Why don't we start with prayer? Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, Lord, how we thank you for your love that you have displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and how you have set him forth as the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but the sins of the whole world. We thank you that in him and through him we can know you for you're the only true God and to know you is eternal life and Jesus Christ whom you sent. We thank you for the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts through faith. and who has lifted up our blind eyes, giving them light and also giving us a sight of the glory of our Savior. Lord, it's our great shame and folly that we so often live below the benefits that you have provided for us and purchased for us in Christ Jesus. We pray that this morning as we spend some time considering and meditating on the Lord's Supper, that it would fill our hearts with joy and faith, that it would prepare us also to partake here in a few moments as we gather for worship soon. Lord, please help us to have understanding, humility, faith, and love. These things we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so again to give you a little sense of where we are, we are working through the rather organic outline proposition, Heritage Presbyterian Church is a Christian Reformed Church happens to be Presbyterian. We have looked at principles of the gospel, what is the gospel, how do we understand it, what's the gospel's gracious declaration, what are the gospel's gracious demands. We've then looked at different principles of Reformed theology, we've looked at God's sovereignty and salvation, we have looked at God's sovereignty and salvation, we looked at reformed worship, which is the purpose of salvation. We looked then at a principle or bastion of reformed life and piety, that is the Lord's day. Last week we looked at baptism, which is where we are now into the category of church. And so just again to remember, it's very important that we embed our sacramental theology in the category, very self-consciously, of ecclesiology. Where we go awry is when sacramental theology bleeds into the realm of soteriology, soteriology being that study of things pertaining to salvation. The sacraments are not causes of salvation. We do not obtain the grace of justification or adoption through the sacraments, but God does bless the sacraments as a means, as our catechism teaches us, of salvation to the elect. And that salvation, again, remember, we can define the term salvation more broadly than just being saved from your sins. Salvation includes justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification, and so God uses baptism and the Lord's Supper to bring His people to glory. Baptism, as we looked at last week, is the rite, r-i-t-e, the rite of initiation into the covenant community. The Lord's Supper is this right of nourishment, growth, and continuation in the covenant community. And so what are some different names that you all know the Lord's Supper by? Other than the Lord's Supper, what are some other words that you might hear used to refer to it in the realm of Christianity? We have communion. That is one of the most common ones. Any others? The Lord's Table. One of the reasons it's important to talk about the Lord's Table, even though I'll read later on when we actually come to the table this morning, the writer of the Hebrews makes a point to say that we have an altar that we eat from that those who serve in the tent have no right. This is not an altar, this is a table, and this is important because it's a feast that Jesus Christ has spread, not another sacrifice that the church is offering up. We'll talk about that later. So we have the Lord's table. We have communion. We have the Lord's Supper, of course. There's another one that is used commonly. Go ahead, Boaz. The Eucharist. Now, usually, the Eucharist is a term used in more high church sacramentalist or sacerdotalist churches. I'll have a word about that terminology in just a moment. The word itself is not wrong. Eucharist is Thanksgiving. It's a cup of blessing, a cup of grace. And so when Paul says, the Lord's Supper is not the cup of blessing which we bless, it's not a bad term, it's just kind of picked up a lot of bad baggage along the way. So generally, again, we want to be analytical, as Bill Shishko would always tell me, and not spastic. We don't need to overcorrect away from things just because the Roman Catholic Church does it or uses the terminology. Now, when I was in college, I went to a Baptist college, and I came out a very convinced Presbyterian. And one of the reasons that kind of set me off studying this was we had a number of papers presented in a church history class that I was a part of. in my undergraduate, and there was a young lady whose last name was Myers, but she had no relation to me, gave a paper about infant baptism, and she basically said her arguments were that we ought not to baptize children because the Bible doesn't command us to and Roman Catholics do it. And I found that argument to be very unsatisfactory, but that actually is what God used to propel me to go study these things. Now also, Paul Washer, if you know Paul Washer, a great preacher of the gospel, thankful for him, a godly man, he does have a sermon in which he refers to infant baptism as the golden calf of the Reformation. which hurts my heart. So I differ from the venerable preacher in that respect. But anyway, sorry, that was a tangent about baptism. We need to understand our sacramental theology. So, that's where I was. We don't just not do things because Roman Catholics might do things. Now, they baptize their children for completely the wrong reason. Now, let me talk a little bit this morning about about the Lord's Supper, I'd ask you to turn first to Matthew 26. Matthew 26 verses 26 to 29. We have more texts describing for us the institution of the Lord's Supper than we actually do describing baptism. We find this in the narrative context of Jesus leading up to his crucifixion. When we consider the Lord's Table, the Lord's Supper, we always need to remember it comes in very close proximity, indeed, even on the eve of his crucifixion. And so, the Lord's Supper is the sacrament. This is why our catechism calls it the sacrament of His body and blood, of His death. And there's a unique theme to His own sufferings here. In Matthew 26, we find these words. Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, He broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for their forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. And a couple of things I'd like to point out to you from this text that help us to form a sacramental theology that's more embedded in the text itself and not just built on church tradition, and tradition's not always bad. What had they observed immediately before the institution of the Lord's Supper? and we have the Passover. And this is the last Passover that ever needed to be observed, and it needed to be observed. Jesus is fulfilling all those things leading up to the time where He would consummate His obedience through His death on the cross. And so as He Himself, this is a striking image, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, is actually eating that roasted lamb, that was a picture of Him. this lamb whose blood had been shed, this lamb who had been roasted, by the way. If you ever get a chance, go to Sermon Audio, download the sermon ascribed to Charles Spurgeon. It's a Charles Spurgeon sermon, but he's not the one who's actually reading it because, you know, he died before recordings. But it's a great, great reading of it. Christ, Our Passover is the sermon. It's an excellent sermon, an excellent Excellent topology, opening up Charles Spurgeon, opening up all the ways that the Passover lamb, or many of the ways the Passover lamb pointed forward to the Lord Jesus Christ. Lots of imagery, really powerfully affected me years ago. Anyway, Jesus is eating that lamb. After that meal is finished, note this, it's finished, At that juncture, he institutes the New Covenant meal. Now, many people will say that the Lord's Supper is the New Covenant Passover. And it is that, but not that exclusively, I believe. There were many meals in the Old Covenant. There would be meals when someone would bring the peace offering, for example, where they would sit then and eat in the presence of God. You had the table of showbread when the priests were eating every Sabbath in the presence of God. And so this liturgical meal, which the most sacred of them was the Passover, but what the Lord is doing here is he is marking that transition, and all those meals are passing away, and this now is the new covenant meal. Now, these words have caused great division within the church, not only the Roman Catholic Church, but sadly, in the early Reformation church, these words, this is my body. and this is my blood. This is where we'll talk a little bit later about the Lutheran view and some of the historical developments, but what's really sad is how this became an occasion for great dissension in the church. And when we look at things, we need to understand that for Jesus to speak about the bread as his body and the wine as his blood, to speak metaphorically is not to speak in an empty, meaningless way. Can you think of any other statements where Jesus said, I am this? I am the vine. What Jesus is saying, and what's another one? I'm the door. What else? I'm the way. I'm the light of the world. I am the good shepherd. There are times where he's allowed to speak metaphorically because the imagery is communicating the reality. The imagery is not the reality. The imagery communicates the reality. Jesus is not literally the vine. He's not literally the door, but he is really the door and he really is the vine. We must be engrafted into him. This is where, well I'll talk about that when we get to the Lutheran view a little bit later. And so remember Jesus is attributing or equating his own body symbolized by the bread, which if you pull out that imagery it's so Rich, isn't it? It's so clear that just as we need bread, before there were gluten allergies and all these things, we need Christ. We need our daily bread. We need Christ. Just as the bread is torn, Jesus' body is torn, as the bread is consumed, so we need to consume Jesus by faith. And so also with the blood and the wine, the wine being the blood of the grapes and the imagery in the Bible of crushing, crushing the grapes. There's no more striking imagery, I think, in all the Bible of the wrath of God than in Revelation 14, when the angel thrusts in his sickle and he harvests the earth. And oh, it's just amazing and almost awesome in its real term. These clusters are thrown into the winepress of the wrath of God, and it's trampled outside the city, and the blood that comes out is 1,600 stadia, okay? That's, I think if I remember correctly when I was preaching to you, that's from here to Greenville, as deep as a horse's bridle. That's a lot of blood, and the picture is this, what's coming out of these grapes is the blood of those who are subject to the wrath of God. Jesus took that judgment for his people so that we're not trampled in the winepress of God's wrath. And I remember Isaiah 63 is another image here when the question says, who is this? He was coming from Edom in Basra with his garments dyed in blood. And he's talking about, I've trampled the winepress of the wrath of God. And I remember Nick Batzig, my good friend and early disciple, when he said, he said, Mike, you have to be covered in Christ's blood or Christ is going to be covered in your blood. That's a striking image. And so, this is the picture, the bread of the covenant given, Jesus' body, the blood of the covenant given, Jesus' blood, the wine. Here's what we see here. Now, another part that goes along with the Lord's Supper, I don't think I'm getting too far ahead of myself when I say this. No, I'll get to that later. Self-examination that comes later, so I'll just skip by that. So, this is our narrative text. There are parallels in Mark, I believe, chapter 14, Luke 22. 1 Corinthians 11 gives us a fuller picture. This is what Paul teaches us as those institutions that were given unto him. Paul was not in this room. We can deduce from this that when the Lord Jesus showed himself to the Apostle Paul as the Apostle, one born as one out of due time, that these things he received directly from the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what was delivered to him. This is an enduring sign of the church and one that we should hold dear. Now, I talked a fair amount about good and necessary consequence last week. We need to remember that the principles that we derive from these texts of the Lord's Supper and baptism, sacramental theology in particular, it's heavy, heavy, heavy in good and necessary consequence. And so, you're not going to find a lot of things explicitly stated. For example, when we talk about, well, I'll get to self-examination later. I keep going back to that. So, that's a quick introduction. I want to talk a little bit about some historical background to the Lord's Supper. Now in the ancient church, when they observed the Lord Sable, that is in 1st century Rome, 2nd century Rome, do you know what the accusation was against the Christians as the atheists in the Roman Empire? Do you know what they were accused of? Cannibalism. And this makes sense, because in John 6, Jesus says, unless you eat my flesh, unless you drink my blood, you can't have any life. And so, the natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God because they're spiritually discerned. And so, they were accused of this, it was strange, and yet they were bearing reproach for Christ's sake. Now, during this time, this was actually one of the things they called love feasts. They probably had basic fellowship as well, but I think in ancient times this was referred to as such. Now, one of the problems and one of the things, if you ever take the time or have the chance to read more of the ancient fathers, the first, second, third, fourth, even fifth century writers of the church, you'll find that very, very quickly, sadly, very quickly, the early church slipped into bad ecclesiology, that means a bad order of the church, and also bad sacramental theology. So for example, We ought to appeal to and utilize Augustine for many things. Augustine was probably the most influential and important Christian in the first millennium, aside from Athanasius. Athanasius had a different kind of role, but in terms of prolific writing and thinking, Augustine is the guy. But Augustine is not good on the sacraments, and so you need to be very careful. I wrote a paper on Augustine's doctrine of baptism, and the language he uses then is language we would not use now. Now, that doesn't mean we throw them out. It doesn't mean we also replicate them. We just need to understand that theology develops over time, it's refined, and so we need to guard against that slide. There was also a lot of mysticism in the early church, not just error, but mysticism. And one of the things that actually added to the kind of air of secrecy and even cannibalism is that in the early church, people who were being prepared for baptism, anybody know what they were called? The people who over time were being discipled and prepared for baptism? The word was catechumens. They're called catechumens. That's where we derive our term catechism. They're being taught and prepared to come to the Lord's table. Now, in the early days when they would, taking from 1 Corinthians 11 and not wanting to admit people to the table that ought not to come, they would actually dismiss people. They would send people out from the church who were not to take the Lord's Supper. If they were not baptized, they were not members. And so, it would kind of add this air of mystery. to things. And again, when you speak historically, I'm talking about long periods of time in a single sentence, so there probably were deviations of this. But this is some of what added to the difficulty in the early church. And so, take that as just a quick warning. You've got to be careful when we talk about sacramental theology as we read through it. It's very easy to slip into error. Now, here's where I meant to talk about last week, but I'll talk briefly about this week in terms of sacramental theology proper. First of all, you need to have a phrase that you understand, it's in your mind, and it's called sacramental union. Sacramental union is a term that refers to the very close relationship between the sign and the thing signified. So in baptism, the water is the sign, the thing signified is regeneration by the Spirit, engrafting into Christ, washing of your sins, being identified with God, with His name, all of that. There is a very close relationship between the two. There is not an absolute identity, meaning the sign is not the thing signified. The same thing with the Lord's Supper. There's a sacramental union. This is my body, this is my blood. Now, in the history of the church, there are two basic errors that people have fallen into, one on each side. The first is that word I used a minute ago, sacerdotalism. S-A-C-E-R-D-O-T-A-L-ism. And the great error of the sacerdotal churches is this confusion. conflagration, if that's the right word, the conflation of the sign itself and the actual reality represented. They equate the two. The fault here is moving away from what the Word of God instructs us in, moving away from the necessity of faith in the hearer, and focusing more so on the actual action performed. And so your sacerdotal churches or false churches, false church would certainly be a Roman Catholic church. You're going to find different pockets of your Eastern Orthodox churches, and they have all their iconography that goes along with it. You have your high church Anglicans, Episcopalians, and to some degree Lutherans, and so you want to be careful. On the other side you have, to keep my alliteration going, you have sacerdotalism on the one hand, and on the other hand you have what I've referred to as simple subjectivism. Simple subjectivism. What sacerdotalism does is it over-objectivizes the sacrament. It makes it the reality in itself, and all you need to do is actually participate in that reality. And it takes out the necessity of subjective, that is individual faith, in the reality that's presented. Simple subjectivism, which is what you're going to find in most kind of evangelical non-denom or Baptist churches, and some Baptist churches are far better, your Reformed Baptist churches. The simple subjectivism is, it's simply, I'm remembering these things, it's a ceremony, or I'm doing this as just, it's what we do, and so the focus is on the individual. And the way we escape both of those errors is remembering that sacramental union, the grace that is conferred and applied through the sacrament, can only actually be obtained by those three ingredients, if you remember. The three ingredients being the blessing of Christ, the work of the Spirit, and what's the third one? Faith. Faith in the recipient. This is how we avoid both problems. This is where we see that wonderful convergence of the objective truths taken hold of subjectively, individually by the believer in the context of the covenant community. And so this is where the errors usually flow from, one of those two things. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense. Any questions or anything while I grab a sip of coffee? All right, so we've talked a little bit already about Roman Catholic deterioration when it comes to the sacramental theology. And there are a number of things, again, where I'm going to just, in two sentences or six, talk about the decline here. And this is a decline that happens over the course of a thousand years, so it's impossible just to explain it in its completion. But this is the great fault of Rome, is the confusion between the sign and thing signified. It becomes the reality. Through the deterioration of literacy, through the increase of the magisterial priesthood, that is, they're above the laity, through the movement away from the scriptures. Even through the commitment to continuing the Mass in Latin, and then also through the imagination of the writers within the Roman Church, these things began to deteriorate. And so the ceremonialism is what took the center. Not true, spirit wrought, faith obtained communion. And what this eventually led to in the history of the church was this wicked heresy called transubstantiation with respect to the Mass in particular. Now I want you to understand something. The Roman Catholic Mass is not the Lord's Supper. The Roman Catholic Mass is not the Lord's Supper. This is actually something that our forefathers and mothers in the faith died for. They would not observe these things. The Roman Catholic Church is not just a Christian church that does things a little bit differently, but as some of my classes that I've been teaching should understand, is that the Roman Catholic Church is what Martin Lloyd-Jones calls the accursed religion of and. They add to the Gospel in every conceivable way, and therefore pervert the Gospel in every conceivable way. And if you study their sacramental system, from baptism, through confirmation and penance and the Mass, all the way through their Holy Order's marriage and their last rites, what they have done is they've substituted the sacramental dispensary of the church for Jesus Christ. They've made the corrupt harlot church the Savior. And for that reason, if you're not in the Catholic Church, there's no possibility for salvation because you're cut off from the dispensary of grace. Now, yes, that's a bit of a simplistic statement, but this is really getting down to the root of the problem. Now, the Mass is part and parcel of this wicked institution. And I'll just read for you, it's a very good summary here, I'll read for you in the Westminster Confession, chapter 29, paragraph 6. It says, the doctrine which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ's body and blood, which is commonly called transubstantiation. They say, by consecration of a priest or by any other way, is repugnant. Repugnant. It's repugnant not to Scripture alone, but even to common sense and reason. It overthroweth the nature of the sacrament, and hath been and is the cause of manifold superstitions, yea, of gross idolatries." And if you know Roman Catholics who are committed, not just not, well actually no, if you know any Roman Catholic who's interacted with the Mass, you'll know this is exactly true, 300 and some years after it was written. And so, remember this, it's not the Lord's Supper. It is a cup of demons. It's false. Anybody know the term hocus pocus? You know, that's the magical words. Did you know that that term comes from this phrase? In Latin, the priest would say, hoc es corpus meum. This is my body. And through these words of the priest, by the power invested in the priesthood, they were granted power then to change the bread and wine into actual body and blood, though it keeps the principles or the properties of bread and wine. And so Dr. Piper would teach me. He was converted out of the Roman Catholic Church. He was taught when he was a child, or when he was in the Catholic Church, that when they took the mass, the little wafer, they weren't to chew it. They had to put it in their mouth and just let it dissolve lest they bite into the body of Christ. This also, the superstition, led to that great sin of denying the laity the cup. If any of you have ever seen the newer version of the Martin Luther film, you know the guy with the nice monk haircut. You remember the opening scene where he has his first mass and he spills? spills the cup. This was a horrific failure in the Roman Catholic Church. If you spilled the consecrated cup, you're spilling the literal blood of Jesus on the floor. Now we ought not to be careless after we come to the elements, but we need to understand these things and turn from them. So any questions about the Roman Catholic view or anything of that nature? Luther objected to these things. He reformed these things, but he didn't go far enough. And so Luther developed, and then his followers, I think, kind of kind of mess it up a little bit more, I guess. This view in what the Lutheran Church now is referred to as consubstantiation. Now, consubstantiation, I have to tell you, is just a terribly confusing idea. Now, there is a section about this. I don't know if this is dealt with exactly in the in the catechism, I don't think it is actually. The Lutheran view flows from a very strange view of their Christology, okay, their doctrine of Christ. And what they, anyway, time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all my time away. The Lutheran view, They believe that in the union of Christ's natures, the human and divine nature, they have a confusion of how that works. We have a term, well, there's a term I've been taught and it's mine now, the communicatio idumatum, which refers to the relationship between the two natures of Christ. There's an easier one to remember that I've taught you before, the hypostatic union. This is the term that we use to refer to the perfect union, not confusion, composition, or conversion of the two natures, but the union of the two natures in the one person of Christ. The human nature retains its own human natural properties. The divine nature retains its divine properties. The Lutheran view of consubstantiation, which holds to the fact that Christ's actual human nature is to be eaten and ingested, essentially, in the sacrament, that his actual physical presence is, he says things like, in, over, around, and under, but not actually the bread and wine. Okay, so it's almost transubstantiation, but not, thus the term, consubstantiation. And Luther actually, I wrote a paper on this in seminary, he actually wrote that we could seek Christ's human presence, His actual human nature presence, in a rock or in a rope, but God's not commanded us to seek it there. And he didn't mind that being really weird, even though it was. But what he says is God has commanded us to seek His presence here. Now, what this also betrays, not only is it a misunderstanding that Jesus is not ubiquitous, that means everywhere present in his human nature. He has a local presence that is his actual human body, but in his divine nature, he is always and everywhere present. We need to understand that. But we also need to understand that for Jesus to have a real presence with us, real does not necessitate physical. For Christ to be spiritually present with us, we don't have to see Him, although we will one day. Spiritual can also mean real. Spiritual doesn't mean fake. And so, this gets us to the Reformation understanding as we go back to some of these principles. The Reformers, especially Calvin and those after him in his tradition, they went back to the Scriptures, they studied the Word of God, they weren't appropriating Aristotelian philosophy, which is what really drove the Roman Catholic Church. They did shed the encumbrances of Roman Catholic error. What they wanted to understand was, how do we rightly understand the Lord's Table? How do we approach it? And how does the believer, not just the priesthood, but the believer actually benefit from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper? Now, I've talked to you briefly about the Lutheran view. If you wrote notes, you can just draw an arrow and put it under Protestant views. Luther's great nemesis in this debate was Ulrich Zwingli, who was a godly man, a very capable reformer. And this is really what grieved a lot of reformers in the day, and actually some even as we think about it now, this division. There was a great debate between Luther and Zwingli, and I think they really talked past one another. And also, those who now hold to what would be called a Zwinglian view, which is more the memorial view, have a lower view of the Lord's Supper than Zwingli himself actually did. And so we need to remember, we just need to be careful as we think about the Lord's Supper. Now, that's your quick historical overview. Again, short shrift. Church history professors would just roll in their graves. But that's a quick and dirty. Any comments or questions on that as we move forward? All right, let's talk about understanding the Lord's Table. I have for you two major points here as we think about what the Lord's Table is, as the Lord's Supper is. It's a confession, but it's also something integral to the covenant. What we confess, I want you to understand something unique and remarkable about the Lord's Table. In God's order of things, in Christ's establishment of His church, He has called and gifted and equipped men to preach the gospel, and men, males exclusively, to do so. But provocatively, As Paul is talking to the Corinthian church in chapter 11, right after all this discussion about head coverings and prophesying and women being quiet and all this stuff, he says that when you all take the Lord's Supper, you preach the Lord's death until He comes. And so actually, as a whole, the covenant community, as they come, men and women, and those admitted to it, boys and girls, when they take hold of Christ in the Lord's Supper, there is an official, formal, kerux, that's the Greek word for the real technical preaching, there is a real proclamation of the death of Christ. And so the Lord's Supper is a confession of the church. It's a confession that Jesus Christ is the one who died for us some 2,000 years ago. It's a confession of our obedience that we're coming to commune with Him by faith. Now, it is a celebration, remembering the efficacy of His death and the virtues of His death. But there are many in the church who want to come to the Lord's table And in an effort not to be morose, which is good, they always want to focus on celebration. Like, we should be happy when we come to the Lord's table. And there should be a joy in our hearts. But there's a sobriety. There's a solemnity to the Lord's table. Because, as our larger catechism teaches us, we ought to be thinking and meditating affectionately upon Christ's sufferings. We ought to be confessing our sins. Now, we don't only wallow in our sins, and that's the gist of those who want to be more celebratory, like, hey, don't think about your sins, think about the gift of life in Christ. And we should, but we should strike our hearts and confess our sins and hate our sins and turn from them. So as you take the Lord's Supper, we're thinking here about Jesus Christ as the only Savior of sinners, the one who's the real God-man who instituted the table. We're thinking about the horror and the beauty of the cross of Calvary. What else should we remember in the Lord's Table? We should remember in our confession the character and the covenant of God. We should remember His mercy, His steadfast love, His humility, Christ's humility in drawing near to us and in dying for us. We need to remember His love. This is a love feast. It's a feast that we take because of the love of Christ. You need to remember that the feast itself exists because of Christ's giving of himself, and the Word of God tells us that in this is love, not that we first loved God, but that he loved us and gave his Son to be a propitiation for our sins. We need also to remember when you come to the Lord's table, to come remembering the priority of grace in salvation, just as we remember that in baptism. Who established baptism? It's Jesus Christ, according to the appointment of God the Father. Who established the Lord's Supper? It's Jesus Christ. It's not an invention of man, and man therefore must not pervert it. God did these things. God has given us these things. This is a picture of His grace. We don't come near to God first. He draws near to us, gives us life, and calls us to come to himself. We also confess. There are a lot of things we could talk about, but again, I need to get through some of these things. The other thing that we confess is there's an anticipation element in the Lord's table. It says here that as often as we do this, we proclaim his death for how long? until he comes." I don't know if I've told you this story. I've told the Ropers this. But Natalie Ellen died July 5th of 2014. No, 15. 2015. It'll be six years this year. And she died on the Lord's Day evening, Sunday night, and that Thursday was her funeral, so if my math is correct, 6, 7, 8, 9, July 9th. And then on July 12th, we had the Lord's Supper in God's providence. At that time, we were having the Lord's Supper in the second evening and fourth morning. And some of you may remember, some of you don't, that when Natalie Olin was diagnosed in August of 14, they drove up to New Jersey very quickly to get treatment for her at Sloan Kettering there in New York City. And for many months this family that we love was gone, and I was able to travel up and we admitted Natalie Ellen to the church. We had a small publicly called service where she professed her faith and she was given the Lord's table. And that was the only time I was able to administer the Lord's table to her. And after her funeral, and then that Lord's Day evening the next week, I remember going down, we only had the center aisle then, I remember passing the tray down the roper's aisle, or the roper's row, and I remember thinking this, I wish, I wish Natalie Allen was here to take this. Ah, but then I was thunderstruck with the reality that she doesn't need it anymore. Because this that we take in anticipation of seeing Christ, and she doesn't have everything that Christ has promised along with all the saints yet. They don't get to inherit it apart from us. I'm thinking, we take this because what we have is partial. And what she sees now, and what all the saints see now, actually does away with the necessity of the sacrament, they have the reality in Christ. And then when we are resurrected or glorified and or glorified, the Lord's Supper will be no more but the wedding supper of the Lamb, no longer merely thinking about his sufferings and his expectation to come, but the reality. And that's just rich theology. It's good stuff to remember. And so there is an anticipatory element because we're living, we're still engaged. We're not married yet all the way, if you can take that analogy. We don't have all the privileges of the full, full, full body, soul, new heavens, new earth presence with the Lord Jesus. The covenant nature of the Lord's Supper, I'm going to be a lot quicker here, it reminds us that we need to respond as those who are brought to Jesus Christ in covenant union with Him. There's an obligation to the Lord's Table, and those who come to the Lord's Table then have an obligation to follow Him and to obey Him. Does anybody remember what I mentioned last week about the sacramentum and where that term really came from? Someone remember last week what I said about that? The term sacrament was something that actually arose out of the Roman military world, where there was an oath of loyalty that would be taken, at least especially by the officers, to follow their general. And so there is an element here of obligation and obedience to our covenant Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. There are blessings as part of the covenant. There are blessings to come and to be admitted and to enjoy. And then there are warnings. And this is why we fence the table. Remember, if you remember last week, I mentioned briefly that until a family in the old covenant was circumcised on the male circumcised and they professed the God of Abraham, they could participate in temple worship. They could offer gifts and sacrifices, but they could not take the Passover until they had expressed and confessed their loyalty and obedience to the God of Israel. And so also there's a parallel that until you're actually baptized, part of a church, and actually walking in that obedience and confessing your faith in Christ, you're not to be admitted to the Lord's table. That's one of the reasons why when we fence the table here, we say if you're not a member of Christ's church, you're not to come. We could talk a lot more about that. When you come, you need to know the Lord Jesus Christ, you need to have a working knowledge of who He is, you need to have actually living in a personal and vital faith in Him, and also living with a desire, weak as it may be, but true, a desire for holiness. So this is some of the covenant nature of the Lord's Table. Now let's close talking here briefly about participating in the Lord's Table. When we talk about sacraments, there's one phrase here, one little term that we need to know that is the elements of the Lord's Table, the elements. We have an elements in baptism. What is the element? What's the thing we use in baptism? We use water. The thing we use in the Lord's Supper is? Bread and grape juice. No. Bread and wine. Now, we're in the South, we're in America. Nobody used grape juice before Prohibition in America, just so you know. Okay? Like, a hundred years ago is when we really started seeing Welsh's come on the scene and, hey, let's use grape juice because alcohol's bad. Alcohol is not bad. Sinners are bad. Okay? Sinners sin. Sinners get drunk. Okay, Psalm 104, it teaches us that God gave us wine and there's a purpose. What's the purpose that God invested in wine? It makes our hearts glad. So you might think, well, what if it affects me? Well, it should affect you. That's part of the purpose. It makes your heart glad. Now, you shouldn't make your heart drunk. There's a difference. And just so you know, there's a parallel logic in Psalm 104. He's given bread to the eater, or grass to the animals, bread to the eater, seed for the sower, oil has an effect as well to make our face shine, and wine to make our hearts glad. There's a purpose. We don't want to abuse that purpose. Just like, it's interesting, there are a lot of people who are very, and I don't want to be overly offensive to anybody, but there are a lot of people who might be very reticent to use wine because of all the problems, but I wonder, is there the same kind of effect about makeup? Because there is an oil anointing element, and there is a lot of vanity in America. There's probably as much vanity as there is drunkenness. Something to consider. It's just less apparent, isn't it? And yes, nobody's gotten in a car crash. Well, actually. I'll bet you people have gotten a car crash for putting on their makeup or shaving in the car. But anyway, that aside. Bread and wine. Now we do use grape juice because there are cases of conscience here. They're still the fruit of the grape. I think it's important. I was once asked if we could use cranberry wine in the Lord's Table. I said, no, we need to use the fruit of the vine, grapes. I don't think cranberries come from vines, do they? Where do cranberries come from? Are they bushes? Bush's thank you agricultural people. All right. What's that? Yeah, yeah, we don't need bog wine. We want good wine. Good Pasadena, Napa Valley, good stuff. Okay, anyway. Bread and wine. Understand that we don't want to conflate the signs and the things signified. So, very briefly, what are the things signified in the Lord's Supper? What is set before us in the Lord's Supper? His actual body and blood, but what about that body and blood? What was the purpose of it? What did he endure? Wrath, his sufferings, his actual death. These things are set before us. Now, for what purpose did Jesus die? This is how the gospel is just beautifully summarized and encapsulated in the Lord's Sable. For what purpose did Jesus die? Why do we need his death? We need his death for the forgiveness of sins. What does the forgiveness, now the forgiveness of sins is not the telos, it's not the end of Christ's work. What is the purpose of our sins being forgiven? What's the goal? Say again? Yes, that's the right answer. But His glory in our communion with Him, right? It's His glory as He forgives sinners and brings them into communion, and what do we call the Lord's table? Call it communion. Communion as we, as forgiven sinners, draw near to God and commune with Jesus Christ. That's the gospel pictured. You see, it's more than just remembering what he did. It's entering into the Christ-appointed actual communion with him through the means that he has commanded. It's a wonderful gift, and we need to remember this. It's a picture of that union with Christ, and this is where that physical, earthy imagery needs to really grip your heart and help your mind. Think about it. As literally as that bread and wine, as you take it into your body, it becomes part of you. It sustains you just as Christ needs to sustain you by His Spirit. It becomes part of you just as we become united to Jesus Christ through faith by His Spirit. These things are set before us in the Lord's Table. I did want to talk a bit about preparation for the Lord's Table. You have, oh good, you have six points there. You can think about those. I would just point you to the larger catechism to think through those a little bit more carefully. The one note I want to tell you about number four, self-examination, the Lord's Supper. I always wondered, actually, until I preached through the Gospel of Mark, where biblically Do we have an injunction to examine our own hearts before the Lord's table? And J.C. Ryle actually really helped me with this. If you look in the gospel in Mark, and I believe it's the same thing here in Matthew, yeah, something striking happens right before the administration or institution of the Lord's Supper. Remember what Jesus says? One of you is going to betray me. And what did every single disciple do? It turned their thoughts inward, and what do they ask? Is it I? Is it I? And Jesus, in His wisdom, says, you need to turn the accusing thoughts inward. Search your heart. Am I the one who will deny Christ? And He brought them to that self-examination. So there's a narrative, biblically authorized foundation for self-examination. But even after that, this is what's very important, because we have too many people who self-excommunicate themselves. Now, there are times that people are presumptuous and come when they ought not to. But there are too many people who think, oh, I've sinned, I shouldn't come to the Lord's table. No, no, no. You've sinned, confess your sins. If it's a sin serious enough that you ought not to be taking the Lord's table, you need to confess that to the elders. You need to be talking about it. You need to expose it. Jesus turns their thoughts inward. Now, I want to talk very briefly about this, very quickly, because we'll have participation. We've talked about these things. I want to talk a little bit, it's not in your notes, about paedo-communion, because we have like four minutes. Paedo-communion is an error. It's popped up here and there in the church. It's something a little bit more popular now. And the logic of paedo-communion kind of goes like this. Baptized children are members of the covenant community, aka the church. Amen? I agree with that, of course. The Lord's Supper is a means of grace for members of the covenant community, also known as the church. Is that true? Yes. we ought and need to utilize all the means of grace for all the members of the church. And this is where you have to start saying, eh, let's think about this a little bit. And therefore, in the thinking of the paedo-communionist, as members of the covenant community, and as those in need of the means of grace, children ought to have the privilege of participating in the Lord's Supper, even as little ones. As soon as they're able physically to digest the bread and wine, they should be taking it. There's a very powerful and emotional appeal that proponents of this will make. They will say, does the Lord's Supper feed God's people, yes or no? The answer is yes. Why are you starving God's lambs? That's the question. How would you respond to that appeal to the heart of a mother, heart of a father, heart of a pastor? I say, it's not the only way Jesus feeds his sheep. It's not. A kind and tender-hearted mother knows what her children need, okay? I remember actually some years ago having to tell a couple, not in the church, no, you're six months old. I know you think that you're six months old is this great progity, progity? No, what's the word? Progity, progity, a child progity. Prodigy. Yeah, that's what I meant to say the whole time. I know you think that your child is this great child prodigy, but six-month-olds can't digest meat. They just can't. So don't give it to them. And lo and behold, they stop giving them meat. Guess what? Their stomachs stop hurting. How about that? The Lord Jesus knows what His children need. His children are baptized, brought into the covenant community, absolutely. They need to be catechized, they need to be taught to listen to worship, listen to sermons, love to sing, and then They need to be taught, you, my son, you, my daughter, you must take hold of Jesus. And when in knowledge of who Christ is, an understanding of what He has done, then as they profess their own faith in the Lord Jesus, not just the faith of their parents, then they're admitted to the table. And if we don't do that, What aspect is being eliminated from the Lord's Supper? What is needed again? What are our three ingredients? What are three ingredients to make sacraments effectual to the elect for salvation? The blessing of Christ the work of the and faith and understanding faith in the individual. Now, baptism is administered in the community of faith and is to be taught to the children. It's a foundation. And then the Lord's Supper is distinct in that it's one of confirmation and continuation in the covenant. It's a lot more I'd like to say, but time is up. So any questions? All right, very good. I didn't leave you as much time today. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the great gifts of the sacraments in your church. We thank you for the Lord's Supper. We pray that as we come this morning, even, we would find great delight in approaching you through Christ Jesus in this way. Bless our worship here in the next hour. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.