprising
point. Because, as I looked at this verse, I started to think
about the backdrop of what he had been going through. At this
point in time, it was merely hours before he was going to
be made sin. And he's sitting with his disciples. Judas is at the table. He's getting
ready to betray him. He's getting ready to be taken
before a religious mob. and go through this trial with
a weak politician, and then he was getting ready to be crucified as he was under God's judgment. OK, and all this is happening
very shortly after he says these words, and so it is a marvel
that he gave thanks. I don't know if I could. There's
a lot of things that I don't give thanks about that I should.
Very easy things. And here he is, kind of at the
sunset of his ministry, getting ready to die, getting ready to
be made sin. And here he's giving thanks.
So I wanted to give you three brief reasons why he gave thanks.
The first is that he always did those things which pleased his
father, and he was He had lived his life as a perfect man, the
God-man. He had kept his own while they
were in the world. The Father was pleased with him,
and he was pleased with the Father, and so he gave thanks. And also,
he was shortly going back to his father, and he was happy. that he was shortly getting ready
to enter into the joy that was set before him. He was going
to the cross. He despised the shame, but he
was actually going to the cross to save his people. And he was
happy to do it. We sang that song this morning
that says our sins he was gladly bearing. And I've never thought
about it before, but he was gladly bearing our sins for the joy
that was set before him. And so that's the second. The third is that he was giving
thanks because he was happy to save his people. He loves his
people and he was happy to save them. And he was he was shortly
going to take care of everything that we would ever need on the
cross. And so that's why he gave thanks.
He also gave thanks because this isn't in here, but he was instituting
the Lord's Supper. And this is a wonderful thing
that we get to do. It's a memorial that we can do
as often as we want, where we can remember not Not so. I mean, we remember that he died,
but we also remember that he was raised again and that he's
sitting at the right hand of the father right now. This is
this is a living memorial that we that we take tonight. OK,
so secondly, he break it. He he he gave thanks for this
loaf of bread and then he tore it apart. He broke the bread.
The significance here is that he did it. He's the one that
broke the bread. There were probably many lows
at that table, but he took one and he ripped it apart and he
he gave it out to his disciples and their significance there.
This one low. It represented his one death. And so he took it and then he
broke it. And what does this show us? It
shows that all the redeemed of the Lord were saved by his one
time sacrifice on the cross. We don't we don't believe, like
the rest of the world, that there's many ways to be saved. We don't
believe that God is sovereign and man has a free will. We don't
we don't believe all these different things because those are lies. We believe in the truth. We believe
in Christ's one-time sacrifice for sin. And all of us here that
believe, we're all partakers of that one sacrifice. So that
my life is your life, and your life is your life. You that believe. We have the same life. And that he broke that he broke
this bread. What this what what I believe
this says most most importantly, simply is that salvation is of
the Lord. He did it. He broke it. He gave
it to them. He said, Take, take and eat,
which is the next point. OK, then he said then he took
this bread, you know, and he gave it to them and he said,
Take this and eat this bread. Go ahead and turn with me to
Colossians 1, 26 and 27. We're going to read those two
verses together. Colossians 1, 26 and 27. We eat this bread to remember that the
Lord himself is with us and in us. We take the bread into our
bodies, and there's significance in that. I believe it's found
here in 26 and 27 of Colossians 1. Even the mystery, which had
been hid from ages and from generations, but now it's made manifest to
his saints, to whom God would make known what is the riches
of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. And this
mystery that had been hid is that Christ is in you and he
is the hope of glory. What what taking and eating represents
is that Christ is your all and he is actually in you. He's not
on you. He's not upon you. He's he's
in you. Believers don't have a pasted
on righteousness. We have a real righteousness.
that is given to us by God, and it's the very righteousness of
Christ. And so you go ahead and turn
with me now to Exodus 12. And. We're going to spend probably the remainder
of our time right here and just a few things after, but in Exodus
12. In verse 11, we have some instruction
from the Passover that I think is going to be beneficial
for us here. This was God's instruction regarding
the Passover, and although the Lord's Supper and the Passover
are not the same, the Passover spoke of the passing over of
our sins by the sacrifice of Christ. And so I think we can
draw some benefit from this. Exodus 12,
11. So this is the instruction about
eating the Passover. And there's four things here
that are mentioned. The first says, and thus shall you eat
it with your loins girded. We are to eat the Lord's Supper. We are to remember him with our
loins girded, and that refers to truth. We are to remember the truth about God,
that he's sovereign, the truth about man, that he's a sinner,
the truth about ourselves, and the truth about Christ, that
he's our Redeemer and that he's our Savior. We're to remember
the truth. The second, we're to eat this
Passover with shoes on our feet. This is referring to the gospel,
and it's referring to our walk in this world. Our walk in this
world is ordained by God. We need to remember, for myself
here, we sometimes crawl in here. Things are so rough out there.
OK, and it's good for us to remember that the Lord ordains that for
our good. He is he is the sovereign. He
ordains things for our good and for his glory. And this also
is significant because we are to walk through this world believing
the gospel. I know many you all you all know
how it is out there. But may we have the grace to
remember the gospel, to remember salvations by grace alone as
we're out there walking in this world, rubbing elbows with unbelievers
and dealing with ourselves mostly. And so when doubts and fears
arise, simply remember him. That's that's the instruction
there. The third thing here is that
we're to eat this with a staff in our hand. And what this represents
is leaning on Christ alone. Okay, that's what a staff is. If you see some elderly and they
have a staff, they're not just using it because it looks cool. They're actually leaning on it.
And they're walking with it. We are to lean on Christ alone.
We use a staff to lean on and to help us walk. We lean because
we can't hold ourselves up. That's why we lean. So Christ
is what we lean on. Todd, has it been 15 minutes,
really? OK. All right. And we're to eat,
we're to eat it in haste. This this means that we're not
to hold anything back. It's Christ or nothing. It's
Christ and him alone. We're not to hold back a bit
of our righteousness and add it to his. It's him and him alone. When we when we remember him,
we remember that he tread the winepress of the wrath of God
alone. We took no part of it. other
than it was for our sins that he took upon himself and bore
on the cross. OK, so as as we remember this
Lord's Supper, let's try to remember those things to. You know, the truth, the gospel
leaning on Christ alone and not holding anything back, believing
my fourth point. is this is my body, which is
broken for you. You know, I'll briefly say here that. Have you ever considered that
not a bone of his body was broken? They tried to throw him off cliffs,
they hung him on a cross, they thought they had had Adam, they
they bruised his his face, they did all these things to him.
Yet, that the Scriptures be fulfilled, there was not a bone of his body
broken. Yet, in this great Lord's Supper
that he gives, he says, this is my body which is broken for
you. So I want to ask really quickly, who broke the body of
the Lord Jesus? And really, what body here is
he referring to? Go ahead and turn with me to
Job chapter 16. And I will. I'll just read this without comment
for time's sake. This. This if I could find a
word to define. What what this is, is this is
a brutal description. of what happened to Christ on
the cross. A brutal description. Starting in verse 9, I had asked
the question, who broke the body of the Lord Jesus Christ? It
was his father. It was his father that broke
him. He teareth me in his wrath. He hateth me. He gnasheth upon
me with his teeth. Mine enemy sharpeneth his eye
upon me. They have gaped upon me with
their mouth. They have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully.
They have gathered themselves together against me. God hath
delivered me to the ungodly and turned me over into the hands
of the wicked. I was at ease, but he had broken me asunder.
He had also taken me by my neck and shaketh me to pieces and
set me up for his mark. His archers compass me round
about. He cleaveth my reins asunder. and does not spare. He pours
out my gall upon the ground. He breaketh me with breach upon
breach. He runneth upon me like a giant. I have sewed sackcloth upon my
skin and defiled my horn in the dust. My foul, my face is foul
with weeping and on my eyelids is the shadow of death and not
for any injustice in my hands. What this tells me is that Christ
was perfect. The perfect, spotless Lamb of
God. He who knew no sin was made sin. And that's why He was broken.
The body that He's referring to was His soul that was crushed. His life. When He died on the
cross, His life was crushed. He was poured out. until the
vengeance of God was spent, until there was no more sin. He was
broken by God because of our sins to save us. He said, This is my body which
is broken for you. He did this for sinners, for
those that know their centers. The last point he said in in
First Corinthians 11. Was this due in remembrance of
me? Take ye, this is my body which
is broken for you, this due in remembrance of me. The Lord's
table is a memorial of his death. Or rather, it's a memorial of
him who died to redeem me. When we take the Lord's Supper,
it's a personal supper. You know, he said this is he
didn't say you all. He just said you. And that's
for you that believe. I mean, together were his body.
But individually, he did this. If if you believer were the only
one, he would have done it for you. You can think of this that
we that we partake of here as an anniversary of our Lord accomplishing
redemption. It's an anniversary. It's a memorial.
It's a. I want to say it's a birthday,
but it's like that. It's a it's a time where we remember
something that happened to somebody. Back then, and we're taking time
a day to remember that event, a birthday, an anniversary of,
you know, the young people now they have. date of bursaries
where they call those month of bursaries where they date. You
know, it's my first month of bursary. I've been dating for
a month. But this is this is our memorial of him. So we remember what he did, but
more so we remember him who did it. So as we eat this bread, may
the Lord give us grace to remember how Christ died according to
the scriptures for us. May he be pleased tonight to
make himself known once again in the breaking of bread. Amen.