to read the Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 11, commencing at verse 17. 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17. Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper, and one is hungry and another is drunken. What? Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup. When he had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me. For as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weakened sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. If any man hunger, let him eat at home. that ye come not together unto condemnation, and the rest will I set in order when I come." God will add His blessing to the reading of His own infallible Word. Could we bow together, please, before the Lord, and we will have a word of prayer before we come to the Lord's message. Let our hearts together and let us all pray. God and our Father, we pray today that As we now turn to the Scriptures of truth that will please Thee to visit us and to bless us, we pray for Thy Spirit to draw near. We pray that we'll know that help that He gives to those who seek Him. O Lord, shut us in with Thee. Speak to our hearts from this Thine own holy and precious Word. May we see much of Christ today. May our hearts be moved to rejoice in Him. We pray, Lord, that even those who sit among us who need Him would have their hearts opened up to seek for the mercy and the salvation that He affords to the sinner. Hear and answer prayer and abide with us, we pray in Christ's name and for Christ's sake. Amen. Returning to 1 Corinthians 11, where we read earlier in the service and we today come to consider these verses that set before us the mind of the Lord, the teaching of the Lord on the matter of the Lord's Supper. We've already noted in our studies over recent weeks that the Old Testament people of God had two ordinances, the Passover and circumcision. And therefore, in the New Testament church there are also two ordinances or two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, which have replaced the ordinances of that former administration. The Gospels in their record of the institution of the Lord's Supper or the communion ordinance make it very clear that it was actually on the night when the Lord and His disciples were celebrating the Passover, the night prior to His death, that He instituted the new sacrament. Matthew tells us that as they were eating, that is, as they were eating the Passover meal, the Lord introduced and ordained the communion of His body and His blood. And therefore the very fact that he did so at that time, at that juncture, was the indication that the Passover was being abolished and the Lord's Supper was being established and introduced as the covenant meal of the New Testament era. Now when the believer reads the words of Jesus Christ that he employed at the institution of the Lord's Supper, it will be noticed, or it should be noticed, that there are words of explanation. Both in Matthew, Mark and Luke, where they record this event, and then again here by the Apostle Paul, you will notice in the words that are recorded for us that the Lord Jesus very carefully explained the meaning and the sense of this sacred ordinance. His sovereign institution of the Lord's Supper as the head of the church was set forth in language that could not be misunderstood. It was very plain. It was a verbal explanation in the most concise terms and the most plain terms of what was going on. In other words, the Lord did not leave it to the finite minds of even good and godly men, like His own apostles, to determine the meaning of this ordinance. He gave the explanation of the ordinance even as He introduced it to them and, of course, therefore to the entire church. Notice here in Paul's record in 1 Corinthians 11 the fact of our Saviour's personal explanation of this sacrament. What Paul records here, he tells us, he received directly from the Lord Himself. Look at verse 23 and he says, For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you. He had told the Corinthian church when he was with them at the institution of that church, when he had preached the gospel in Corinth of the Lord's Supper, and therefore that's what he means when he says, that which I delivered unto you. But it's those words, I have received of the Lord. And that is a claim to direct revelation from Christ Himself. And here's an interesting matter. The Apostle Paul came along later with regard to his ministry. That is, later than Peter or John or James. He didn't go to them to receive the information, although he could have done and would have received the right information, may I hasten to say, concerning the Lord's Supper or anything else. But he didn't do that. He met with the Lord alone, in Arabia actually. He was there for three years, the Bible tells us. And in those three years, the Lord manifested Himself to Paul and He taught Paul the very Gospel itself. He showed Paul more than He showed any other apostle. But it was on that occasion, we believe, that he actually revealed to Paul the nature and the meaning of this ordinance of the Lord's Supper. Paul can say, I have received of the Lord. He received the details of the institution of the Supper directly from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And why was that? Why did the Apostle Paul receive a direct revelation from the Lord about the Lord's Supper? Because he was the Apostle to the Gentiles. He must go forth into all the world of that day, especially as the apostle of the Gentiles, and preach the gospel, ordain men to the ministry, or elders to the churches, and set up the whole work of God in many regions. And he must be able to tell those Gentiles, what I'm teaching you about the Lord's Supper, I receive right from Christ. It's not of man. It's right. from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And when you read Paul's words here, you will find that they are fuller that they are more explicit than anything else that you are going to read in the Gospels. I know there you will read the sentence and you will read the basis of the entire ordinance, no doubt, but here you find that you have a fuller presentation, a more detailed presentation than you even have in the Gospels themselves. And here the Lord Jesus Christ stamps His own authority. on the ordinance of the Lord's Supper by giving this direct and personal explanation to Paul and therefore to all the New Testament churches through the Apostle Paul and right down to ourselves today. Thank God we have the words of Christ to tell us what the Lord's Supper is and what it means. As he explains it, you'll notice that the Lord tells us that in nature it is a remembrance. He says here, this do in remembrance of me. Now let me just say at this point that that does not mean a bare, mere memorial. It doesn't mean that at all. The word remember here, this do in remembrance of me, it means to call to mind. And what it signifies is that when you and I sit at the Lord's table to receive the Lord's Supper, we are to call to mind from the Scriptures, that is, the meaning and the significance of this ordinance and what it says to our hearts. We are to think upon the Word. We are to bring up in our minds verses and Scriptures that make it absolutely clear what happened that night when the Lord died. We are not left to our own imagination, in other words. The Lord doesn't mean when He says, this do in remembrance of Me, that we go through the matter perfunctorily in a very dead manner, not thinking. And when we do think, we are to think scripturally. Bring up from the Lord into your mind verses and statements that will help you, that will enable you to understand this ordinance of the Lord's Supper. The Lord explains for us not only an act of remembrance in that sense of calling to mind what He has done, it is an act of representation. Because when the Lord says, this is my body, as you find in these words, In verse 24 or verse 25, this cup is the New Testament in my blood. Well, he means that these emblems represent his body and his blood. And it's a representation, and this is very important, it's a representation of the covenant essence. of the ordinance. And that's especially brought out in the words there concerning the cup. This cup is the New Testament, or the New Covenant in my blood. That, of course, could belong to the other words about the bread, but the point is, the Lord refers here to the covenant, the New Covenant as it's called, because the word testament simply means covenant. And therefore He's saying to His disciples and saying to us that what He did when He died, when He gave Himself and when He made the atonement, was a sealing or a confirming to His people all the blessings of the covenant of grace. The Lord's Supper is therefore not a mere memorial service at all. It is a covenant meeting. when we meet with our covenant God and our covenant Head and we have represented for us on the table before us the very signs and seals of the covenant in the form of the bread and the juice of the grape. And the Lord is telling us that by His death He has sealed and ratified that covenant for the blessing and for the eternal welfare and well-being of His people. And therefore, on the basis of what the Lord Himself set forth about the Lord's Supper, Paul proceeds then to draw a conclusion that you see in verse 26. It says there, for as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come. Now let me just say, those are Paul's words in the sense that verse 26 does not contain words that the Lord directly gave Paul when he gave him the other words that he mentions in 23 through to 25. The words in verse 26 are inspired, of course, but they are Paul's own comment, by inspiration of the Spirit, on what the Lord showed him, on what the Lord said to him. And what is that? Read it again. For as often as ye eat this bread, and by the way, now just say this, those very words tell us that there's no set pattern in the New Testament as to how often the Lord's people celebrate the Lord's Supper. It says, as often as you do it. And you might say, well, why do you do it every week in Palomino Church? Because we may do it every week. And we do it every week. We remember the Lord's death every week. But not all of our churches do that. And down through church history, there was the tradition to have it once a quarter, perhaps, or once a month, or whatever. But the point is, no one can say you should have it every week, or you should not have it every week. The Lord says, as often as you do it, here's the important thing. Whenever you celebrate the Lord's Supper, whenever you observe this ordinance, you are showing the Lord's death. Now, there's the thing I want us to think about today as we come to look at the Lord's Supper. That word, show, means to proclaim. As oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do proclaim the Lord's death till he come." At every observance of the ordinance, there is a fresh proclamation of the death of Jesus Christ. And that means that we as God's people need to celebrate or partake in the ordinance with discernment, with understanding, because as we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we are actually proclaiming the death of Christ. That's why Paul goes on to mention discernment. Go down to verse 29. It says, He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. I wish I had time today to explain that verse fully because it's a verse that gives many believers a lot of trouble. I think I will just take a moment to look at it in passing here. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily. What does that word unworthily mean? Well, many, many believers will substitute another word, and they'll read it this way, he that eateth and drinketh unworthy. Well, of course, for a start, that doesn't make any sense grammatically. But that's not what the word is. In your mind, how often have you put it in? And you've said to yourself, I'm unworthy to come to the Lord's table. Because you know that you are yet a sinner. And you know that you're not perfect yet. Well, my dear friend, you don't understand today that if the word unworthy were in there, no one would ever be allowed to come to the Lord's table. But the word's not in there. And that's not what unworthily means. It doesn't mean unworthy in the sense that you haven't reached a certain spiritual level and therefore you feel you're not worthy to come to the Lord's table. That's not what it means. I want you to get that because I feel that many of God's people live under a misunderstanding here. under a burden, and they say to themselves, well, I haven't reached a level of spirituality or understanding of the Word, or I haven't reached a level of sanctification, and therefore I can't come to the table. That's not what the Word means. The Word simply means that you come to the Lord's Supper making no attempt to discern or to understand the meaning. and the significance of it. And that's what Paul explains, he says at the very end of verse 29, not discerning the Lord's body. Many believers in Corinth were coming to the Lord's table, just taking the setting here in the context, and they were making no attempt to discern or to understand the Lord's Supper at all, and therefore it was of no benefit to them, and therefore they were eating and drinking unworthily. And the word damnation there doesn't mean going to hell in this setting. It means coming under chastisement. And that's what Paul explains when he goes on then into verse 30. And he says, For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. That is a reference to death. Now get this clearly. Verse 30 is a very solemn verse. But it must be understood in its own context. If you go back with me a little, I'm actually not even looking at my notes here, I'm digressing, but go back with me to earlier verses. I want you to understand and see what Paul is teaching here. If you go back to where we read at the start, from verse 17 onwards, and he says, I can't praise you that you come together, not for the better, but for the worse. He talks about divisions in verse 18. Then he gets right into the matter of the Lord's Supper, verse 20. He says, when you come together, therefore, into one place, that is to assemble as a church. That's what he means. Then he says this. This is not to eat the Lord's Supper. Now, what he means there is not that these people never came together with the intention of eating the Lord's Supper, or having the Lord's Supper, or that they should never come together with that intention. But what he means is, when you do come together professing to remember the Lord's Supper, or celebrate the Lord's Supper, you're not doing it at all. What were they doing? Well, look at verse 21. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper, and one is hungry, and another is drunken." These are amazing words. Paul is describing what was going on in the church at Corinth. He is describing a situation where they had actually turned the Lord's Supper into a veritable feast. It wasn't a matter of simply using the bread and the juice of the grape as the Lord had appointed, but they had spread out their tables and they had filled them with much food and there was feasting and drinking going on professedly in celebration of the Lord's Supper. But to the degree that there was a complete ignoring of what it meant, there was no discernment of what it meant, it was turned into a terrible abuse. And for that reason, God chastised the church at Corinth, because whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. And when you get this well, He chastened them, some were weak and some were sickly, and some had even been taken away in death. The chastening hand of God was heavy. But here's the point, men and women. It was not for anything else. But this matter of coming to the Lord's table, failing to celebrate it properly, this is why the Lord chastened them. He wasn't chastening them for other discrepancies or sins in their lives, in everyday life. It was for this matter of their failure to discern the Lord's Supper. Now, I tell you, it's a very solemn thing. To solemn passages, and I think for that reason again, many believers say to themselves, using that word once more, I'm not worthy to come. I just can't come. I don't feel right. I don't feel spiritually at a certain level, and therefore I shouldn't come. And what I'm explaining to you is this, my friend, that's not the setting here when Paul says, let a man examine himself and then let him eat and drink, or if he eats and drinks unworthily, he does so to his own chastisement. The setting here is not what you think. The setting here is with regard to the discrepancies and the faults and the failures of the Corinthian church that I've sought to explain to you. And I do all that to get it home to your heart. That the Lord's table is for sinners saved by grace, who are endeavoring, yes, to walk with God as grace enables them. But it's not for people who are spiritually elite, It's not for people who have reached a level of sanctification or knowledge of God or whatever you care to mention that's far superior to all other believers. Because let me tell you something, there aren't such people in Christ's church that is spiritually elite or have reached a level that others haven't reached. I know there are some who think that they're in those areas. But let me tell you, my dear friend, there isn't one. There isn't one. There's no true child of God who has reached a level of holiness or spirituality that sets him or her above other Christians. That is not biblical, and furthermore, it's not reality. The Lord's Supper is for men and women who have sinned their sin and have come to rest in Christ. and have fled to Him for refuge and salvation, and have cast themselves upon Him. And though they know their failures and the remaining corruption in their own hearts, and the sins of which they are guilty, even as God's people, though they know all that, yet they remember the blessed words of Christ. But as we examine ourselves, we are to eat and we are to drink. and we are to remember our Lord's death. and we are to understand what it's all about. And this is the key thing for our purposes today, really understanding what the Lord's Table is, what the communion service is all about, and what is that? Well, first of all, it's a proclamation of the sufferings of the Lord's death. I go back to verse 26, Ye do show, ye do proclaim the Lord's death till he come. And when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, what are we proclaiming? Well, we are proclaiming the sufferings of His death. The fact that the Lord not only died, but that He suffered, is shown in the communion ordinance. You take the words of Christ as He says there, this is my body which is broken for you. There in verse 24, this is my body which is broken for you. Or you take Luke's account, and Luke puts it this way, this is my body which is given for you. And I tell you, brother and sister, if you read those words prayerfully and carefully, you're going to see something of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, my body broken, broken, broken for you. And therefore, it's a proclamation. of the awful sufferings of our Redeemer on behalf of His guilty people to save them from our sins, the agony and the shame and the pain and the suffering to which He gave Himself, to which He submitted Himself. This is what's in view in those words, this is my body which is broken for you. The scriptures make it clear therefore that in the Lord's Supper we are proclaiming the sufferings of the death of Jesus Christ as we think about His own words, but we also think about His actions. Because we're told here, are we not? Look at verse 23 and notice what it says. We're told here that the Lord actually broke bread. It says, the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He break it. He took bread and He break it. That that was a symbolic act. And we should pay heed to that. The Lord took it before the eyes of the disciples. And in their view, he actually broke that bread. And as he broke it, he said, this is my body, or this represents my body. And what does he say? Which is broken for you. He broke the bread and then he explained what he was doing. And He was telling His people, He was telling His disciples, and He's telling us today that therefore He suffered. And when we celebrate the Lord's death or the Lord's supper, we are proclaiming the sufferings of Christ in His death. Now those sufferings of the Lord were voluntary. If you think about these verses and these words of our Savior Himself, you will find that He broke the bread. as he instituted the communion ordinance, he did so not one of the disciples. The Lord did it in order to bring home to the disciples that he was willingly and voluntarily giving himself for them and for their sins. We, as it were, do not see this taking place visibly before our eyes, because the Lord does not come down into our midst in a physical way, break the bread before our eyes the way He did before those disciples. But the point is, it is recorded in the Scriptures. And therefore, when you read the actions of Christ and the words of Christ, you read of a voluntary suffering into which He was going. And my friend, there is the very heart almost of the whole suffering of Jesus Christ. And when we come to the table, we are to keep this in mind. We are to remind ourselves, we are to meditate on this great truth that the Lord Jesus Christ was not forced or coerced into suffering. Willingly, He gave Himself, demonstrated it, by his action of breaking the bread and handing it to the disciples, telling them that what he was about to suffer was according to his own mind and his own will. And he was willingly, therefore, giving himself. He said himself, as you find in John 10, No man take of my life from me, I lay it down of myself. Over and over again, He makes it absolutely clear that gladly, willingly, He suffered for His people. It was a voluntary suffering. And we should never forget that when we come to the table of the Lord. It should be uppermost in our minds. Our blessed Savior willingly put Himself under the stroke of the wrath of God in order to save us from our sins. It was also not only voluntary suffering, but it was, of course, vicarious or substitutionary. In verse 24 again, notice the words, "...this is my body which is broken for you." Every little word there is important, especially that word, for. broken for you. That word for has the sense of in place of, or instead of. It's translated in different ways in the New Testament that bring out the idea of the vicarious suffering of Christ. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 5.20, in Christ's stead. And there the words instead are the same word here as for. So He died instead of us. His body was broken instead of us, or in place of us, or for our sakes. It's all there. This is what the little word for means. It tells us, therefore, that the Lord's sufferings were vicarious. He suffered in our place, and for our sakes, and in our stead. He suffered our hell. He suffered the wrath of God that was our due. He took our place, He bared His bosom, so to speak, and He allowed the Father willingly to run the sword of justice through His lovely soul. And He took all the scourging and all the beating and all the ignominy and all the shame that was put upon Him at Calvary. He took it all, my friend, for the sakes of His people. And we are to remember that. when we come to celebrate the supper of our Lord that His sufferings were vicarious. Let me just say a little about that by way of explaining further the vicarious sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. The vicarious sufferings of the Lord are the highest proof of divine mercy. You see, the penalty that is due for sin is such that God in His justice could have damned the entire human race and would have been right in doing so. He could have poured out His wrath upon mankind as a whole. But what did He do? He appointed His own dear Son to step in and take the place of many and become a substitute to satisfy divine justice, bear their sin in His own body, carry it to the tree, suffer beneath the wrath of God for that sin, make atonement for that sin, And you know why? The Lord could have damned the entire company of mankind and have been just in doing so. And therefore, you who are saved today need to remember well that you do not deserve to be saved. That you have no entitlement to the mercy of God. That you have absolutely no way whatsoever that you can claim to be a worthy receiver of mercy. What mercy of God that He not only provided a way of salvation, but that He actually gave His Son to bring it about. And therefore, when you think of the vicarious sufferings of Christ, His body broken for you, you remember that that is the greatest demonstration of mercy that ever could be shown unto men, that God would not only allow a substitute to die for others, but that He would provide that substitute in the person of His own dear Son. And then, of course, as we think about these words that proclaim the sufferings of Christ's death, we see that the sufferings were vital, or they were necessary. When the Lord handed the disciples the broken bread, For He did hand them the broken bread. He was demonstrating that there was no other way in which their redemption could be accomplished, their salvation could be secured. He gave them broken bread. And remember that the Lord broke the bread, not the disciples. When they received it, it was already broken. What is the Lord telling them? He is telling them, This is the only way. My sufferings are vital and necessary, indispensable. There is no other way for you to be saved. And dear believer, while we cannot fully enact what happened in the upper room when the Lord entered at the ordinance, yet nonetheless, when the plate comes to you and you take your piece of bread, you remember something. You remember that you are handling a sign of the vital suffering of Christ for your soul. You are actually taking into your hand and then into your mouth and into your very body that which tells you that without the Savior's death you would already be in hell. Already you be feeling the flames of damnation. And therefore you're being reminded of how necessary, how vital the sufferings of our Lord actually were. Turn to Luke 24 for a moment. Luke chapter 24. And listen in that chapter to the words of Christ as He dealt with the two on the road to Emmaus. And He says in these verses, Luke 24, And in verse 26 he says this, "...ought not Christ to have suffered these things?" Now, the things that he mentions there in verse 26 are, of course, his full sufferings. If you go back to verse 20, it speaks there of how the chief priests and rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified him. And the Lord now refers to that in His words in verse 26, "...ought not Christ to have suffered these things." You see, the problem with the two disciples on the road to Mass was that they could not understand why this had befallen their leader, their blessed Jesus of Nazareth. They couldn't understand it, why these things had come, why He died, why He was buried. Their minds were still darkened. And now the Lord brings it home to them, because the word up there means it is necessary. Read it that way. It is necessary for Christ to have suffered these things. Necessary, my friend. Oh, when you take the bread, or when you drink the cup, you remember something, that there was no other way for your soul to escape the just wrath of God. Therefore, it was necessary that He die, that He suffer, that He do the great work of the cross. We proclaim the sufferings of His death when they come to the table. We then proclaim the sacrifice of His death in the two actions of breaking the bread and distributing the wine or the juice of the grape in the cup, it is set before us that the Lord's death was sacrificial. Now, we know that His death was sacrificial, because again, the Scriptures make that absolutely clear. And we could go to many Scriptures today that tell us that He gave Himself a sacrifice for sin, that He offered up Himself, all these terms, all these verses, they're found throughout the New Testament, and indeed in the Old Testament. And therefore we know from the Scripture that His death was sacrificial. But remember that that night of which we read right here, when the Lord took the bread and broke it and handed it to them, and then took the cup after He had supped and did the same, handed the cup to them, Remember that when He did that, He was showing those disciples not only that He would suffer in His death, but He was showing those disciples that what He was about to do was the great sacrifice for sin. That means that when we come and we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we do proclaim that His death is a sacrificial death. A price paid to save His people from their sins. It's an acceptable sacrifice, we should notice. And that's a very blessed thing for God's people to remember and to dwell on at the Lord's table. If you look with me at those words in verse 24, And when he had given thanks, he breaketh. And the word break there, denotes the action of Christ in that He only broke the bread once. He didn't break the bread over and over again, but He took that loaf, or whatever it was, actually the Passover bread, and the verb here indicates that He broke it only once. It was one action of breaking the bread sufficient for the disciples to eat. Now what's the point of that? The point is, the once and for all suffering of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the acceptable nature of the suffering and the death and the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, the Roman Mass is a blasphemy for this very reason, that it supposedly is a sacrifice that is being offered repeatedly to God. When we come to the Lord's Table, we are not re-enacting Calvary. We are simply remembering what happened at Calvary, and we have it represented to our minds, as I said earlier, that Jesus Christ died and died only once. His sacrifice, therefore, was accepted by God. An acceptable sacrifice And then, thank God, an atoning sacrifice. That's presented in the emblem of the cup containing the juice of the grape. The Lord made it very clear that the contents of that cup were symbolic of His blood. He said, this cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do as you have to as you drink it in remembrance of me." So we have the Lord's own words to tell us that the cup, the juice of the grape, in other words, represents or symbolizes the precious blood that He shed at Calvary. And it's right here in this feature of the Lord's table that we see the whole idea of the atonement. Because, my friend, when we proclaim the Lord's death as being a sacrifice, We must remember the teaching of Scripture on the matter of the sacrifice that God requires. As I said earlier, the Lord's Supper is a covenant meal in the sense that it is setting before us the symbols of the covenant of grace and that Jesus Christ died, shed His blood, sealed the covenant. It is therefore a covenant meal. Now, there's one outstanding feature about the covenant throughout all Scripture, and it's this. Any covenant or any revelation of the covenant of God and of grace in the Bible always brings us to the shedding of the blood. Always. You see, the Lord Jesus Christ died in a particular way. He died by offering up Himself to satisfy divine justice. He who was the priest also was the victim. He presented Himself in His entirety to God the Father as that sacrifice that satisfies divine justice. But in it all, my friends, He died by the shedding of His blood. Or He died a death that involved the shedding of His blood. And that is in keeping with the whole revelation of Scripture on the covenant of grace. God revealed from the very time He began to reveal anything to men about salvation, that salvation is His promise, His covenant unto men. He revealed that a Redeemer would come in the fullness of time. who would die in the sinner's place. He revealed that that Redeemer would offer up Himself a sacrifice to pay for sin. But He revealed very clearly, and this is where, when you look at the Old Testament, you can see it so clearly. He revealed that that sacrifice, as I put it, would involve, would include the shedding of blood, because God required that His wrath be appeased by the shedding of blood. You might say, why? Well, my friend, no man has any right to ask that question. God revealed that there would have to be the shedding of blood to satisfy His justice. That's what He revealed. That's why when you read of covenants being made in the Old Testament, between God and men, there always was a sacrifice, and there always was the shedding of blood. He's setting forth, therefore, in tight and in picture that when the Redeemer would come, He would make the atonement, and He could only make the atonement in His sacrifice when He would shed His blood. Let me ask you a question. Why was it that the Lord Jesus Christ did not lay down His life in some other way? Let me put you another way. Do you remember when the devil came up to the pinnacle of the temple and said, cast yourself over, and therefore sought to kill the Lord? Why was that so wrong? Why would the Lord not yield to that? For the simple reason, that wasn't the way that the Father had appointed for Him to die. That would not have been according to the covenant of grace. Why was it? that when he was in Nazareth and they took him and sought to throw him over a cliff, that he simply passed through them and went his way. Why was that? Because that was not how it was appointed for him to die. He must die and make the atonement for sin by shedding his blood, because God said, it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul. The brethren and sisters, let us believe that. It is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Oh, men will say, but surely it's simply talking about the death of Christ. I know it's talking about the death of Christ. But the death of Christ was not a death that didn't involve the shedding of blood. It did involve it. And you remember something. When the Lord ordained the Lord's Supper, He did not give the two emblems together to His disciples. He gave them separately. Here's the bread. Here's the cup. That's why we celebrate the Lord's Supper in that manner. What's the point of that? To bring home the great truth that our blessed Savior died a death, a sacrificial death, as well as a suffering death that involved the shedding of His blood. There's so much emphasis on that in Scripture that we could not fail to notice it. His death involved the shedding of blood. Therefore, you take the bread, then you take the cup to show the full meaning and significance of the death of our Savior being a sacrifice for sin. And then, thank God, we can say today as we come to a close, ye do show, ye do proclaim the Lord's death. It is also proclaiming the sufficiency of His death. Ye do proclaim the Lord's death till He come. What do I mean by the sufficiency of the Lord's death? I simply mean, my friend, that in the death of Jesus Christ, in the breaking of our Savior beneath the wrath of God, in the shedding of His precious blood, there is everything that is needed to save us, deliver us, reconcile us to God, make us God's people, bring us home to glory. There is the sufficiency of the death of Christ. It is enough. Nothing more is needed. Nothing more is required. Our Savior's death is absolutely sufficient. And that comes out in an interesting way with regard to the Lord's Table, and it's this. As I said earlier, we're not told how often to remember the Lord's death or celebrate the Lord's Supper, but we are told to do it. Continually, as oft as ye eat this bread, ye do proclaim the Lord's death until he come. The church is to celebrate the Lord's Supper until he returns. It's a constant, ongoing celebration. Even take your own individual life. I dealt with baptism lately. And I may have said this then, that a believer is baptized only once. Why? Because you're only born again once. Baptism is a symbol of union with Christ. Therefore, baptism is administered once. But it's not enough, dear believer, for you to come to the Lord's table just once in your Christian experience. It is to be ongoing. And here's the reason why. While You're united with Christ only once, symbolized by baptism. On the other hand, you're constantly enjoying the fruits of the Lord's death. Only when you're first saved, but ever afterwards to the very day you go home to glory, there is an endless supply of the fruit of the death of Christ to your soul. And that's why you remember His death constantly. And that means that you come to the Lord's table regularly, because we are endlessly supplied with the benefits and the merits and the values of the death of Jesus Christ, that all-sufficient death. Turn to Mark chapter 6, please. Just as we do come to a close today, one verse I want you to see, Mark chapter 6 and verse 41. And it's a verse that illustrates this point of the sufficiency of the death of Christ, and does so in a very remarkable way, dealing with the feeding of the 5,000. And verse 41 says this, When he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven and blessed, listen, and break the loaves. Now once more, that verb there, break, is actually basically the same word as we saw back in 1 Corinthians 11. He break the bread. It's the same word. Now what does it indicate? Remember what it indicates? He only broke it once. This actually was the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. Do you ever understand that? The Lord didn't take the five loaves and keep doing this. That's not how it happened. He only broke those loaves once. And then he created bread on the spot. That's the miracle. He created enough bread to feed the 5,000 and have some left over. But the point is, he broke the loaves only once. But the miracle is, He kept on giving until everybody was fed. And there's an illustration of this point of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ's death. We already saw that He only died once, and thank God He died unto sin once and never again. But oh, men and women, He died once, but thank God He keeps giving, always, continually. Here we are today in 2006. The 21st century and across the world today, God's people all together are benefiting from our Saviour's death 2,000 years ago, as they have been doing down through the time since He died and even before He died, because He's the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and His death benefited it. and saved His people before He ever died, because in the mind of God it was as good as done. And the Lord Jesus has been, therefore, feeding His people with the benefits of His death constantly. Just as the Jews were to celebrate the Passover on an ongoing, regular basis, to celebrate by way of looking forward to the cross the sufficiency of Christ's death. So we regularly come to the table of the Lord to celebrate, to rejoice in the sufficiency of His death. That's a challenge to our hearts. It's a challenge to those here today who are saved. Have you been careless about the Lord's Table? When did you last remember your Savior's death as He is appointed? You see, brethren and sisters, the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Table is His ordinance. It's not a man's, it's not a church's. It's His. You profess to be a child of God? When did you ever come to the table of the Lord last? When? You see the point I'm making? There may be coldness in your heart. There may be carelessness in your heart. There may be sin in your life, and you say, that's the reason why. Well, let me tell you something, dear believer. You need to get that sorted out. You need to get that sorted out. If you're not coming to the Lord's table because of carelessness, because of coldness, because of whatever it might be, it's wrong. And the sooner you get back to the Lord and repent of your sin or whatever is needed, the better for your own soul. Because you are depriving yourself of a means of grace that the Lord in His love and mercy has appointed for His people, that they might grow and they might rejoice. And then there are some of you sitting here today, and you know that you cannot come to the Lord's table because you are not saved. And you see the table spread from Sunday to Sunday, and you have to walk out the doors because you know that you're not in any fit state in the sense of being yet unsaved and unregenerate to come to the table of the Lord. My dear friend, God is speaking to you by that table being spread. It's showing, it's proclaiming the Lord's death. It's telling you, every time you see it spread, that it's the death of Christ alone that will ever save you. And while you're honest enough to walk out and say, I can't come there, for I'm not saved. Oh, I tell you today to stop and think of what you're doing. Because if you live on the way you're living and you die in the state you're found today, There will come a time in the depths of hell when you will remember that you had set before your eyes at least a message about the death of Christ, about what it is, the sufferings, the sacrifice, the sufficiency of that death showing to you that if you would seek that Savior, you would be saved. There's a message for your heart. Make sure that you seek Christ. Make sure, my friend, that you come to know Him. Let us bow together before the Lord. Let's all unite our hearts in prayer together Just as we close our meeting today, let's all engage in prayer. O God, our Father, we ask Thee to take Thy Word and to use it for Thy glory and for Thy praise. Lord, may it indeed be a means of help and encouragement to the saints. And may it be a challenge to those who are lost, that even this day they will seek Thee and come to Thee and rest in that finished work. hear and answer prayer, go with us now today, and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit be with every believer both today and forever. Amen.