I guess, of the Means of Grace series that we're doing here in October to bleed over a little bit into November. And we're looking at the Lord's Supper this week. So I want us to think again about how we've been thinking the last three weeks about the Word of God as a very great power. You have to have this in your mind. This is probably the key concept that we've been trying to uncover in the short series. The means of grace depends upon the idea that the Word of God is a great power. If it's not a great power, then the means of grace are pointless. Do you see the connection there? Because the means of grace are the Word of God. whether it's in the form of preaching, or reading, singing, or praying the word, or whether it comes to us in the sacraments. Now last time we dealt with what a sacrament is, and then we went to the initiation sacrament of the new creation, which is baptism. Today we're going to look at our weekly sacrament, which is the one that feeds us with food to teach us our need for our daily bread, as our Lord taught us to pray. And of course, this is the Lord's Supper. So I thought it would be interesting before doing a little bit of systematic thinking about the supper and then looking at it through a biblical lens, to begin with the passage that we saw last time. And we actually read this today, earlier in this worship service, 1 Corinthians 10, 1 through 2. It says, I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. So if we talked about baptism last week, you can see why we brought that up last week. And I use that as a launching point for this idea that baptism is in fact in the Old Testament. Paul directly calls the baptism crossing in the sea a baptism into Moses. But then he continues in the very next words and he says this, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. How interesting that right after he talks about baptism, he goes to eating and feasting upon Christ in the Old Testament. Now this is in some ways similar to how we began last week with Isaiah 55, 10 through 11 where the prophet spoke of both water and bread in the same sentence as being the analogies of how powerful his word is. He said it's like water that turns seed to sprout and eventually this gives way to the bread which feeds the people. That's what his word is. It's that kind of a power. On the other hand, the prophet Amos spoke about the word of God when he likened the lack of hearing the word to a famine that God was sending. He says, not of bread, nor of thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. You see, there was no greater famine the people could endure than this kind of a famine because in failing to give his word to them, the people would starve and die and their inner man, their spiritual man, the man who lives long after the body wastes away and goes into the grave. He says, they shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east and shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it. I'm going to come back to this idea at the end and how often we have given ourselves a kind of self-induced famine when it comes to the supper. I could preach an entire sermon on that verse just regarding the church. or a nation that fails to hear the word and what that does. But we're going to contain ourselves to the supper today. But before we get into that kind of application, I want to explore more what it means that the supper is a means of grace. So in our circles in the Reformed world, we probably most commonly call our sacramental meal together communion, right? The word comes from just a little later in the same chapter in 1 Corinthians 10. The ESV reads this way. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? And the bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? But the older King James and Geneva Bible say this, is it not a communion in the blood and a communion in the body. And so the Greek word there is rather famous, it's called koinonia. So what is koinonia? Well the word refers to a communion, association, or a partnership. It can refer to fellowship or joint ownership. Our English word comes from the Latin word communionum, which is how the Latin translates it. And it means fellowship or mutual participation or sharing. It's a compound word. with the prefix being com, which means with or together, and then unis, which means one or union. So a one union coming together. The word common is actually its root. We'll see the word common come up a little later with Noah. Something in common is something that belongs to all, right? It's owned or used jointly. General, it's of a public nature or character. So this usage, We can see that communion is not only a participation in or a fellowship with, but it's something that actually belongs to all Christians. It is our common meal. How ironic then to me that until 1970, Rome refused to give half of that meal to its members. You were free to take the bread so long as the priests fed it to you, but the cup was forbidden to all but the priests. And this is because of a gross superstition that crept into the Roman mass only around 1215 AD at the Fourth Lateran Council. At that time, Rome officially adopted what most Protestants consider a great blasphemy, which is transubstantiation. So what is that? Well, as the word conveys, the idea is that when the Eucharistic prayer is offered by the priest, the efficacy of the word of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit transform the substance. So that's transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the actual literal body and blood of Jesus. And that's why you are not allowed to drink the blood, especially if you spilt it on the ground. And by the way, the word Eucharist is what they and several other denominations have chosen to call the supper. Some people think, well, we should never use that word because Rome does. No, Eucharist refers to what the Lord did at the last supper with his disciples. He broke the bread and gave thanks, Eucharisto. And so Eucharist simply means to give thanks. It is the Christian's corporate Thanksgiving meal, if you want to think of it that way. Now, I believe that there's a whole bunch of philosophical monkey business that's afoot in their view of transubstantiation, and I'm not going to spend the hours upon hours it would take to break it all down for us. I'm just going to say this. The idea is deeply rooted in a philosophical assumption of the atemporality of God. What's that? Well, this is the idea that God exists outside of time, and therefore, he is present in every single time There is only now with God. There is no past, there is no future with Him. So with that underpinning, the priest's blessing of the elements where they are transformed into the actual literal body and blood, although this is completely invisible to any kind of form of scientific inquiry, you just have to believe it, when this happens, it's as if two presents, that is Jesus present to God on the cross and Jesus with us right now, somehow they're kind of merged into a space-time continuum. Now importantly, because we want to be fair to their actual position, the idea is not that Christ is actually put back on the cross and re-sacrificed. It actually doesn't have to be that way because to God, Jesus is always dying on the cross. Just like Jesus is always in the womb of Mary and Jesus is always here at the second coming. That's the nature of a God that's outside of time. Nevertheless, they believe that it is Christ's body and blood, and God is remembering Christ's sacrifice in a way that he can't do for the benefit of the people unless it actually transforms into that. That's the idea. Now, Rome, of course, believes that Christ is now, in space and time, eternally alive, not dead. And so, they will call the Mass a living sacrifice, even though it's simultaneously a participating in the actual death of Christ on the cross. So, as one person has put it, the Mass is not a repeating the murder of Jesus, but it's taking part in whatever ends the offering of Christ to the Father for our sake. But why would they say it's never ending? Because God is outside of time, and to him, it's as if Christ is always on the cross, dying. In my opinion, this is really a philosophical sleight of hand, and I disagree with how Rome has used this philosophy to basically reinterpret the words of the Bible. One of the things Rome does is to take Christ's language that this is my body, and is my blood, literally. You're gonna hear more of this next week, I think, with Tim's sermon. I think that's about as smart as taking the statements that he is the door, or the gate, or the road, literally. It's called a metaphor. I don't think it's that difficult to understand a metaphor. Now, in a kind of overreaction, many Protestants have said, there's nothing whatsoever to the supper, save our own personal remembrance of it. It's completely one-sided. It's not a means of grace. Instead, in taking it, what I'm to do is I'm to think about Jesus, and frankly, it's more likely that I'm gonna think about myself, but that's for the end of the sermon, in a kind of intense psychological experience that I try to make myself have. This is called the Memorial View of the Supper and it really was first championed by the great Swiss reformer and friend of Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli. Now I grew up with this view and I believe it profoundly misses the Jesus statement that this is my body and blood nearly as badly as Rome does. Because while I do not take that literally, I do take it seriously. There is something profound going on in the supper that makes it a means of grace, which is why I'm looking at it this morning. Now remember, the means of grace always have at their heart the word of God. The word of God is powerful, especially the gospel, which is powerful to save and to sanctify because it is the word of God. Now we always make sure in our church that the proclamation of the word is attached to the sacrament. Every week we do that. But we should never lose sight of the fact that the sacrament itself contains the word of the gospel implicitly in its message. After all, what is this that we take? Well, we take the body of Christ in some sense. When was it broken? It was broken for you on the cross. This is the death of Jesus that's in mind here. His sacrifice that takes away our sins. It's the new covenant in His blood. His blood poured out on the cross at that same life-giving sacrifice that came through His death. Friend, that's the gospel. And therefore, it is the power of God. And as such, it is a means of grace. It is God's grace to you through the gospel to feed you with Christ. Now, because the supper is somehow a communion with the living Christ, as Paul himself told us, then when he says that this is my body, we must take that seriously, though I do not think literally. And this is where I've found John Calvin's view of the supper better stated than maybe anyone in church history. Essentially, he believes that when the supper is taken by faith, and that's key, it's not just that it's taken, as we'll see later with the Corinthians, they were actually thought they took the Lord's Supper, and Paul says, it's not the Lord's Supper you're eating. Why? Because they weren't taking it by faith. So when you take it by faith, the participants who are already mystically united to Christ by faith, we are lifted together into heavenly places as a sign and a seal of the new covenant relationship that we have been brought into. After all, Christ has, as Ephesians says, raised us with him and seated us with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. See, we are lifted up to where Christ now stands, into heaven. through our vital union with him. Therefore, we commune in real, actual, genuine fellowship with Jesus and with one another as his body on earth through the Holy Spirit when we take the supper. This is called the spiritual presence view of the supper. And it says, yes, we are able to have real fellowship with Christ through the meal because we are communing with him as we do it. He is somehow feeding us with himself through the sign of the supper. I think that's just incredible, and you could spend the rest of your life thinking about it. It's absolutely amazing. But to understand more of this, I want us to go to a biblical theology of the supper by looking at various Old Testament foreshadowings and types that teach us more, and so they're gonna look very similar to last week, but instead of baptism, we're going to look at the supper now. So let's begin in the Garden of Eden, and I'm gonna ask, is there food in the Garden of Eden? And of course, there is. God gave to Adam the tree of life, remember? And out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, of course, both trees gave forth fruit. Eve saw that the tree of the knowledge had fruit that was good for food and a delight to the eyes, she said. And of course, the tree of life had fruit that one could eat and live forever, it says. Eating and living is very much the spiritual idea behind the Sacrament of Communion. So this is a type of the Lord's Supper. Our own renowned divines like Francis Churton even called the tree of life, quote, a sacrament and symbol of the immortality which we would have been bestowed upon Adam if he had persevered in his first estate. With respect to the future life, it was declarative and a sealing sign of the happy life to be passed in paradise and to be changed afterward into a heavenly life if he continued upright. And of course that foreshadows the eternal life that we do have now in Christ, even though Adam blew that and didn't take that sign as he should have. As with all sacraments, it involves a promise that God attaches to it. So this is a sacrament because God is the one who says that this he will work through it. And this was the food sacrament of the covenant of works that we'll actually talk about a little bit later in Sunday school, so hang around for that. And it was a foreshadowing of the life that Christ gives us through himself as Revelation says, to the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. Now we can move forward to Noah. Remember I brought up Noah a moment ago with the word common. When Noah was given instructions for the ark, which was the holy sanctuary where he would spend his life during and as the flood waters receded, he was told this, take with you every sort of food that is eaten and stored up and it shall serve as food for you and for them. And then after the flood, this included every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. God was now giving mankind permission to eat the animals. You wonder, how is that significant to what we're looking at here? Well, I'm not going to spill all the beans just yet. We're going to need to wait for the Levitical covenant for that. But here, it's enough to know that Noah's covenant was what we call a covenant of common grace. And so there's our word common. Common grace is simply grace that's given by God that's common to all mankind. We all share in this grace. It's not specially given only to some, and it's not speaking about eternal life or the gospel. See, God promised our entire race that he would never again flood the whole world like he did with Noah. As a companion to this common grace, God gave our race permission to eat the animals, and as such, they become a graceless precursor to the supper, but in the common realm. I want you to think about how you give thanks for any food that you eat around the table. Every time that you eat, right, you pray and you give thanks to God about it, especially when you eat steak or bacon, right? Because those are glorious gifts from God. And my mind often goes to the stories of the Indians of North America, who were renowned for giving thanks to the great spirit for providing the buffalo, which sustained nearly every part of their existence. That's what I'm talking about. It's a foreshadowing of special grace. And in this way, every time you eat, you are partaking of a common grace sacrament, if you could call it that, which is supposed to remind you of all of God's wonderful daily blessings. But common grace is not special grace because it offers no eternal life through the gospel. It's merely a type and a shadow of greater blessings that come from being in a covenantal relationship with God in grace. The first time that this is clearly pictured for us is still a very long, long time ago. It takes place in the days of Abram and Melchizedek. This is Genesis 14. I'm gonna spend a little time on here. This is a fascinating chapter of the Bible. It begins in what I call the giant wars. Four kings against five, all related in one way or another to the Nephilim and the Rephaim giants found throughout the Old Testament. Among the five kings were the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. And we all know what a place that that became because of the story of Lot who pitched his tent there. But in fact, in chapter 13, Lot had already pitched his tent there and Lot is the central point of our story in chapter 14. We learn that it did not go well for the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and the enemy took all their possessions and the provisions and they went their way. And in verse 12, they also took Lot son of Abram's brother who was dwelling in Sodom. Now one of the captives had escaped and went and told Abram who took with him some of the Amorite allies and he led a war band of 318 trained soldiers all the way to the foot of Mount Hermon and then even north of Damascus in Syria to go rescue Lot. They were eventually victorious and they returned back to his home by the Oaks of Mamre in Hebron, which is south of Jerusalem. Now upon his return, as he's going south, he went through the hill country of what is today modern Jerusalem in what's called the King's Valley. This is the Kidron Valley, just east of the city of David. This is actually the same valley Jesus would cross on his last night between the Mount of Olives and the city of Jerusalem. Here, Abraham was met by the king of Sodom and a very mysterious figure named Melchizedek, king of Salem. Now, Salem was the earlier word for Jerusalem, and it says that he brought out bread and wine. Isn't that interesting? The same exact elements as we find in the supper. There Melchizedek blessed Abram by God most high and he blessed God most high who had delivered the enemy into his hands. And it says Abram gave it him a tenth of everything. So what in the world is going on here? It's like three or four verses and then that's it. Well, it seems that we have a covenant being made and confirmed after a great military victory. Very important. You have a greater king, Melchizedek, entering into a covenant with the lesser vassal, blessing him with a covenant blessing and then sealing it with a covenant victory meal. It's important to stress the military connection here because we saw the same thing with the word sacrament and how it was originally used to describe the oath of allegiance and obedience of a soldier to his commander. We also saw that baptism was a sacred oath when viewed from the perspective of the baptizee, and that oath was a military term as well. And here then we have another military connection with the other sacrament of the New Testament, which is intimately linked to making a covenant through bread and wine. Surely the many fathers and reformers who have seen this as a type of the Lord's Supper, especially when you consider who Melchizedek may very well be, were right. So what do I mean by who he may very well be? Who is this Melchizedek? Well, long story short, Hebrews tells us some very bizarre things about him. It implies that he's a priest forever of God most high. He is a king like Jesus. His name means righteousness and his city is peace, just like Jesus. He is without father, mother, or genealogy. He has neither beginning of days nor end of life. He is like the Son of God come in the flesh. He is the mighty Abrams superior. And verse eight implies that he is immortal. And verse 11, that his priesthood is perfect. How could all that be? Well, Hebrews is simply agreeing with the many ideas found earlier in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Septuagint. For example, Psalm 110, verse one, identifies the pre-incarnate Son of God, Adonai, with Melchizedek's priesthood. And then verse three is very much like Psalm 27 in the Septuagint. I have begotten you from the womb before the morning. Second, Enoch would call Melchizedek the word and power of God. That's pretty wild. The Dead Sea Scrolls actually replaced the word Elohim in Psalm 82.1 with Melchizedek, the God and the divine counsel. While Yahweh in Isaiah 61.2, which Jesus actually reads as he first lets people know that he is Messiah, they actually turn Yahweh into the year of Melchizedek's favor. And for these reasons and more, I think Melchizedek, the king of Jerusalem, is simply the angel of the Lord, being given probably a proper name. In other words, it is the pre-incarnate Christ covenanting with Abram with bread and water. How's that not a type of the Lord's Supper? Now, there's two very important food events as we keep going with Moses that are attached to this covenant, to his covenant. The first is the Passover. Now, of course, the Lord's Supper takes place at the Passover. In fact, the disciples are taking the Passover as Jesus reinterprets it for them, its meaning in light of what he's about to do for them at the cross. Therefore, the Passover is probably the most direct Old Testament type of communion that we have. It teaches us some amazing truths. The last and greatest of the great plagues of Egypt was about to occur, you remember? The slaughter of the firstborn. And upon its heels the people would be led in all haste out of Egypt, out of slavery, redeemed by the only powerful God. It was necessary that a pure lamb be sacrificed for the salvation of the people. They then had to put the blood on the lintel of their doors as an act of faith and a sign that God would pass over this house when the angel of death came through. The people were to eat that night a meal with unleavened bread, which symbolizes their haste and purity needed for their redemption. You could spend an entire sermon on this single Old Testament type and not exhaust all of its implications. But the clearest point is that the gospel of Christ foreshadowed for us with the sacrifice, the redemption, the looking past our sins, the covering them with the blood, and so on, is right there with the Passover. Now there's a second major food event with Moses, and this is the manna from heaven in Exodus 16. The people were now out of Egypt, delivered through the sea, but weary and worried about where they were going, and so they began to grumble. because they were hungry. So God told them to prepare because he would send them manna from heaven. Manna was a white flake-like substance that looked like coriander seed or frost on the ground. The word means, what is it? It was said to taste like wafers made with honey. It came at night. It was a miracle food and would only last the day. But God went into feeding the people with the manna for 40 years, every single day, except on the Sabbath, without exception, their daily bread. The psalm amazingly calls manna the grain of heaven and the bread of angels. It was both a physical and a metaphysical food, just like a sacrament. Jesus goes so far as to say that he is the manna, the bread come down from heaven. When we feast upon the supper, we are feasting in some spiritual way upon the living Christ himself. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give him for life of the world is my flesh, he says. This is exactly what we do in the supper, and therefore the manna of the Old Testament is a wonderful type of our New Testament communion. We next wanna look at that priestly covenant that came through Aaron and Levi. Here we wanna think about the main sacrament of this covenant, which is sacrifices. Here's how Calvin put it. The sacraments themselves were also diverse in the Old Testament in keeping with the times according to the dispensation by which the Lord was pleased to reveal himself in various ways to men. For circumcision was enjoined upon Abram and his descendants, and to it afterward added purifications, sacrifices, and other rites from the law of Moses. These were the sacraments of the Jews until the coming of Christ. So the idea of a sacrifice being a sacrament is very interesting to consider when you think about what Jesus says when he asks us to do this in remembrance of me. You go, how's that related to a sacrifice? I don't get that. Well, in the Greek world, this word can mean a calling to mind or reminiscence or a memory. And of course, that's usually how we think of it when we take the supper, that we are remembering what Jesus did. On the other hand, it can mean reminders to the gods of sacrifices offered by us. The Greek speech water Lysias wrote this, certainly the fear that was upon them must have made them believe that they saw many things which they saw not and heard many things which they did not hear. What supplications, what reminders of sacrifices were not sent up to heaven? Using that word. So you can hear how the sacrifice was actually given to remind the gods of their promises, which is the exact opposite of what we usually think about. Now the thing is, this seems to be the way that this is used in the Septuagint in Numbers 10.10. Here's what it says. And in the days of your gladness and in your feasts and in your new moons, you shall sound with the trumpets at your whole burnt offerings and at the sacrifices of your peace offerings and it shall be for you a reminder before God. The ESV of the Hebrew reads this, they shall be a reminder of you before your God, I am the Lord your God. So it's parallel is in the previous verse where the trumpet blast alerts God to remember his people as well. That's why you blasted the trumpet, toot, God hears it, he goes, I remember my covenant. Same idea with the sacrifice. One of the two sacrifices mentioned here is called the peace offering. This was a sacrifice that the Israelites actually participated in by offering part of the animal to God and then eating part of it themselves. This is the special aspect of eating food that I think was foreshadowed in Noah and his covenant. It had not just daily food, but also eating certain kinds of sacrifices as kind of participation meals with God. because now the meat can be eaten. It was in a very real sense a sacrificial meal, not for atonement, like the burnt offering, but to celebrate peace with God and to express thanksgiving and fellowship with him. That's why you offered a peace offering. That's the idea with the Lord's Supper, where we feast upon the life of the resurrected lamb who died to take away our sins. Now, David's is the last great covenant of the Old Testament. So let's think for a moment about him and his greatest Psalm. This is Psalm 23 that we'll sing right after we finish this sermon. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides still waters. He restores my soul. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Now in John's version of the feeding of the 5,000, where he tells us that he is the manna, he tells us very specifically that the crowds were gathered together on the green grass, which hints at the meaning of the meal. Now given that the meal was also done on Passover, Lord's Supper and the feeding of the 5,000 were about exactly two years apart, Okay, so given that it's on the green grass, it seems to be that the miracle of the feeding was both a foreshadowing of communion and a looking back at Psalm 23, which then connects communion to Psalm 23. Psalm 23's connection is even stronger to communion when you realize that the likely setting for the feeding of the 5,000 was right near Bethsaida. This is the home of several of the disciples on the north side of the Sea of Galilee. Now just a few hundred yards to the northwest, just above the Jordan River, as it gets ready to flow into the sea, there's a large green field, especially that time of year. Whereupon sits an ancient pagan monument called Kirbet B'tah. It's a stone circle about one-third the size of the larger monument called Gilgal Rafaim, about 10 miles to the east. When archaeologists were digging around here, they found two petroglyphs. One was a serpent and one was a fish. Jesus fed the 5,000 with fish somewhere very, very near this spot, while the serpent reference has a very strange connection to Psalm 23 in the interpretation of the rabbis. They taught that this table that David sings about is the flesh of Leviathan. Isn't that interesting? Curiously, it's in John 6 that we find the feeding of the 5,000 where Jesus also gives the sermon that he is the man from heaven. 2nd Baruch, intertestamental Jewish book, says that, Leviathan shall be food for all, and it shall come to pass at the selfsame time that the treasury of manna shall again descend on high, and they will eat of it. Leviathan is likened in the Bible to Satan. He's the great enemy of our faith. He's the serpent. Jesus is about to conquer him on the cross when he gave his disciples the supper and thus Psalm 23 is a tremendous foreshadowing of our communion meal. Maybe this is why Zwingli who cites origins said this, when he says this is my body he immediately adds this bread which God The word acknowledges to be his body is the word that nourishes the soul, the word proceeding from God, the word and the bread from heaven, which is placed upon the table of which it is written. You have prepared a table before me in the presence of those who afflict me. So the church has seen the Psalm 23 connection for a long, long time. Now it's in all this Old Testament stuff that I want us to consider a couple of things that the Bible says about Jesus, his sacrifice, and our communion meal. Hebrews teaches that Christ has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by his sacrifice of himself. He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and cows, but by means of his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption. He has no need like those high priests to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. So once for all is a main reason why we do not believe communion is a resacrificing of Christ. Now let's remember that Rome calls the Eucharist a sacrifice. There are some misunderstandings of what Rome actually teaches. They say it is bloodless, and yet it really and truly is a non-atoning sacrifice of Christ, where the elements are transformed into his actual body and blood, which is his atoning sacrifice on the cross. If that sounds bizarre, it's because it is. I've already dealt with how there's much philosophical underpinning going on here to justify this view. Because of that, I think many Protestants have actually misunderstood what's going on because they don't have the philosophical training. And Rome has some pretty interesting answers for what they teach. Not that I agree with them, but I want to point out something else here. Instead of just blasting on their view of the mass, our main objection to transubstantiation was not only that it wasn't biblical, because you simply can't find any proof of it. with all that complex philosophy on top of it. It wasn't found in the early church, but it's also simply repugnant even to common sense and reason. Overthrowing the nature of the sacrament and blessing the cause of manifold superstitions and even gross idolatries as our confession of faith says it. where people actually worship the elements, deny the cup to others, and carry them around for adoration, among other things. These are superstitions created by just totally abusing what the scripture says about this. Edward Lee was a Westminster divine. He gave us 10 reasons why this is contrary to reason and irrational. I'll only give you a couple here. Among them, Christ must hold himself in his own hands and eat and drink his own flesh and blood when he gave it to his disciples the night before he died. Christ's one physical body would have to be in a thousand places when it's offered in the mass, and it's a form of cannibalism. Therefore, it's important to look to the one sacrifice of Christ rather than to superstitions in the meal. That when we take the supper, we are in a figurative sense asking God to remember his covenant promises that were already promised and made certain in Christ's death. Now there's a second thing I want us to think about is Paul's discussion of the supper and how it is actually a form of spiritual warfare. 1 Corinthians 8 through 11 is where we're gonna go for the rest of this sermon. We've already been in chapter 10 a little. We'll go back to that and then we're also gonna be in chapter eight. The whole thing discusses the supper with some diversions into other topics mixed in between. So we've already looked at chapter 10 in terms of how it is called communion and how it had an Old Testament type in the spiritual food and drink that was Christ. In the middle of those two things, Paul says that their taking of the supper was to be examples for us, or their taking of what they did was an example for us. He says that they grumbled and they were destroyed by the destroyer. And then Paul says, he tells them, the Corinthians, to flee from idolatry when we take the supper, since it is a communion or participation in the body of Christ. So somehow what he's doing is he's connecting what Israel did in the wilderness with their idolatry, and their grumbling, and their sexual perversion, all the things that we're doing, and he's telling us to watch out for the same thing. But how could that be? Well, to answer that, you have to go back to the beginning of his argument, which is actually back in chapter eight, and it starts in verse four. Now, I'm gonna read from the ESV here. So if you have an ESV, pay attention. If you don't, just listen. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that, quote, an idol has no real existence, end quote, and that, quote, there is no God but one, end quote, for although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many, quote, gods and many, quote, lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and through whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. That's how he begins the Lord's Supper treatment in 1 Corinthians. Now, quite frankly, the punctuation here is abysmal and it belies a profoundly anti-supernatural bias on the part of the translator that actually destroys Paul's entire point. First of all, there are no quotation marks in the Greek. In fact, there's no punctuation at all in the Greek for that matter. So when it puts, quote, an idol has no real existence, in quotations, it appears to us as if Paul is maybe quoting one of them. But why would you do that? Paul agrees that idols have no real existence later in chapter 10 when he says, what do I imply then, that food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No! This is because Paul, unlike modern people, realizes that idols are not fake gods, they're houses of the gods. Houses are nothing. They're simply the place in which the deity dwells or doesn't dwell, comes or goes. So who cares about idols in that sense? That's his point. Next, scripture teaches us that, quote, there's no God but one. Now this one is actually decent, okay? Because here he's actually quoting the Shema, Deuteronomy 6, 4, so those quotation marks are okay. If you're quoting something from the Old Testament, feel free to quote it in the New, I get that, that's fine. What does the Shema say? Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. It is stunning the pushback that is starting to crop up in Reformed circles about the following point that I'm gonna make here. Having just said what he says here with that quote from Deuteronomy, Paul actually acknowledges in the very next breath that there are in fact many gods and many lords. He couldn't be any more explicit about it in fact, and yet at the same time he says, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and through whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist. In other words, The other gods and lords that exist are not the creator, but rather were created by our God and his only begotten who created all things. In other words, they are lesser in every possible sense. And yet, another couple of translation points are needed here, and this is truly grievous to me. First, the ESV calls them so-called gods, you see that? This is totally unjustifiable. The word is simply Lego. It's the word that we always translate as called, not so-called. At most, it should say that they are called gods, not so-called gods. So-called makes it sound like they aren't really gods, doesn't it? Furthermore, it then puts gods and lords into quotes, or what some have called scare quotes, to scare you off from coming to the conclusion that these entities are actually real. No, beloved, these entities are real. That's Paul's entire point. This freaks people out and causes them to lash out at what they do not understand, I think probably because they've confused the distinction between an idol, which is a house, and the entity that indwells it, which is the God. They think idols are gods, and since idols are nothing, the gods must be too. Ironically, this may be the very problem that Paul's trying to counteract because apparently this is what some of the Corinthians were thinking. The ESV has ironically changed Paul's entire argument to agree with the Corinthians and their problem. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. Now we can see this much better by going to the parallel in chapter 10, because it is in fact parallel. In this place, Paul now refers to the very same entities as demons. And I think you can realize that demons do have real existence. So this is verses 20 through 22, chapter 10. No, I imply that what pagan sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Now again, the ESV's use of the English markers is horrendous. This time they have no quotes. But this is misleading in an opposite way because Paul's actually quoting something. This time it's from Deuteronomy 32, 17. They sacrifice to demons and not to God. To gods whom they knew not. So why wouldn't you put a quotation here to alert the reader? That's just bad form. Well, because there's difficulties in how to translate this verse, someone might say, well, maybe Paul's just making this up. He's not actually quoting anything. That's why we didn't put it in quotes. All right, fine. If so, why does he say that taking the supper the wrong way can provoke God to jealousy? Which is exactly what the previous verse in Deuteronomy says. They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods. With abominations, they provoked him to anger. Notice how in both verses then, demons are identical to gods. They're the same thing. What's Paul's point? He's telling us that because the supper is in fact a communion with the living God, a sacramental mystery that somehow not just represents Christ, but actually unites us to him by faith in a communal sense, as he strengthens our faith, that we must not align ourselves with the other real entities. This is a form of adultery or prostitution, and it provokes him to jealousy. If they aren't real, then his entire point is nonsensical. The Corinthians seem to have been of the opinion that they could, like Israel, participate in pagan worship practices, making God in their own image, engaging in sexual immorality, putting Christ to the test, grumbling and being destroyed, participating in having communion with demons, and have no bearing at all upon their relationship with God. Paul is simply adding to the point that their lives, as shown in the rest of this messed up church letter, okay, Their lives are not in line with their profession of faith. That's his point. Taking the supper is the climax of all their sinful problems. This is why he warns them in the next chapter that their behavior, even at the supper, where they're showing partiality to some and eating and drinking and getting drunk on the supper while others are going hungry, had already brought God's displeasure and some of them had even died. This was therefore, he says, not the supper that they were truly eating, but it was a participation with demons. How frightening is that? It means you can actually be in a church, you can actually take the Lord's supper, and it may not even be the supper at all that you're taking. Whew. It's precisely for this reason that in our worship service, right at the beginning, you remember I pointed this out earlier, we have a time of reflection of our own sin, acknowledging and confessing and repenting of them. We are to realize that our sins are not in line with our profession of faith. And by faith, we know that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We are taking 1 Corinthians 8 through 11 seriously at the beginning of our service because we always take the supper together as his people later on because it's the covenant renewal ceremony of the new covenant. But beloved, some of you have spent many Lord's suppers doing this. This is how I grew up under the view that my job was to repent of as many things as I could during the supper so that I could be worthy to take the meal as I remembered with all my might what Jesus did in hopes of having some great psychological experience, which, by the way, I never had to have been a single one. This is exactly backwards. In doing this, I was actually depriving myself of the word of God as a means of grace. It was as if I was bringing Amos' famine of the word to myself. Because in doing this, all the focus was on me and not on Christ's work for me in order to encourage and strengthen and help me understand that he loves me so much that he sent his son to die for me once for all. How many people have I heard say, I can't take the Lord's Supper this week, I'm not worthy. That's the point of the Lord's Supper. You're not worthy. I was shutting out the gospel through my own religious zeal to be worthy to take the meal. The supper is a means of grace. That's the point of this sermon. It's not a terror. It's the gospel, not the law. It's the good news of Jesus' death for his enemies, those who are inherently unworthy to sit at his table or even eat the crumbs from under it like the dogs. God has given us a place at his table with his Son, the Lord's Supper, such that we actually have koinonia with him. We have communion. It makes us thankful, that's why it's called the Eucharist. In the supper, all the Old Testament types find their fulfillment. It shows us the way to eternal life. It shows us not to take for granted any of the common blessings that we have. It shows us Christ's great victory, where he's redeemed us and taken us out of captivity, feeds us bread from heaven, reminding us of the once for all sacrifice for our sin, and teaching us that Christ has overcome the dragon. It even gives us a glimpse of the future. Because one day, not too distant from now, if you look with eyes of faith, you can see that Christ will allow you, his child, to come to the wedding feast of the Lamb, where you will see all these blessings and more together with all God's people, enjoying this joyous meal as he takes his betrothed and marries her for eternity. We are the bride of Christ, and he has given us this meal to show how intimate our communion truly is with himself. Therefore, think much on the supper as a sacrament, because in receiving it, you receive more blessings than you can possibly imagine, but only if you take it by faith. Let's pray together. Holy Father, we do ask that you would seal your word upon us today. Show us how powerful your word is. Show us that it brings dead people to life, that it gives hope to those who are hopeless and those who are stuck in their sins, that it brings them out of it because it shows us the objective truth of what Jesus has done. And this is all about him for his glory. I pray that you would cause us all, as we now come to the supper, to remember that we have repented of our sins. And that's why we're to take that part of the service so seriously. Because now we are free, having heard the gospel, that we are pardoned, that you don't hold us under condemnation. That we have confessed you and we have turned to you in faith and we have now been fed upon your word as it's been preached to us. Now we're able to take the fullness of what it means in the joy of the Lord's Supper. Knowing that we are being brought into a new covenant relationship with you through a covenant that was not broken by Jesus. He fulfilled the whole thing for our sake. doing all of these things and more that we have talked about today. Cause it, therefore, to be a means of grace for your people, even as we pray that this proclamation of this message would be the same for every person who's able to hear. We pray that faith might be welling up inside of each of us, creating joy and hope and obedience and a desire to love you more with our lives. For Christ's sake, we pray, amen.