We'll read from Mark 14, beginning in verse 12, and read through verse 26. Mark 14, 12 through 26. Hear the Word of the Lord. Now on the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, where do you want us to go and prepare that you may eat the Passover? And he sent out two of his disciples and said to them, go into the city and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him. Wherever he goes in, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with my disciples? Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and prepared. There make ready for us.' So his disciples went out and came into the city and found it just as he had said to them. And they prepared the Passover. In the evening he came with the twelve. Now as they sat and ate, Jesus said, Assuredly I say to you, one of you who eats with me will betray me. And they began to be sorrowful and to say to him one by one, Is it I? And another said, Is it I? And he answered and said to them, it is one of the twelve who dips with me in the dish. The son of man indeed goes just as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had never been born. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them and said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And he said to them, this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many. Assuredly, I say to you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our Lord stands forever. You may be seated. Well, as the New Testament authors sit down to write under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they aren't writing in a vacuum. The Old Testament scriptures had greatly influenced their culture, their language, and their thinking. And so as Mitchell Chase puts it in his book, 40 Questions About Typology and Allegory, he says the New Testament authors, their New Covenant quills are dripping with Old Testament ink. In other words, as they write the New Testament scriptures, they're picking up language, ideas, and themes from the Old Testament and bringing them forward into the New Testament and showing how they are fulfilled in Christ. And so in order for us to understand this passage in which Christ institutes the Lord's Supper, we need some Old Covenant background. Now, this is our fifth sermon on the ordinances of the new covenant. And remember that an ordinance is a positive law of a particular covenant. So an ordinance belongs to the covenant in which it is given. And a positive law, of course, is a law that we would not know to keep had not God specifically revealed it to us. We wouldn't have discerned it from nature. The first four of our sermons in this series looked at the ordinance of baptism, its picture, its textual basis in the New Testament, its theological basis in the doctrine of the covenants, and its role in the establishment of the new covenant family known as the church. And so my intention is to dedicate two pulpit sessions this morning and next Sunday to discussing this ordinance of the Lord's Supper. Now, given that far more dispute and debate occurred over this subject than anything else, during the period of the Reformation, it may seem odd to devote only two messages to this important doctrine. But there is far less dispute in our day than there was in theirs. We still dispute the Roman Catholic practice of the sacrifice of the mass and their doctrine of transubstantiation. We don't believe that Christ is re-sacrificed in the supper or that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. Scripture clearly refutes these ideas, as does common sense and plain reason. We still disagree with the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation, which teaches that the bread and the wine remain bread and wine, and yet, at the same time, become the body and blood of Christ, both elements coexisting together in time and space. And again, Scripture and plain reason refute such ideas. So instead of refuting these ideas, what I plan to do is simply present our understanding of the ordinance. Now, there were four main views concerning the Lord's Supper during the Reformation. The two I've just told you about, along with what is known as the memorial view, championed by Ehrlich Zwingli, and then the spiritual presence view, championed by John Calvin. That is the confessional view that is in our confession. And so next Sunday, we will examine this idea of the spiritual presence of Christ in the supper. If you're doing the math, that means we're pushing off our last sermon on the Apostles' Creed until the second Sunday of the month next month. But we thought we could do that in order to celebrate communion as we finish these two sermons on the subject. Now, I've used two related phrases already this morning, the Lord's Supper and the Lord's Day. Both of these are found in the New Testament, and there is an important linkage between the two that I've mentioned before, but I want to remind us of it as we get into this doctrine. in his instructions to the church in Corinth, as Paul is instructing them on how to partake of the Lord's Supper, he, first of all, condemns the way they're doing it. And he says this in 1 Corinthians 11, 20, therefore, when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper. And then in Revelation 1, verse 10, the apostle John tells us, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. Now, these are the only two places in Scripture where this word Kyriakos is used, and it means pertaining to or belonging to the Lord, and so it's translated as Lord's, a possessive S. All the days of the week are given to us by God. If we wake up and are continuing to live tomorrow, then that means that Monday is then a gift from God to us. All the days belong to Him. But the Lord's Day is particularly His, the first day of the week. It pertains to the Lord Jesus Christ because it was on the first day of the week that He rose from the grave and sanctified the first day to Himself. So all days are His, but this day is His particularly. Every supper that we eat is a gift from God. and is rightly prayed over, and we give thanks for our meals. But this supper is particularly His. It pertains to Him in a special way, as we'll see this morning. And so it's the Lord's Supper, distinct from all the other suppers that we might eat. And if you'll remember, our English word church is how the Greek word ekklesia is translated in the New Testament. Now, ekklesia means assembly, but our English word church comes from an old English word, churchy, which is related to the Scottish kirk and the German kirch. And all of these words come from the Greek word kyriakos, which is where we get the Lord's Supper and the Lord's Day. And so this word was transliterated into these other languages, and eventually, in modern English, became our word church, conveying the meaning that this assembly, this gathering, belongs to the Lord in the same way that the first day of the week belongs to the Lord, in the same way that the supper of communion belongs to the Lord. Now this has bearing on our topic this morning, that the Lord's Day, the Lord's Supper, and the Lord's Assembly are all related together. It is the Lord's church that gathers on the Lord's day to partake of the Lord's supper. And so we need to be careful not to mistakenly believe that the Lord's supper is a religious rite that can be celebrated apart from the gathering of the church. Remember that the apostle wrote to the church in Corinth and said, therefore, when you come together in one place, It is not to eat the Lord's Supper. They're doing it wrong. And earlier in verse 18, he had said, when you come together as a church. So the Lord's Supper is to be observed in the context of the local church gathered together in one place. It's not to be partaken of by families in their home or by random gatherings of Christians, but by local churches. And we'll see why this matters shortly. So I want us to look at this text that we've read in Mark, and then we're gonna go back and find the Old Covenant roots behind some of the language that's used here. As I said, Mark's pen and Jesus's words even are dripping with Old Testament ink. Look at how this passage begins in verse 12. Now, on the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, So here we have a feast of the Old Covenant, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and an ordinance of the Old Covenant, the Passover. And so the context for the institution of the Lord's Supper is these Old Covenant ordinances, the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover. And so if we're going to understand the Supper, we need to understand the context. Now the Passover is first instituted in Exodus chapter 12. So we're gonna have to go back to Exodus chapter 12. Here, Israel has been in bondage in Egypt for 400 years as slaves, and they're being brought out of Egypt by the hand of God. And so it says in Exodus 12, beginning in verse 1, Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be your beginnings of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel saying, on the 10th of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons. According to each man's need, you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish. a male of the first year, you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lentil of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire with unleavened bread, and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat it raw or boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire, its head with its legs and its entrails. You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. And thus you shall eat it, with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover." Now this is the meal that Christ is celebrating with the 12 as he institutes the Lord's Supper. He's celebrating the Passover and the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Now there are several important features of the Passover that are worth noting here. The Passover lamb is taken into the home on the 10th day of the month, and then it is killed on the evening of the 14th day. So this lamb lived in the home with the family for four days. Now, I want you to imagine this, especially those of you with children or grandchildren. If you bring a little lamb into your home for four days, it lives with you, what happens? It becomes a pet. When you have to kill it on the fourth day and then eat it for dinner, can you imagine how difficult that would be and the emotional impact that that would have Now, this Lamb is a type that points forward to Christ, who is the Lamb of God, precious in the sight of the Father, and yet slain for our redemption. He came and lived among men, dwelling with us in the flesh. before being offered as a sacrifice for his church. And notice as well that this is a family ordinance. Each family or two families combined, if the families are smaller, to take a lamb for themselves. Now the Lord's Supper is instituted for the New Covenant family, which is the church, as we saw last Lord's Day. And so this is one reason why the supper is only to be partaken of in the local church, the family unit of the New Covenant. Now, the Lamb's blood is to be put on the door of the house, and this would protect those who were within the house from the wrath of God and cause the angel of death to pass over them. It's by means of Christ's blood that we are spared the wrath of God against our sin, for we are, according to Romans 3, 24, and 25, justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed." We can see clearly that the Passover, as an old covenant ordinance, was a type pointing forward to Christ, the anti-type. He is the fulfillment of all that the Passover promised. He is the Lamb of God, our Passover Lamb. For indeed, Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 1 Corinthians 5, verse 7. Now, in Deuteronomy 16, which is a restatement of the law, the Passover is reviewed along with the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And we're given a little more information. We find that it's very similar, and yet it's modified slightly. We have instructions that are given to us here in Deuteronomy 16, beginning in verses 1 and going through verse 8. Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. Therefore, you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God from the flock and the herd in the place where the Lord chooses to put his name. You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, that is, the bread of affliction, for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste. that you may remember the day in which you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life. And no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the meat which you sacrificed the first day at twilight remain overnight until morning. You may not sacrifice the Passover within any of your gates, which the Lord your God gives you, but at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide. There you shall sacrifice the Passover at twilight, at the going down of the sun, at the time you came out of Egypt. and you shall roast and eat it in the place which the Lord your God chooses. And in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents. Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a sacred assembly to the Lord your God. You shall do no work on it. So we have slightly modified instructions regarding the Passover. We see now that the Passover is to be remembered in the place where the Lord has put his name, Jerusalem. This is where the temple is throughout the scripture. Jerusalem is put as a type for the church. The Jerusalem above in Galatians 4.26, the heavenly Jerusalem in Hebrews 12.22, the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21.2. These are all references to the church. And so we see a correspondence between the Passover and the Lord's Supper. The ordinance of the Old Covenant was to be kept by families in Jerusalem. The ordinance of the New Covenant is to be kept in the New Jerusalem, the church, by the family of God, the local church. So this is where we see the Lord's Church eating the Lord's Supper on the Lord's Day. Additionally, Deuteronomy tells us that the purpose of the ordinance of Passover was that the people would remember the exodus when they were delivered from slavery in Egypt. The Lord's Supper reminds us of Christ's blood shed for us for the remission of our sins. This is our exodus from slavery to sin. The Passover is the context in which Christ chose to institute this new ordinance of the Lord's Supper as a positive law of the new covenant. And it bears many resemblances to the Passover because they are both centered on Christ, the Passover Lamb of God. The Passover Lamb's legs were not to be broken. Christ's legs were not broken. There's many correspondences between these two ordinances. However, there are also distinctions The most striking break that Christ makes with the Passover is in the elements of the Passover meal that he incorporates into the Lord's Supper. Had Christ meant only to modify the Passover and continue it into the New Covenant, he might have used the meat of the lamb that was sacrificed, and the wine, representing its blood, as the two elements. This would have kept the focus on him as the lamb of God, sacrificed for our sins, but instead, he chooses the bread and the wine. An interesting choice, given that the bread of the Passover is referred to as bread of affliction, and he names it his body. Now certainly he was afflicted, his body was broken, but the focus is not so much on the brokenness as it is on the given-for-you aspect of the bread. The picture is that Christ is given to us as our spiritual food. In John 6, the Jews ask Jesus for a sign by which they might believe. And they remind Him of the incredible provision of God for their fathers in the wilderness. And then Jesus answers them and says, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. So when they were eating the Passover meal, and Jesus institutes this ordinance for the new covenant, he took the bread and combined the typology of the Passover with the manna in the wilderness. Now, the Passover was in Exodus 12, the manna is found in Exodus 16. Manna is tied to the Exodus because it's God's provision for his people once they come out of bondage in Egypt. By his daily provision for them of bread, they are to remember, we are told, the glory of the Lord who redeemed them from slavery and then provides for them in the wilderness. And so we're told there in Exodus 16 that this is the purpose, that they are to remember the glory of the Lord. But then in Deuteronomy 8, we're told that this manna would serve as a test, a test of their hearts. Will they continue to trust the Lord from day to day to provide for them, or will they greedily gather more than He has instructed them to? His mercies are new every morning, and so they are to trust Him from one day to the next. Likewise, Christ is our spiritual bread, given to strengthen us so that we might live the life that He has called us to live. This is a present grace to us, to nourish us from day to day as we depend upon Him for our spiritual life. The regular observance of the supper reminds us that we are continually dependent upon Christ for all spiritual good. The manna in the wilderness provided for Israel's physical needs, but it would take a much greater bread from heaven to provide for the spiritual needs of God's people. and that need is met in Christ and all the benefits that come to us in the gospel prefigured in that manna of the Old Covenant and pictured for us as a regular reminder in the bread of communion. But in verse 24 here in Mark 14, in verse 24, Jesus introduces the primary picture or typology behind the Lord's Supper. He says in verse 24, And he said to them, this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many." Now this is very specific language. This is where that idea that the New Testament is dripping with the ink of the Old Testament. This language of the blood of the covenant. It's only used a handful of times in the New Testament. In each of the gospels, as we read this account of the institution of the Lord's Supper, We also see Paul use this language as he quotes Christ in 1 Corinthians 11, again regarding the Lord's Supper. And we find the phrase several times in the book of Hebrews, wants a direct quote from the Old Covenant. But each use in Hebrews is expounding upon the escalation from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant, which is better. There are only two times that this phrase, the blood of the covenant, is used in the Old Testament, and they have a bearing on our understanding of the Lord's Supper. The phrase is used once in Zechariah chapter 9, and this is a very familiar passage to us, particularly in the next month or so. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem. The battle bow shall be cut off. He shall speak peace to the nations. His dominion shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. Now this is clearly a prophecy of the coming Christ. is fulfilled by Christ as he rides a donkey into Jerusalem at the triumphal entry. But the prophet continues here in Zechariah 9, in verse 9 through 12, and he says, but as for you also, because of the blood of your covenant, now he's speaking to the Messiah, to the Christ, because of the blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope. Even today I declare that I will restore double to you. Now this is a passage that we actually referenced a number of months ago when we examined the line in the Apostles' Creed that says that Christ descended into hell, and there he freed the prisoners of hope, which Peter also references. Those Old Testament saints that were in that chamber of Sheol known as Abraham's bosom, or paradise, And from there, his blood having been shed, the veil torn asunder, he leads them out of paradise and ushers them into the presence of God in heaven. It was the blood of the covenant that made this possible. And that's the language that Jesus uses as he's instituting the Lord's Supper. Again, picturing our greater exodus, our being taken to glory with him. So this passage in Zechariah is speaking of the New Covenant, but it's using this language of the blood of the covenant. And so the passage in Zechariah and all the texts in the New Testament that use this phrase, the blood of the covenant, are all picking up this language from Exodus chapter 24. Exodus chapter 24, we see that Moses has received the 10 words of commandment from the Lord. and the covenant is now being ratified. Moses writes all of God's commands in a book. He builds an altar at the foot of the Mount Sinai. He erects this altar on 12 pillars representing the 12 tribes of Israel. They offer a peace offering to the Lord. Moses sprinkles half the blood of the offering on the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant, read in the hearing of the people, and they said, all that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, this is the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you according to all these words." So here's this language, the first time that it's used, the blood of the covenant. And Christ will later say, this is my blood of the new covenant. But what comes next is extremely important for us to understand the Lord's Supper. After sprinkling the blood of the covenant on the people, it says this, then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel. And there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity. But on the nobles of the children of Israel, he did not lay his hand. So they saw God and they ate and drank. Now the 70 elders represent the entirety of the nation of Israel. This is the number of Jacob's descendants that went down into Egypt, if you'll remember, in Genesis 46, 27. And so what do these 70 elders do? They go up on the mountain and there they see God. They have a vision of the Lord. His throne is in heaven, but the earth is his footstool. And so they see the Lord's feet with a pavement under it like sapphire. And having seen God, what did they expect? Death. But that's not what happened. God did not lay his hand on them. He didn't strike them. Instead, he invites them to share a meal in his presence. Now the food that they ate was most likely the flesh of the animals that they had just offered in the peace offering a few verses earlier. This means that as the covenant is being ratified, it was not only ratified with a sacrifice and with the blood of the covenant, but with a shared meal in the presence of God. Over 1,000 years later, Jesus, God in the flesh, would share a meal with the 12 disciples and declare that his blood was the blood of the new covenant. He was the final sacrifice for sins. So G.K. Beal writes and says, the Passover was never an end in itself. The goal to which it pointed was the Exodus 24 covenant, which bound the nation to Yahweh as his kingdom of priests. By uniquely combining the two, Jesus not only compresses and references the whole of Israel's founding moment, but also, in the context of a new Exodus and a reconstituted Israel, reconfigures it around himself. The Lord's Supper is the covenantal meal of the new covenant. It reminds us of our exodus from slavery, slavery to sin, our covenant relationship to God who is in heaven, and it promises us an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ. The ordinances of the various covenants make visible to us the promises made by the Lord of the covenant. This is part of the meaning behind the word sacrament. They are sacred mysteries made visible. And so as we think back upon the various covenants in the Old Testament and the sacraments that were a part of them, we can see the promises that those sacraments make visible before our eyes. In the covenant of works, the trees in the garden served as a sacramental purpose of making visible the promises of that covenant regarding life and death. In the Noahic covenant, the rainbow is a visible reminder of the promise of preservation, that the Lord of the covenant will never again destroy all life in a global flood. In the Abrahamic covenant, the ordinance of circumcision made known to the sons of Abraham the promise of their inheritance in the land of Canaan. In the Mosaic Covenant, the Passover is a visible reminder of their exodus from slavery in Egypt and the promise of refuge from the wrath of God. In the New Covenant, baptism makes visible the spiritual reality of our union with Christ, the death of our old nature, and the promise of new life in Him. Also in the New Covenant, the Lord's Supper serves as a visible reminder of our exodus from slavery to sin. By the shed blood of Christ, our Passover lamb, it promises our preservation from the wrath of God against sin. It pictures our spiritual nourishment in the daily dependence upon Christ, and it serves as a visible representation of the promise of our inheritance in the kingdom. Samuel Renahan has commented and said, "...because His death has occurred, eternal life is our right, inheritance, privilege, blessing. It belongs to Christ's people by birthright from their federal head. It is theirs by covenant." Because God is just, there is never any question about whether those who partake of Christ's body and blood will enter everlasting life. The covenant guarantees it. The body and blood of Christ testify to it. The supper then serves as a means of grace to us. It reminds us of our redemption. It serves as our corporate confession as a church that we have a genuine hope that Jesus is truly coming again, which also means that every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper, it should be our hope that this is the last time we'll ever do this, because the King has come. We should want every celebration of the Lord's Supper to be the last one. In fact, we might think of the Lord's Supper as a rehearsal dinner for the coming wedding feast of the Lamb. The Lord's Supper looks to the past and it reminds us of Christ's redemption and it blesses us in the present as we feed on him spiritually, but it also promises the coming consummation of the kingdom when we will once again feast in his presence. When you partake of the Lord's Supper, you're not only making a claim to the current kingdom of grace, saying, I am a child of God who's experienced salvation, having my sins washed clean in the blood of the Passover lamb, but you're also saying, I'm a child of God, and I recognize that I have been promised an inheritance in the new creation, and as I partake of this meal, I'm looking forward to the meal that will happen when the kingdom comes. Now there are a few applications that we should consider around this doctrine of the Lord's Supper. The first is the nature of the spiritual nourishment that we receive by faith as we partake of this covenant meal. We eat a little tiny bite of a cracker or bread. It's not actually nourishing our bodies very much. But what is happening when we do that? Well, we need to recognize the distinction between this meal and other meals. When we eat a meal, we consume physical food. It nourishes our bodies through the process of digestion by which our bodies break that food down into the various component pieces that are then integrated into our body. In other words, the food that we eat becomes a part of us. It's changed by the process of digestion into our substance, calcium into our bones, protein into our muscles, various vitamins and compounds that our bodies need, glucose for energy. But the spiritual nourishment we receive in the Lord's Supper is quite different. In fact, it's exactly the opposite of that. Rather than the food being transformed into our substance, we are transformed into its substance. That is, through the process of sanctification by faith, we are made into the image of Christ, the food of which we partake by faith. The bread and the wine remain bread and wine, but they signify the spiritual reality of our union with Christ by which we are spiritually nourished, and that nourishment means our transformation into his likeness. And as we partake, much like the manna in the wilderness enabled ancient Israel to see the glory of the Lord when the Lord gives you bread to the full, Exodus 16, so the supper visualizes to us the grace of the Lord given to us in Christ, the bread from heaven. We're reminded that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights. And so our faith is supplied and nourished and we're taught to be more like Christ, our Redeemer. We're taught to pray, give us this day our daily bread. The second thing that we ought to consider is that the institution of the Lord's Supper as a positive law of the new covenant should remind us that the ordinances of the old covenant have no place in the life of the new covenant community. Ephesians 2, 14 and 15, for he himself is our peace offering, such as the peace offering offered in Exodus 24 that became the covenantal meal. He is our new covenant meal, who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances. Christ abolished it. The ceremonial law that contained all those ordinances of the Old Covenant has been done away with. No Christian should concern themselves with attempting to keep the abolished ordinances of the Old Covenant. Christ has fulfilled them. To try and keep the Passover or the Old Covenant feasts or a seventh-day Sabbath is to trade the reality for the shadow. It's offensive to Christ, who is our Passover. To go back to the shadows of the Old Covenant would be to reject the reality of Christ in the New Covenant. That's what the whole book of Hebrews is about. When professing Christians become overly enamored with the Old Covenant ordinances, they betray their spiritual immaturity, or worse, their lack of the true knowledge of salvation by faith alone and Christ alone. Now, this is very common in charismatic circles, where the emphasis is on felt experience, emotion, outward shows of religious activity. And it's seen very prominently in the Hebrew Roots movement, which grew out of the charismatic movement. and has gained quite a bit of popularity in recent years, but we must be careful to avoid any such return to the shadows of the old covenant. Those who are in Christ by faith are people of the new covenant. He has fulfilled the types and ordinances of the old covenant, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom and self-imposed religion, false humility and neglect of the body, but they are of no value." Colossians 2. Third, given that the Lord's Supper is a covenantal meal and a means of grace to us, a reminder of our forgiveness, our redemption from bondage to sin, and a promise of the good things that are to come at the consummation of the kingdom, we must not become indifferent or casual in our attitude toward it. We should not absent ourselves from attendance upon this meal. We should make every effort to be here and to partake of it when the church gathers. 19th century English particular Baptist pastor Eric Dick Eccles wrote, attendance at the Lord's Supper is an obligation. It is an expression of fellowship. Not only do those who stay away rob themselves of the benefit of remembering the Lord and a fellowship with other believers, but they are also robbing the church of what it is entitled to expect of them. their fellowship. Indeed, the question should be asked whether they are, in fact, in fellowship with Christ, since it is so inconceivable that a Christian should not desire to have fellowship with Him and with His people at the table. Now those are hard words, but they're true. Any professing Christian who does not earnestly long to partake and make an earnest effort to be there when the church gathers to celebrate the Lord's Supper either does not know Christ or does not know the true nature of this covenantal meal. Now there's one last aspect of this that I would like to point out. that goes back before the Passover. In Genesis chapter 14, Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, comes home from a small war and he is met by Melchizedek. who is at least a type of Christ, if not a pre-incarnate theophany. And here's what it says. Then Melchizedek, king of Salem, in Hebrews tells us that this means that he is the king of peace, brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of God most high. And in the Lord's Supper, our great high priest, the prince of peace, the peace offering of the new covenant, brought out bread and wine. wine that makes glad the hearts of men, and bread which strengthens man's heart." Psalm 104 verse 15. The Lord's Supper, when eaten in faith, strengthens our faith and comforts our hearts. We're encouraged, nourished, inspired to pursue Christ-likeness as we are reminded that He is our spiritual bread. We're comforted and made glad as we're reminded that we're forgiven, covered, washed clean in His blood. Our great High Priest has brought forth bread and wine. At the inauguration of the Old Covenant, there was a meal in the presence of God in Exodus 24. At the inauguration of the New Covenant, there was a meal in the presence of the Son of God in Mark 14. At the consummation of the kingdom, we have the earnest expectation and promise that we will share a meal in the presence of God once more in Revelation 19.9. Our regular attendance upon this sacrament now reminds us of these things. It nourishes us spiritually. It renews our commitment to the covenant, and it makes visible to our eyes the promise having been made to us by the Lord of the covenant. Better promises, Hebrews tells us, made by a better mediator. Promises of slavery, not just from Egypt, but from sin. Promises of freedom from that slavery, promises of forgiveness, of cleansing in the blood of Christ, something that the blood of the old covenant sacrifices could never accomplish. promises of eternal preservation from the wrath of God, promises of spiritual nourishment, not just physical nourishment, promises of everlasting life in the kingdom of light and glory in the presence of the King. All those who are children of God by faith. are given these promises and invited to the table to be reminded of them each time the church gathers as the new covenant family to celebrate this covenantal meal. Let's pray.