It's from Luke chapter 22. I'll be reading verses 14 through 20. You can find that on page 882 or 882 of the Pew Bibles. Luke 22, starting at verse 14, reading all the way to 20, as we continue our evening service series on the Westminster Shorter Catechism. So Luke chapter 22, I'll be starting at verse 14. And before I read, would you join me once again in prayer? Lord, I ask that you would help us to focus on your word, that we would be able to give it proper attention and reverence so that we may learn from you, that we may sit at your feet, Christ, and learn who you are for us, how you serve us, what you have provided for us in the supper. We ask that you would accomplish this in Jesus' name. Amen. Luke chapter 22, starting at verse 14. And when the hour came, he, referring to Jesus, reclined at table, and the apostles with him, And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took a cup. And when he had given thanks, he said, take this and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. A broken body and shed blood. A body thrashed by Roman soldiers, pummeled by their instruments of torture, not only to inflict pain but to publicly shame Christ. A blood that dyes a Roman cross the color red. What could make this horror story, this account of suffering, a benefit? How could a broken body and shed blood be, as the Shorter Catechism labels it, spiritual nourishment? I think the answer to these questions is found in what Jesus connects that broken body to. What he connects the shed blood to. Church, it's you. Do you hear Christ? Do you hear the thrust of the Lord's Supper? It's almost as if Jesus breaks the fourth wall, looks right at you and says, my body broken for you. My blood shed for you. Which means that before we can consider how we must respond to the supper, we need to consider what is Jesus promising to be for us. To give and to provide. In our passage we see that he provides for the disciples substance. Substance for their bodies. Physical bread for physical strength. Natural digestion. They eat it. It becomes one with them. The disciples no longer have empty stomachs. They're not hungry. The drink would physically refresh them. But is that enough? No. Our souls need to be strengthened. Our souls need to be refreshed. Our soul needs to be filled. And so Jesus utilizes this familiar comparison and says to us, my flesh is true food. My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. John 6. This physical bread and drink sustains physical life. It is Christ who desires to fill the souls of His brothers and sisters, to strengthen them, to nourish them with Himself. Or as one theologian put it, when we eat and drink Christ, He enters our system, indwelling us, and we remain in Him. We grow into union. Now talking about the supper can turn us into toddlers. Toddlers with a whole bunch of questions firing them one after another before mom and dad can answer a single one. We eat Jesus? Jesus' body is in our stomachs? What does this bread and cup do? How am I supposed to approach the table? How should I eat it? Well, given that our focus these past evening services have been on the catechism, I think now would be a good time to read its answer. What is the Lord's Supper? And here's the answer. The Lord's Supper is a sacrament wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine according to Christ's appointment, his death is showed forth. And the worthy receivers are, not after corporeal and carnal manner, but by faith made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits to their spiritual nourishment and growth and grace." One author describes this answer as a minefield of unnamed theological opponents. What is he getting at? That in the answer to the question of what is the Lord's Supper, They are rejecting views, but they're not using names. Or to put it in modern terms, if the assembly were to publish their shorter catechism on Twitter, this would be a subtweet. This kind of is going to split the room, where some of you are going, yeah, I know what a subtweet is. Here's what a subtweet is. Excuse me. It's when you reject someone's actions, beliefs, without using their name. But you give enough so that anyone reading the tweet can say, I know who this tweet is about. And this is what we find in the answer. The assembly is rejecting views without naming them, naming the opponents. Excuse me. So here's what I'm going to try to do by being sensitive to a few things. One, this is not a classroom. You are not earning any credits for listening to me. And this is an evening service where we will be taking the supper. So I want to try and make a few points about some of these subtweets or mimes. And then end with two questions. What are we eating? And what are we filled with? What are we eating? And what are we filled with? So where's the first mime or subtweet? His death is showed forth. Well, after the Fourth Lateran Council, transubstantiation becomes the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, which means that if you were to teach or believe anything else, you are a heretic. You are outside of truth. The supper is now no longer a meal, but a sacrifice. And the Council of Trent uses that exact same language. Thank you. The Council of Trent. calls the supper a divine sacrifice. Well, how does that play out? Who offers sacrifices? You can answer. Who? Yeah, priests. So now, John is no longer a pastor, but a priest. The supper is not a meal, but a sacrifice, and the table is now an altar. The bread and the cup become the physical body and blood of Jesus. And so the bread and the cup get worshipped. And that also means that there's no, you know, after-mass snacks on the leftovers. You can't leisurely snack on the actual body and blood of Christ. Someone would say, well, it just looks like bread, or it just looks like a cup, in which they would say, yes, this is the accidents. What's the two words there? Substance and accidents. Accidents, yeah, it looks like bread. But the substance is the actual body of Christ. The substance is the actual blood of Jesus. So in light of this, you get a whole host of no's from the Protestants, raining down in every direction. No, the pastor isn't a priest, because Jesus has made all his brothers and sisters a priest. And if the priest is offering a sacrifice, well, he's taking the job of Jesus. A Hebrew says that Christ is the priest who once and for all offered himself as a sacrifice. Here's question 25 of the Shorter Catechism. Christ executeth the office of a priest in his once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God, and in making continual intercession for us. And so we don't need another sacrifice. Jesus has done it. perfectly. Then we get another no. And that no is no, the bread and cup can't actually become the body and blood of Jesus because that would defeat the whole purpose of a sacrament. Signs show, they represent, they point. The signs do not become the substance. And another reason is that Jesus could not have been bodily present before his disciples taken his physical hands and ripped his own body and feed it to them. And he certainly couldn't do that in every place where the mass is taken. So the assembly, following the words of Christ, do this in remembrance of me, and the Apostle Paul, you proclaim the Lord's death, said, no, this is not a sacrifice. This shows forth the death of Christ. It shows, proclaims, commemorates, but this is not a sacrifice. Well, then what happens is something that some of you might be familiar with. Let's say you're in a group of friends, and not everybody there in this group is a believer, but most of you are. And so they make some claim, you know, I can get saved just by being a good person, or I don't really think Jesus is fully God, and you start working together, right? Here are these believers from different denominations and traditions, and you start working together. But then as one of your brother or sister in the faith begins to go into a little bit more detail, it gets kind of awkward. As you're hearing their explanation, you say, that's actually not in the Bible. And for sake of time, this is a little bit of a simplification, but this is kind of what happens with the Protestants in the Lord's Supper. Luther hears Zwingli getting more specific in his rejection of Rome, and Luther says, that's not right. And Calvin in the Reformed hear Luther explaining what the supper is, and they respond, Luther, we actually disagree. And so this brings us to the next mine, or subtweet. Not after a corporal, which, you know, not corporal like military, but body, or carnal manner. So who's being discussed here? Luther. Luther coins the term consubstantiation. And he says, okay, the bread and the cup does not actually become the physical body of Christ, but, he says, Jesus is physically present with us at the supper. And here is his major emphasis. In, with, or under the elements. And so this is Luther's position. He moves this forward. Jesus is physically present wherever the supper is being held. Calvin and the Reformed respond and say, no, Luther, Jesus is truly human. And because he's truly human, he can't physically be present in each and every place where the supper is taken. And they also say, don't you remember, this is settled back in a couple of those church councils, don't you remember? Chalcedon, there's no mixing or changing of the two natures, right? Jesus is fully God and fully man in two distinct natures in one person. And so that divine nature of being able to be present everywhere can't bleed or blend over into humanity. Calvin and the Reforms say Jesus must be truly human. How else can he represent us? Well, to try and put it more succinctly, Luther says that Christ is present in the supper because he comes down. Calvin looks to the work of the Holy Spirit and says, yes, Jesus is present with us in the supper, but because the Holy Spirit lifts the bride to be with the groom. Jesus does not come down, but by the work of the Spirit, he is present wherever his brothers and sisters come to the table to eat. Earlier, I said that I wanted to conclude on two questions. What are we eating? And what are we being filled with? And I wanted to end here because I feel like this is perhaps maybe the biggest threat to the church's view of the supper. Protestants agree. What are we eating? Bread. And we are drinking from a cup. The bread remains bread. The cup remains a cup. But does that mean only our stomachs are being filled? When you take the supper, is that all that's happening? The Assembly, Westminster Assembly, Calvin, Augustine, the Apostles, Christ himself says, no. There is more happening. And here's an example of what can happen when you fail to grasp that. Growing up, when I was taking the Lord's Supper, I think it was maybe about 11 or 12, I had two really big challenges. First challenge for me, taking the Lord's Supper. We had these really thin paper wafers, and they were terrible, and I couldn't stand the taste. That was the first challenge. I want to be a Christian, I want to be a good boy, but these wafers are terrible. Here is my second challenge. How do I get the supper to work? To change me? To convey significance? And so there I would be trying to work up feelings of guilt about my sin. trying to envision in my mind's eye Christ on the cross and me in the crowd shouting crucify him. I was doing all this to make it work, to get the effect. The supper was an occasion to work up devotional thoughts and show that I am a Christian. And what's behind that is Zwingli. He taught that the Supper is a pledge of fidelity. I believe in God. I have faith in Him. And so the Supper isn't a moment of spiritual nourishment. It's where I show I'm a Christian. The Supper becomes, you know, waving a flag or wearing your Eagles jersey or whatever team you might root for. But it's not a nourishing event. It's all dependent upon your memory, what you can work up devotionally with your thoughts and memory. And so in our last subtweet, or mine, we see the Catechism rejecting that. Partakers of His body and blood. In the Confession it says, with all the benefits. And spiritual nourishment, growth in grace. This means that when we come to the Supper, it's not just about what we can remember, or a guilt that we can produce, but what Christ Himself is saying He is going to do for you. to nourish your spirit, to cause you to grow in grace, deepen you in your participation in His body and blood. This is Paul. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? It's these symbols, the bread and the cup, that the Holy Spirit utilizes as symbols to nourish our souls and to deeper union with Christ. Here's a quote I really enjoyed from Calvin. As surely as the bread and cup are physically digested and produce strength for our bodies, the bread and cup become vehicles for our souls to be nourished and strengthened. The broken body for you. the shed blood for you. The supper is for you. Jesus wants to nourish us. He invites us to His table to feed us. It's as if our baptism brings us in to the family of God as His children. And the supper is God doing whatever a good dad does. You feed your kids. Dads, why do you make sure there's food on the table? For your kids to grow, to be strengthened, to grow up. And this is what the Father has provided us in Christ and in His supper, an opportunity to feed and be strengthened, to grow up, to be nourished. Well, I shared a bit about what I would try to fill my mind with before taking the supper. And I'd like to suggest a few things for you to think about while taking the supper. Your upcoming week, your brothers and your sisters, and your God. Because you need strength and nourishment for all of those things. You will have trials. You will experience suffering or difficulty this week. Temptations. You need strength. It's hard to share in the sufferings of others. It's hard to humble ourselves and rejoice with those who are rejoicing. Or weep with those who are weeping. You need strength. And we need strength to share in the sufferings of Christ. Are you hungry for strength to trust Christ during those trials? Are you hungry for strength to kill sin? to put to death ungodliness and unthankfulness will come in faith and eat. Do you feel your body aging and struggling to hold fast to the promise of the resurrection? These bones are old now, but my body will be made new. If you are hungry for assurance and renewed faith in that promise, come in faith and eat. Because just as the bread and cup sustain physical life, so our souls are fed by Christ. My flesh is true food. My body is true drink. Would you pray with me? Lord, as we prepare to continue to worship you and to take of the supper, we pray that we that we'd be blessed with the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that we as your people would be lifted to commune with you, and that we would really view the supper as a nourishing event where you would feed our weak faiths, that you would remember or cause us to remember the blessings and benefits that we have in Christ. Thank you that you have made us your own. You want us to feed, to grow, to be strengthened. And so whether that be to share in your sufferings, to resist sin, to be assured of your love, would you let it be effective? Would you accomplish your purposes as we take the supper? We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.