Let us turn back tonight to 1
Corinthians chapter 10. We are looking once again at
the verses we looked at this morning. 1 Corinthians 10 and
verses 14 through 17. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 14. Wherefore, my dearly
beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as
to wise men, judge you what I say. The cup of blessing which we
bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread
which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread
and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread. The title of my message this
morning was Union and Communion. Tonight, it is simply communion,
communion. We know that communion is one
of the four names that we find in the New Testament, find in
the word of God for this ordinance that we are going to observe.
It is called communion, as we see here in this passage. It
is also called the Lord's Supper in the next chapter. It's called
the Lord's Table farther down in this chapter. And it is also
called the New Testament in Christ's blood. Now I want to remind us
of three truths this evening as we partake of the supper and
have communion with Christ. This ordinance is a very simple
ordinance. It's very simple. There's no
hocus pocus. There's no ritualism involved. It's very simple, but it's very
important. It's a very simple ordinance
to remind us and to cause us to think about the greatest event
of all time. And that is the substitutionary
death of Jesus Christ for his people. this do in remembrance
of me. Three things that I want us to
consider tonight, and all of them very simple. But first,
we sit. We sit. S-I-T. We sit as we partake of this
supper. In Hebrews chapter 10, we read
this about our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is seated. The text says, but this man,
this man, not just any man, but this man, the God-man, the Lord
Jesus Christ, that He is seated at the right hand of God Almighty. Under the law, there were priests
But this man who is our high priest is different from all
others in these three ways. First of all, he was made a priest
by an oath, by an oath. God swore, God Almighty swore
and said, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. That just simply means he has
an unending priesthood. He's a priest after the order
of Melchizedek. All of the other priests who
officiated as a priest under the law, none of them were made
a priest by an oath. They inherited that office. The second thing is all of those
priests, they offered a sacrifice for their own sins. That was
the first thing they did on the great day of atonement, before
they took the blood of the goad in to sprinkle on the mercy seat
and before the mercy seat to make atonement for the sins of
the nation of Israel. First of all, they took the blood
of a bullock in there to make an atonement for their sins. Now that was typical, I understand
that. But the Lord Jesus Christ is
a priest different from all other priests. He was made a priest
with an oath. God swore thou art a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek. He had no sins of his own for
which he had to atone. All the other priests symbolically
had to atone for their own sins. He had no sins of his own. And
something else that was different, all of those priests, the blood
that they offered never took away one sin. It never removed one sin. But
this man, the apostle tells us, this man, after he had offered
one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of
God. The Lord Jesus Christ is seated
in heaven, which shows us that his work is finished. It is ended. He has accomplished redemption.
And not only is his work finished, but it is accepted by God the
Father. Now tonight, as we partake of
this supper, we rest in Christ. We do so sitting. He is our Sabbath. It's what the word Sabbath means,
isn't it? Rest, and he is our rest. We
rest in him and in his work. We sit as we take this supper
tonight. And a second thing, we receive.
Not only do we sit, but we receive as we take this supper. You don't
prepare anything. Those of you, like myself, we're
going to sit here, we're going to eat this supper tonight. We
haven't prepared this. We haven't bought this. We haven't
contributed anything to this supper. We receive. We receive. Just as our salvation,
we contribute nothing to it. Unless we could say we provide
the sinner, he does the saving. But we provide nothing. We furnish
nothing. We sing that hymn sometimes,
Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe, amen. He paid it all,
we receive. We don't contribute anything
to the salvation of our souls. The sacrifice that he offered
is sufficient and efficient for those for whom he died. One of our Lord's parables that
he gave speaks of a supper. And I like to think of that parable
and the description of those who came to that supper as a
picture of all of us who receive and come to this supper tonight.
The scripture says those who came were poor. They were maimed,
they were halt, and they were blind. And that's the description
of all men as we come into this world. We're first of all poor. were poor, not financially, you
may be the wealthiest person in the world, but spiritually
bankrupt, all of us by nature. Now we've tried to pay our own
way. There's probably no one here who hasn't tried to pay
his or her own way to salvation. And we were convinced that we
could do it. We really were. We really thought that by our
good works, maybe by living a good life, trying to keep the golden
rule, treating others as we wanted them to treat us, but we failed
time after time, didn't we? No matter how hard we tried,
no matter how long we tried, we failed, we failed. We're poor,
spiritually poor. And think about this, if we had
not failed, if we had not failed, We wouldn't
need a savior. The very fact that we have failed
time after time after time just reminds us that we need a savior. We're poor, spiritually poor,
and cannot redeem our own souls. And then second, we're maimed. That is, we've been crippled
spiritually. by Adam's disobedience, bringing
us into bondage to sin. We're maimed. We're impotent.
We don't have the power to make ourselves right with God. We
all love the story about Mephibosheth, don't we? I love to preach about
Mephibosheth, and I thank all of God's children. We all love
that story about Mephibosheth in the Old Testament. He was
a king's son, but by a fall, he had become lame on his feet. We became lame. We were children
of a king. That is, when God created Adam,
he was made the ruler over all of God's creation, our father. And just like Mephibosheth became
maimed in a fall, so we became maimed. And then when David became
king, David asked, were there any of the household of Jonathan
that he could show kindness to? And they said, well, there's
one. There's this guy over here named Mephibosheth, and he lives
in Lodibar. Lodibar means no bread. No bread. He was in a place of famine.
And David said, fetch him. Fetch him. But how's he going
to come? Does David send him a pair of
crutches and say, now use these crutches and get up here to me
the best way you can? Oh no, fetch him, bring him. And in the word of a king, there's
power. David was a king and he gave
the command, fetch him. And sure enough, he was brought
into the presence of David. There had to be a covenant, we
know that. There had to be a covenant made, and that covenant was between
David and Mephibosheth's father, Jonathan, that David would show
kindness unto his son. And there was a covenant made
in old eternity between God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. And he agreed to come into this
world to be our representative, to be our savior. And he came. He was made flesh and came into
this world as a man. And that covenant, he's the surety
of that covenant. He's the messenger of that covenant. He's the mediator of the covenant
of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ. We love to hear that story, don't
we? Because it reminds us that we too one day were living in
Lodibar. We were in this world, and we
may have had everything that flesh could possibly want, but
we were not satisfied. We had no peace. Something was
wrong. Something was missing. And it
was that relationship to God. And God sent that message to
us and brought us to himself. We were maimed in a fall. And then those were halted. It
says they were halted. We were incapacitated. We didn't have the will nor the
power to come on our own. And we were blind. Man by nature
is blind. We're blind first of all to our
need. I don't have any problems. I'm okay. You're okay. You know,
we don't have any problem. We're blind to the fact that
we have a need. That God Almighty, our God, the
God with whom we have to do, is such a holy God, such a righteous
God, and we're blind to the fact that we have no right, have no
ability on our own to come into His presence. Were we to come
into His presence, as sinful as we are, we would be consumed. The scripture says our God is
a consuming fire. We were blind, we didn't know
we had a need. I'm okay, you're okay, we're
all okay. But then when God the Holy Spirit
began to work in our hearts, we realized we do have a need. Not only were we blind to our
need, we were blind to the way of reconciliation. The scripture
says one of the charges against mankind is the way of peace they
have not known. How can I have peace with God?
Man by nature doesn't know. The scripture says, there is
a way which seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are
the ways of death. And that way that seems right
to man, it just seems right. Live a good life. Do the best
you can. That's all you need to do. Oh
no. That seems right, but the end
thereof is the way of death. There's only one way. There's
only one way to the Father, and that's Christ. We were blind
to our need. We were blind to the way of reconciliation. We were blind to how a man can
be justified, how that God Almighty, the righteous, holy God He is,
can declare such a one as us to be just, to be just as if
we had never sinned in His sight. To be just as if we had never
one time sinned. Never sinned in thought, in word,
or in deed. We were blind to how God can
justify a sinner. That's one of the oldest questions
recorded in the word of God. Can man be just with God? Can
he? He can through Jesus Christ.
He can by having his sins imputed to Christ, charged to Christ,
and Christ's righteousness imputed or charged to us, and therefore
we're declared righteous, just as if we had never sinned in
God's sight. We're blind to sanctification
also, not only justification, but sanctification. How is it
that we might be made holy? One of the old hymn writers said,
with his righteous garments on, I'm as holy as his son. He is our sanctification. His
righteousness is our righteousness. His holiness is our holiness. So we receive to as many as received
him. He came unto us all. and his
own received him not. The Jewish nation, they received
him not. But to as many as received him,
to them gave he power, the right, the privilege to become, to be
called a son of God, even to them which believe on his name. The third thing I want us to
do, so we sit, we receive, And this is so important, we meditate. As we eat this bread and drink
this cup tonight, we meditate, we think. And I have five things
here that I want us to think about as we observe the table
tonight. First of all, we meditate on
God's love which provided the supper. God's love which provided
the supper. We know it represents our Lord's
broken body, his flesh which was broken for us and the blood
which was shed for us. And we know that it is God's
great love that set him forth to be the propitiation, the atonement
for our sins. As you take the bread and you
eat it tonight and drink the cup, think about his great love. His great love that caused Him
to give His only, His only begotten Son. Second, we meditate and
we think on God's grace, which brings us to the table. We cannot ask, we cannot help
but ask, Lord, why me? Why me? I love those words of
that hymn that Joseph Hart wrote many years ago. Why was I made
to hear your voice and enter while there's room when thousands
make a wretched choice and rather starve than come? Why was I made
to come? Why was you made to come? Well,
we know why. God's grace, God's unmerited
favor, And number three, we should meditate
and think upon God's mercy. God's mercy that keeps us from
being where we deserve to be. Now you might not know this.
It's true whether you know it or not, but thank God if you
do know it, I know it. We deserve to be in hell. That's
where we deserve to be. It's only God's mercy that we're
not there. Meditate on His mercy. It keeps
you from being where you deserve to be. Number four, we meditate
on God's covenant. Now this is the name the Lord
Jesus Christ gave to this ordinance when He said, this is my blood
of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission
of sins. We all know what a testament
is, a last will and testament. And who is interested in a person's
last will and testimony? If you heard tonight on the news
that Bill Gates had passed away today, would you buy a ticket
and fly out there to, where is it, Seattle, or wherever it is
he lives, and you find out they're going to have the reading of
the will tomorrow, would you go to hear the reading of the
will? Probably not. I wouldn't. Why? I don't know
Bill Gates. He doesn't know me. People who
want to hear the reading of the will are those who have an interest
in the will and the covenant. We have an interest in this covenant,
and so we desire to hear the reading of the will. And that's
what we do when we come here to worship, when we come to hear
the gospel preached. We hear the reading of his will,
his last will and testament, what he has bequeathed unto us. all the blessings that he has
bequeathed unto us. We meditate on this wonderful
covenant of grace. And number five, lastly, we meditate
on God's keeping power. We should at least, God's keeping
power. We're here tonight at this table,
but who knows next month if we'll still be believers. If we'll
still be worshipping God, if we will still be calling upon
Him, well, we will because He keeps us. And that's the only
reason we will, because He keeps us. It's keeping power. There's a scripture in Jeremiah
chapter 3 and verse 19 which says, Thou shalt call me, that
is God saying, Thou shalt call me my Father, and Thou shalt
not turn away from me. He puts his fear in our hearts. He will not turn away from us,
and we will not turn away from him. The Lord Jesus Christ said,
my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and
I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. I've never got a whole lot out
of written prayers, but I read this prayer recently by Robert
Hawker. I wanted to bring to us tonight,
read to us tonight, when coming to the Lord's table, this old
preacher of yesteryear, back I think in the 1700s. Here's
his prayer. Blessing and honor and power
and glory be unto him that setteth upon the throne, and to the lamb
that was slain forever and ever. Surely our God is gracious in
having instituted such a feast for the setting forth of his
love. I have tasted, I do taste, that
the Lord is gracious and that his mercy endureth forever. What a miracle of love is the
whole purpose of God concerning the church and His people. Chosen
of God to be holy, then fallen by sin, then redeemed by blood,
yea, the blood of the Son of God, then regenerated by the
Spirit, and now feasted upon the body and blood of Christ. Ere long to set down in the kingdom
of glory, to feast my ravished soul in the unceasing enjoyment
of God and the Lamb forevermore. Thanks be unto his unspeakable
gift. That prayer blessed me in coming
to this table tonight. I hope it does to you as well.
I'll ask the man, if you will, to come at this time.