THE LORD’S SUPPER

Matthew 26:26-29 (NIV)

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."
Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.
This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom."

We need to open our churches for "interfaith celebration" and this includes "opening up our holy of holies" that is, allowing members of other faiths to partake of the Lord’s Supper, or so we were counseled by the Very Reverend James Parks Morton, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The "Very Reverend" Morton was speaking at the 1993 Parliament of Word Religions, an interfaith gathering very popular with liberal Christians, when he offered this advice.

The Very Reverend Morton, who is an Anglican, does not merely counsel other Christians to practice these interfaith communions, he regularly practices them himself opening up his pulpit to leaders of religions likes Shintoism and regularly giving the Lord’s Supper to people like Swami Satchinanda, a well-known Indian Guru.

In doing so Reverend Morton undoutably believes that he is encouraging harmony and understanding amongst people of different beliefs – indeed the ecumenical movement often likes to think of the Lord’s Supper as an occasion when people from every different Christian and non-Christian perspective can share in a common meal, when they can in effect commune together, despite their differences.

But in doing this the Reverend Morton is both betraying Christ whom he professes to serve, and doing grave harm to those members of other religions whom he wrongfully admits to the table.

Unfortunately, such wrong attitudes and beliefs about the Lord’s Supper are all too common in Christendom, and this is particularly tragic when one considers that this sacrament was instituted by Christ as means by which his body the Church might be both strengthened and unified.

Matthew tells us that on the night He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread gave thanks and broke it, and then He gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body." The other Gospels and Paul tell us that Jesus added that his body was to be broken for us, and that we should do this in remembrance of Him.

"Broken for you" how often have we heard that phrase during communion without really stopping to consider it’s meaning; what Christ is communicating to us by and through it. In this phrase Christ tells you that he has taken the punishment that should have been yours. That in His torture and death on the cross he has drunk the cup of the wrath of the Father, in your place. He has been broken for your sins. Paid the price that you could not pay even were you to spend eternity in Hell.

After He had broken the bread and given it to His disciples Christ took the cup and gave it to them saying "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." Again we have the same kind of phrase as before; "poured out" like a drink offering on the altar signifying his violent death; "for many" signifying that this death was something that he did not for Himself, but for others, for You, "for the forgiveness of sins"; signifying that this death was the atonement, the only thing that could reconcile us to the Father from whom we were separated by sin.

Truly, as Thomas Watson put it, the Lord’s Supper is a "visible sermon, wherein Christ crucified is set before us". In the Lord’s Supper we see salvation exhibited in the one perfect sacrifice of Christ. But the Lord’s Supper is so much more than just a display of the incredible salvation by which Christ saved His people. The memorial aspects of the supper wherein we are reminded of Christ and His completed work on the Cross for us are indeed important, but the Lord’s supper is so much more than a merely a commemoration.

For those who come to it in faith, the Lord’s Supper is a gracious gift of God to man, a means of grace, a divinely appointed means of strengthening the faith of believers, and sign and seal of the Covenant mercies of God.

Let me try to unpack that a little further for you. We understand how Bread and Wine are a means of physical nourishment to our body. We eat and drink and are thus strengthened, thus our bodies gain energy and grow through them. In the same way we are spiritually nourished by the Lord’s Supper, our faith is strengthened and through this and other means we grow in grace.

But even as we talk about the Lord’s Supper as means of Grace, and as a sign and seal, it’s important that we dismiss some of the misconceptions about the Lord’s Supper.

When Christ says in Matthew 26:26 "this is my body" he did not literally mean as Roman Catholics believe that the bread he was giving to the Apostles, and which you eat in the Lord’s Supper, had been changed into his physical body or that the wine had literally become blood. Certainly that wouldn’t have occurred to the Apostles any more than they would have thought that Jesus was saying he was a plant when he told them "I am the true vine" in John 15:1. No they would have understood, as we should understand, that Christ was telling them that the bread and the wine represented His Body and His Blood.

Miracles are by definition self-authenticating, when Christ turned water into wine, it looked, smelled, and tasted, like the finest wine. The attempt to persuade people that something that looks, tastes, and smells like bread and wine is really flesh and blood is a sham, and no less of a sham than the bogus faith healers who attempt to persuade people that they have been healed when all of the physical evidence says otherwise. Christ is indeed present in the Bread and the Wine, but He is present spiritually. So when believers receive and eat and drink the elements in the Lord’s Supper they are receiving and feeding upon Christ crucified but spiritually and by faith.

It’s also important to note that the Lord’s supper is only a benefit to believers, to those who have been united to Christ by saving faith. The grace that is conferred to believers is not some sort of automatic benefit that is conferred by some sort of inherent power in the elements themselves. Rather it is by the work of the Holy Spirit working through the elements to the benefit of worthy receivers.

To those who partake of the elements, but who do not believe, those who have not been saved, such as the unbelievers to whom the Reverend Morton regularly gives the Lord’s Supper the elements are not a benefit but a curse. Paul warns us in 1 Corinthians 11:29 that "anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself." And that it was for this reason that many in the Corinthian congregation were weak and sick, and that a number had died. Elsewhere, in

1 Cor. 10:21 Paul warns "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons." Either the Lord’s supper will be a means of blessing to believers or a means of judgment to unbelievers.

It is for this reason that a godly Pastor will take care to fence the Lord’s table, before giving out the elements. He will warn those who are not trusting in Christ alone, or who are too young to be able to discern the elements, that this meal is not for them. A godly pastor certainly will certainly never harm people by encouraging unbelievers to eat and drink judgment unto themselves.

What if you doubt your own faith? Should you come to the table? Well in answering the question

"Who are to come unto the table of the Lord?" the Heidelburg catechism answers:

Those who are displeased with themselves for their sins, yet trust that these are forgiven them, and that their remaining infirmity is covered by the passion and death of Christ; who also desire more and more to strengthen their faith and amend their life. But the impenitent and hypocrites eat and drink judgment to themselves."

The Lord’s supper is for anyone who can honestly say "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief" because these elements are a means by which the Lord strengthens the faith of those who, like the Apostles, may waver or stumble in their faith.

The elements are signs and seals to all believers who partake of them both weak and strong:

• They signify to you the Lord’s death
• They signify the believers participation in the crucified Christ
• They signify Christ as giving life, strength, and joy to the soul
• They signify the union of believers with one another, the spiritual unity that we have in Christ

This Sacrament is also a seal:

• It is a seal to the participant of the great love of Christ revealed in the fact that HE surrendered Himself to a humiliating and painful death for you
• It assures the believing participant that he personally was the object of incomparable love
• It gives you personal assurance that all the promises of the covenant and the riches of the gospel are yours because of what Christ has done
• It assures you that the blessings of salvation are in your actual possession
• It is also a reciprocal seal, by coming to the table you profess your belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior and you pledge your life to Him in obedience to His commandments

Look to Christ, you see Him in the elements of the Supper he instituted on the eve of His crucifixion. In the Bread and the Wine, the Body and the Blood, you see His love for you, you see His sacrifice for you. If you are would partake in the supper he offers then you must believe. You must not come otherwise, lest it be to you a means of judgment. So believe in Christ – believe and be saved.

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