We're in Mark chapter 14 again. I want to share with you one story from the life of William Gatsby. I shared with you last week some of God's providential workings in bringing him to Manchester. He was there in the city of Manchester as a minister for 38 years. One of the first sermons Gatsby preached there in Manchester was from Isaiah 42, verse 22. Now, for unknown reasons, reasons unknown to him at that time, the people, as he preached this message, they looked with great attentiveness. They were clinging to every word that he was saying. They had big smiles on his face. And it was different from some of the other times, and he didn't understand it. And then he found out later why. The preacher that had gone before him, in the last couple of sermons that he had preached, began to preach against his deacons, or the deacons of this church. It was a Baptist church that Gatsby was called to. And in his second to last sermon, the former preacher had used Mark chapter 5. This is the passage where the demons entered the herd of pigs, and then the herd of pigs ran off the cliff and were drowned. Well, this preacher stood up and he was pointing out the deacons and saying, you're those demons, and this congregation is the herd of pigs, and if you don't get rid of them, they're going to drive you into destruction. And then his last sermon there, 3624. And here's what that verse says. It says, this was that Anna that found the mules in the wilderness. He fed the donkeys of Zibion, his father. And so he preached and he said, the deacons were the mules and the donkeys were the congregation. And so if you can imagine, the congregation was not pleased with what they were hearing, and so they paid him off. They paid him off to get rid of him. That was the situation that William Cadsby entered into. That was the type of preaching that these people had to suffer through. And so he gets up on this particular Sunday and he preaches Isaiah 42, 22, which says, this is a people robbed and spoiled. Providence, wasn't it? That's why they had huge smiles on their face. That's why they were clinging to his words. Those words fit perfectly the situation of the church in Catholic, we didn't know it. You know, true preaching is a fascinating phenomenon. The world doesn't understand the preaching of the world, right? The world tries to change culture by protests, by riots, by uprisings. But how does God change? How does God bring about change? It's by the preaching of the Word. first to the heart of the people that are listening, and by transforming the heart, at times, then God goes and transforms communities. Do you remember that great string of rhetorical questions? Chapter 10. Paul writes, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And then he begins to rattle off these questions. How then, Will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And you remember what Paul's answer was? Paul's answer was Romans 10, 17. So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. True preaching is the word of Christ going out, going forth. I was reading an article about Martin Luther's view of preaching this week, and the writer said this, the word mediated to me via another from outside, and this not immediately filtered through my own simple mind, this word confronts me in a way that my own Bible reading can never do. The external word is preached, as Luther said, is one of the major means of personal transformation. The writer of this particular article then quoted Karl Truman as his conclusion. And he said, in the Word, each person is confronted, not simply with an idea, but with God. Ultimately, that's what preaching does. Preaching takes us in the very presence of God, where God confronts us. Where we do business with God. That's why the ministry of the church begins with the pulpit. Not only does God prepare the preacher to speak, God prepares the people to listen. That's why you often will hear me say something, or bring something out in a sermon, and afterwards people will say to me, you know, that was just what I needed to hear. Asper, were you preaching right at me? What is that? That's God at work. That's the Word of Christ going out. God said in Isaiah 55 11, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. The word of Christ is powerful. What he says is. So what does God say to us this morning? Mark chapter 14 Beginning in verse 22 And as they Jesus and the disciples were eating he took bread and after blessing it he broke it and gave it to them and said take this is my body and Jesus took a cup and when he had given thanks he gave it to them and they all drank of it and And he said to them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again to the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. That's the Lord's word for us this morning. Heavenly Father. We do pray this morning that your word, the word of Christ, would be powerful. We're told that it is sharper than a two-edged sword, that it pierces between joints and marrow. It pierces into the deepest places of our heart. Lord, we need Your Word to pierce deeply because in the deepest recesses of our heart, that's where sin is. And only Your Word can cut it out. So Lord, we pray that You would perform surgery on us We pray, Lord, that you would show us our motivation this morning. Especially show us our desires. Show us what it is that we want in life, and especially what we want from you. Show us, Lord, what it is that we find our desire, our satisfaction, and our pleasures in. And we pray, Lord, that we would be shaped challenged, conformed, so that we find our greatest desire and our greatest satisfaction in Jesus Christ. Bless us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Why do you eat the things that you do? Think about your breakfast this morning. If you had breakfast, Why did you choose to eat the breakfast that you did? I ask you that because I really want you to think about your motivations for eating. There is a motivation behind what we eat. And so I ask myself, what are the different motivations that drive people to eat? And I came up with three motivations. People eat because they're forced to. At the beginning of our life and at the end of our life. When you're really young or when you're really old, you're forced to eat, aren't you? Some people are forced to eat. Some people eat because they need to. Our bodies need energy and nutrients. This is the way God designed us. We get the stuff our body needs by eating. So we eat because we need to. Our stomachs growl. What's our stomachs telling us? It's growling. We need to eat. Then there's a third reason. We eat because we want to. Besides the necessary nutrients that our bodies need, we eat because we get something we want from it. Some people eat because they want something to do. I don't want to go out and mow my yard. I don't want to go out and go for a jog. I can't find anything on TV, so I'm going to go to my freezer and look and see if there's any ice cream in there. Or I'm going to go to my refrigerator and look and see if there's any lettuce in there so I can have a salad. Right? Some people eat because they want something to do. Some people eat because they want to take care of their bodies. You know, one of the most important things you can do to care for your bodies is eat right. Our immune system, perhaps the most important aspect of our healthy immune system is what we eat. So some people eat because they want to take care of themselves. Some people eat because they want fellowship that often accompanies eating. Friday afternoon for lunch, after the Women's Bible study, a number of ladies, they go out to eat regularly. Tonight, after our hymn singing, what are we going to be doing? We're going to be eating. Why? because of the fellowship that comes with it. So some people eat because they enjoy what comes with eating. Some people eat because they want pleasure. Why do I eat chocolate? Oh, I love chocolate. Linda brought that tray of cocoa dusted, dark chocolate covered almonds. Hopefully you might bring some more tonight. They're delicious. I like eating because of the pleasure you get from them. Right? That's why we eat. We eat because we're forced to. We eat because we need to. We eat because we want to. And when I think about why people participate in the Lord's Supper, it's all parallel. Same three reasons. Now the first reason, granted I don't see it too often, why do people eat? I don't see it too often that people partake in the Lord's Supper because they're forced to, but it does happen. Sometimes parents, and I think wrongly, will force their infants to participate in the Lord's Supper. I've seen or heard of people being forced to take the Lord's Supper when they're on their deathbed. There are those people that are not caught the world around them, and yet they're forced to partake. So yes, sometimes people are forced to participate in the Lord's Supper. But most of the time, I think, and I think this is true of every theological persuasion, I think most of the time, people participate in the Lord's Supper because they need or they think they need something from it. but the it is, they may or may not be receiving any benefit from it. See, if someone comes to the table, the Lord's table, thinking that their grace tank needs to be filled up, I think they're actually going to leave disappointed. You all know what a grace tank is. Kind of an expression. Think of a grace tank like a hot water heater. If you have enough grace when you sin, right, you can go take a shower and the grace will cover you and wash all your sins away and everything will be okay. I think that view of grace is fundamentally flawed. Grace is not... Grace is an attitude. I think one of the best places to see this is in Genesis chapter 5. In Genesis chapter 5, verse 5, the Lord looked on mankind. And he sees that every thought of the intentions of man's heart is wickedness. That's all there is in mankind is wickedness. And then in verse 8 we read, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. The word favor there is the word that is often translated grace. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now here's kind of where the difficulty and some of the misleading, some misleading can happen. The word found The word found is not that Noah went out and had to acquire for himself grace. Rather, he went out and he discovered that God was already gracious towards him. Grace is an attitude. What Noah discovered, what he found, is that God's attitude towards him was not one of wrath and punishment, but rather it was an attitude of mercy. When we talk about receiving grace from God, I think that's what we're actually trying or should be trying to communicate. That we are discovering that God's attitude towards us has been gracious and merciful. See, Noah did not earn God's favor, did he? Man can't do that. Romans chapter 3 says we're God haters. We are God's enemies. We wish God was dead. I think of Friedrich Nietzsche, that famous quote from Friedrich Nietzsche. God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him. When Nietzsche wrote that, he was actually being honest. He was describing the wickedness of the heart that says, God, I wish you were out of our lives. God, if you're not going to do what I want you to do, go. That was the wickedness that God saw in all the people that lived on earth. And they deserved wrath and punishment. And Noah, by default, as a son of Adam, was included in that. But why didn't God treat Noah like the rest of the world? Because God had grace. God's attitude was one of, I'm going to show you favor, Noah. And so when it says Noah found favor, Noah was discovering that God had an attitude of graciousness towards him. So when we come to the Lord's table, what should be our motivation? Again, we should not come because we're forced to be here. And our motivation should not be, I want to be here because I need to get something from this, even though that's true. We do need something that's offered in this. The right attitude, the right motivation when we come to this table is because I want I want to. Now what is so special about the Lord's Table that we want, that we desire to participate in it? Even to the point of preparing for it. Well, again, when we rightly come to this Lord's Table, when we come because we want to participate in this fellowship meal with Christ, what we discover, or really rediscover, is that God is being gracious to us, isn't He? If we have a seat at the table with the Lord Jesus Christ, why? It's because He has delighted to give us a seat at the table. Revelation chapter 19, verse 9. It says, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. That's what's going to happen in eternity. That's what this communion, the Lord's Supper, points to. To that marriage supper when we get to sit down and enjoy an eternal feast with the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Lord's Supper looks forward, but we also know it looks back, don't we? It looks back to the Passover, and it looks forward to the return of Christ. When the Lord's Supper, we are reminded, aren't we, that God's grace is upon us. Think of Lamentations. His mercies are new when? Every morning. Great is His faithfulness. We discover in the Lord's Supper that God is looking upon us favorably and lovingly. You remember that old joke about the husband who never told his wife, I love you? And he was asked about it one day. He says, why don't you ever tell your wife that you love her? And the husband says, well, when we got married, when we were standing up there on the platform, I told her I loved her then, and if anything changes, I would let her know. Why doesn't that work in marriage? There's a fundamental truth about love. Love has to be expressed. If love is not expressed, it dies. Love is always seeking expression. Sometimes it can't be expressed, right? Sometimes the situations of life prevent love from being expressed, but love seeks expression. If it doesn't get expressed, It withers. It looks like a fruit on a vine. And if it doesn't get picked and enjoyed, it dies. And I think this is actually the lesson that Jesus is teaching his disciples about the Lord's Supper. the right manner, the right attitude, the right motivation to come to the Lord's table is not because we're forced to, not because we have some need that's driving us to it, but because we want to be there in order to express our love and our delight and our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're coming to the Lord's table because there is no other place I would rather be. If you love someone, where do you want to be? You want to be with them. If you love the Lord Jesus Christ, you want to be with Him and His people. And you want to sit down at the table with Him. In our text this morning, Jesus isn't merely informing the mind about what happened. He is shaping the heart to long for what is to come. He's changing this meal. He's changing this meal from remembering mercy to expressing hope or expressing faith. There's a tremendous change that Jesus is implementing here. Even as the old covenant is dying and going away, and the new covenant is being established, at the same time, the old sign of the covenant is disappearing and going away, and the new sign is being instituted. There's a tremendous change. And part of that change is from remembrance to expectation. So how does Jesus do this? How does Jesus accomplish this significant change? Well, I think we can understand this by asking two questions. Why the bread, and why the cup? Why the bread? There were lots of items on the table. Historically, during the Seder, which is what the Passover meal was called, there were six items on a plate there in the middle of the table, and each of these items was very symbolic. There was the shank bone. There was a carpus, which was a green vegetable. There was a marar, a bitter herb. There was a hazaret, which was a second bitter herb. There was a keraset, which was a sweet salad. of apples, nuts, wine, some cinnamon mixed in it. Then there was a roasted egg. All of those items that were there on the table, they all had a specific reason. They were all put there to remind people of something about what happened in the Passover. So with all these other items on the table, very specific items in fact, Jesus takes the bread. Why the bread? Right? He could have taken all these other things. And if you were to ask me, I would say, why didn't you take the lamb? That makes a lot of sense. But he doesn't. He takes the bread. Why the bread? Well, I think there are three characteristics of this bread that he took that would help us to understand why he took it. Bread is universal. Bread is sufficient. and the bread was unleavened. So the first of those, that bread is universal. Every culture knows what bread is, doesn't it? You know how long it was from the time of Moses until the time of Christ? 1,400 years. Lots of things in the world changed in 1,400 years. Friday mornings, we see that in the last 500 years, 400 years, there were four different kingdoms that came and went. So lots of things have happened. How long has it been since Christ? Well, about 2,000 years. Lots of things have changed. Cultures have changed. If you go out to eat this afternoon at Long Horse Steakhouse or at Olive Garden, what are they going to bring you and give you at your table? They're going to give you bread. Bread transcends culture. But more than that, bread is also universal in that it is accessible and affordable. Jesus didn't pick an item that only the wealthy could afford. Even the poorest of the poor find a way to get bread. And He didn't choose something, one of those other objects on the table, that was specific to Jewish culture. Instead, He chose bread because it was accessible to every culture. After the fall, God addressed Adam in Genesis 3, verse 19. Now we often think of just the second half of the verse, but listen to the first half of the verse. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Right? We remember that second half, from dust to dust. But the first thing God says to Adam is, you're going to eat bread. Eating bread is for everyone. It's universal. More than that, bread is sufficient. Bread is effective at sustaining life. bread, what food item was placed in the temple, right? It's the show bread. It's a matzah bread, right? Every Sabbath day, 12 fresh loaves of matzah bread were brought into the temple, and then the last week's bread was taken out. Why? Why did God constantly have bread before him? I think it's because bread symbolized that the food needed to sustain the people came as a blessing from God. The purpose of baking bread. Why did they make bread at all? So that you would have it there to eat as you needed it. When God fed the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years, what did God supply? manna, which is also called bread from heaven. And so when Jesus wanted to illustrate that the length of our life is ultimately determined by God, then what item did God use? Bread. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. If bread did not sustain our physical bodies, if bread was not sufficient to sustain our physical bodies, then Jesus couldn't have made that statement. This is why when we pray in the Lord's Prayer, give us this day our daily bread. What are we asking for? God, give us what will sustain us. So bread is sufficient for its purpose. Thirdly, bread that Jesus took was unleavened bread. What's so special about unleavened bread? Well, we read that in our scripture reading earlier. Exodus 12-39 says, "...they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait." The significance of the unleavened bread was that the bread was ready when they needed it. They didn't have to wait for it. They didn't have to wait for the leaven to permeate it and to cause it to rise. It was immediately available to sustain them in the moment. It was food for the now. So when Jesus takes the bread, and He breaks the bread, and He says, this is My body, He's communicating something significant about Himself. First, He's saying He's the universal Savior, isn't He? Not that He's going to universally save everyone, but He is the Savior of all types of people. The salvation that Jesus Christ brings transcends culture. There is no people group on earth that the Lord Jesus Christ can't save. The Buddhists, the Hindus, all those Middle East cultures, the cultures of South America. Into all of those, Christ can go and pluck out His elect and save them. He's a universal Creator. Revelation 7-9, a great multitude that no one can number. from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, and they're all going to be standing before the throne, clothed in white, and they're all going to be saying salvation belongs to our God. Right? Christ is universal. That is, He can reach every people group. He transcends every sort of division or barrier. They might separate and divide people. The second thing Jesus is saying about himself is that he is sufficient. In fact, Jesus calls himself, you remember, he calls himself the bread of life, doesn't he? In John chapter 6, Jesus is having a conversation with the crowd. And Jesus says to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. And you can see the people start scratching their heads. What are you talking about, Jesus? And they say, Jesus, give us that bread so that we don't have to eat anymore. And Jesus says to them, I am that bread. Now I want you to notice in Mark, again describing this bread, it's in Mark, it's in Matthew, Luke, John, it's in all of the places where we find a description of the bread. We always find that the bread is broken, don't we? The bread is always broken at this meal. Why is the bread broken? What does the broken bread communicate? Very simply, the broken bread communicates that the bread is broken instead of the eater of the bread being broken. Jesus Christ was broken so that those who believe in him might not be broken. The idea of brokenness is the idea of falling under the wrath and the judgment of God. Romans 3.23. The wages of sin is death. What you deserve because of what you have done in sinning against God is the wrath and the damnation. You deserve to be broken. To be smashed into pieces. To have your life ended. But Jesus interrupted that, didn't He? For those who belong to Jesus, He was broken in their place. He suffered the full wrath of God. And so if Christ is not broken in your place, then you still stand under the wrath of God and the judgment of God. And if it falls on you, you will be broken. And there is no escape from the wrath of God except by the blood of Jesus Christ, except to have Jesus broken in your place. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Jesus alone is sufficient to give life, to sustain life. The third thing that Jesus is saying about himself is that he is available now. just as the manna came down first thing in the morning, right? If you didn't go out and gather the manna up in the morning, what happened? When the sun rose up, the sun began to hit that manna, and it began to dissolve. It's available now. The bread of life is available now. Jesus says, come as you are. A lot of people have this attitude, well, I've got to get myself right first. I have to fix myself and then I can go and participate. You know who the Lord's table is for? When it's time to participate, it's time for those who say, Lord, I need you to make me right because I can't do it. Hebrews and Psalms, they say, now is the day of salvation. You don't have to wait. In fact, waiting to come to Christ is often detrimental, isn't it? As the words of one hymn go, if you tarry till you're ready, you will never come at all. Do you understand what Jesus is saying about himself when he takes the bread and he says, this is my body? He can save. He alone is sufficient to save and to give life. And He is willing and able to give life at this very moment to anyone and to everyone who would trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior. That's why Jesus took the bread and not something else. But why the cup? In the Seder meal, in the Passover meal, there were four different cups that were used. These were not big mugs, right? They were not big goblets. Sometimes if they used individual glasses, they were small little cups. Sometimes they just used a community glass, which seems to be the cup, which seems to be the case here because Jesus, after he gave thanks for it, it says, they all drank of it. So it seems that everyone drank from the same cup, but the idea is that there were four different times in the meal which wine was drunk. You say, well, where did this come from? Because I don't see in the Old Testament any commandments to recognize the four cups in the Seder meal. So where did it come from? Well, the Israelites understood that since God had instituted the Lord's Supper, well, God was also going to give them instruction on how to do it. So they began to look through Scripture to see what does God command us, or what guidance might God be giving us. And one of the places that they found that gave them guidance was Exodus chapter 6. If you would turn over there with me. Exodus chapter 6. Verses six and seven Say therefore to the people of Israel I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the burden of the Egyptians and I will deliver you from slavery to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment I will take you to be my people and I will be your God and And you shall know that I am the Lord your God who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians." Does that sound like some other place in scripture? Does that perhaps sound like something we spent the first ten weeks of this year looking at? Yeah, if you look at the Ten Commandments, how did the Ten Commandments begin? I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. What are the Ten Commandments? The Ten Commandments were the formal declaration of God's covenant relationship with His people. And so here in the very introduction to the covenant relationship we have God summarizing the very promises that He gave to Moses that He was going to do for His people. In this verse, there are four promises. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will deliver you from the slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with the act of judgment. I will take you to be my people. Four promises right there in Acts chapter 6, verses 6 and 7. And that's what the four cups there in the Seder meal represent. It represents each of those four promises. And it's interesting, the cup that Jesus takes is the third cup. The third cup is the cup of redemption, as they call it. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will redeem you. An outstretched arm means a mighty arm. A mighty arm that can reach and save. And He's going to redeem with an arm and a power that can save, but He's also going to redeem with great acts of judgment. And what had to take place for Israel to be redeemed, rescued from Egypt? Wrath and judgment. Wrath and judgment were required in order to bring out Israel. Now, was Israel exempt from this wrath and judgment? No! They were subject to God's wrath and judgment just as the Egyptians were. The only difference is God showed favor on them. God provided a way for them to get out from under the wrath and judgment of God. And that escape is to have a qualified sacrifice in their place, and blood from that sacrifice covering the door of the house. So Jesus takes this cup, this cup of redemption, and says, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. He is declaring in this that his death is the only sacrifice that is qualified to cover and to save from God's judgment. Verse 25, there in Mark. Jesus says, truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God. Without going into a lot of that, just simply know Jesus is saying He's going to celebrate this meal again. He's going to celebrate it in the fullest way possible. Jesus is saying He's coming again. And He will celebrate this incredible communion that this Lord's Supper is only a taste of, it's only a picture of. So question, how does this apply to you and me? How does this passage right here affect you and I today? I believe it comes down to how we understand the word is. This is my body. This is my blood. What does Jesus mean when he says that? Now, historically, there are four answers, four approaches, four theologies to explain this. The first, the Roman Catholic view says that the bread and wine actually become the physical body of Jesus. This is why, if you go into Catholic churches, they have an altar at their table, right? In their sanctuary, right? It's not a table, it's an altar. That's because the priest is calling down Jesus Christ to be sacrificed again. Now the Lutherans, they have a very similar view to the Roman Catholics. Instead of the bread and wine actually becoming the body and blood of Jesus, what they say is that truly and substantially present in, with, and under the forms of the consecrated bread and wine is the body of Christ. So Jesus is physically present somehow with the physical bread and the physical wine. Even though they're not actually the body and blood of Jesus, Jesus is still physically present with those elements. And then the third view is the memorial view. We prominently see this in Baptist circles and non-denominational circles today. They say that Jesus is not present, but rather these elements are merely a memorial. These are just objects meant to remind us of what Jesus has done. These are elements to cause us to remember what Jesus did. And then there's the Reformed view. In the Reformed view, along with the Catholic view and the Lutheran view, the memorial view, it says, wait a minute, that can't be right. There's more happening in the Lord's Supper than simply us remembering. If you go to Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, there's a warning. There's a reason we fence the table. Because if you don't come and participate in a worthy manner, there's consequences, isn't there? Paul says that's why some of you are sick and why some of you have even died. And so we fence the table because there is a real transaction, there is a real interaction that takes place. Now what is that interaction? How do we interact with Christ? How is Christ actually present in the meal? And here's where the Reformed view is a little bit different, a lot different, than the Lutheran view or the Roman Catholic view. You say, where is Jesus Christ right now? Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of God. The Apostles' Creed says, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. When is Jesus going to do that? Has he done that? There will be a time, at the end of time, when the judgments are pronounced. The judgments that have already been made are pronounced. They are declared. When is that going to happen? When Christ returns. And until then, Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 16, Paul talks about the bread and the cup. And he says, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not participation in the body Paul is talking about there is a real interaction that is taking place in the Lord's Supper between the believer and Jesus Christ who's in heaven. Jesus Christ who stays in heaven. And so how do we interact with him? Reformers describe this sort of a mystical language that we are somehow raised up into heaven itself in the Lord's Supper. That means when we experience, what we experience, sacramentally, memorial, covenantally, what we experience in the Lord's Supper, that union with Christ that we experience, is really a foreshadowing of what's going to happen for all eternity. While our presence with Christ is spiritual, while we are raised into the heavens spiritually, and not Christ coming down physically, we look forward to the time when we will be with Jesus. I happened to pick up all those books in the back table back there that are free to take. I happened to be looking through one of those books on baptism, and on one of the first pages, I found something that I had written on it years ago. How it got into your collection, I don't know. But I wrote on there that this is not the Reformed view. He was talking about baptism. He said, why should we participate in baptism? And his answer was obedience. People should get baptized because they have to obey. And I said, that's not the Reformed view. And I look at the Lord's Supper and I think again, that's why a lot of people participate in the Lord's Supper, because we're commanded to do it. They say, I'm just doing what I'm told. I'm obeying. The Jews partook of the Seder meal because they were commanded to do it. For them, it was an act of obedience. And it became ritualistic. Isn't that one of the arguments why we don't celebrate communion weekly? You say if you do it weekly, it will become ritualistic. Well, the danger of it becoming ritualistic, because we have danger to say this is only about an act of obedience. And it's not. I believe this to be an act of faith. It's an act of expressing faith. It's an act of looking back to what Christ has said. Yes, I trust that. It's an act of looking forward to say, yes, I believe we're going to one day share an amazing wedding feast in heaven. I don't believe that Jesus intends for this meal, the Lord's Supper, to simply be a ritualistic observance. Believe it's to be an act of faith. Act to what Christ did. We look forward to what Christ is doing and what will happen, but it's also an act of faith for the here and now, isn't it? Remember why we are to eat We're not to eat because we're forced to. We're not to eat merely because we need to. Yes, we need to. But we eat because we want to. Because it delights us. I think that's why we're to come to this Lord's table. We're expressing our faith. And we're declaring, Jesus Christ, we are delighted that You have given Yourself, Your body, Your blood, to sustain us, to heal us, to deliver us, to protect us, to bring us to our eternal home. I think I've said enough. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we do thank you that you have given us this meal that we truly do share with you, come rightly. Lord, we We pray that when we celebrate the Lord's Meal, it would be a time of delighting in You. A time in finding pleasure in what You have done for us. A time of expressing our love to You and receiving Your love to us. Lord, we pray that we would be humbled by this meal. Because only those who are invited get to participate. Only those upon whom you have looked with favor, salvific grace, only those are the ones who can rightly participate. And so, Lord, we're humbled. We ask, Lord, that you would increase our faith, that you would cause us to look to Jesus and Jesus alone as the giver and sustainer of life. Thank you for your grace towards us, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.