We have been considering upon the occasion of coming to the Lord's Supper as we do in the second Sunday of each month. We have considered together on those occasions the atonement that is the sacrifice of our Savior on our behalf. We've considered the roots of the atonement and we've considered the nature of the atonement itself. We've considered various ways in which we should and do describe the atonement. But we have now come to consider the one who makes that atonement and what he is like. And that particularly by the use of his name and titles. His names and titles. And we have begun of course with Jesus name Jesus and how that states to us the promised coming of Yahweh to save his people from their sins just as that name was promised to Joseph and to Mary and so there is embedded even in the name itself, so much of the gospel as it fits in the scriptures itself. Yahweh comes to save his people from their sins and how does he do it? It's here in this one who is given, Jesus is the name that identifies him as the one who is present to make atonement for those whom the Father has chosen for his love. And then we went on to look at the name Savior because If that's implied in the name Jesus, let us go there next. And we looked at Titus 2.13 and 14, in which we read there of our great God and Savior. And we saw that as a matter of fact, there are these, this interesting approach that the word Savior is first applied to God, Yahweh God, and God explicitly God, in each of the three chapters of Titus, before we come and consider 2, 13, and 14, then we must think of it as tied along with God and Savior. The word Savior, first of all, is something that applies to God. And so that rightly refers to his divinity, that Jesus is God, Savior. He is God, our Savior. Wonderful confession when we come to the Lord's Supper and think of all that that means for us in salvation. We have a divine Savior that God has come and visited us with salvation and he himself has accomplished our salvation. Salvation is of the Lord, which is what the name Jesus itself means. So these two things fit together right well. And of course, we'll return to this whole matter of Savior and the name of Jesus and what that means in the weeks ahead. Or I should say in the Lord's Suppers that are ahead. But I want to turn explicitly to the word God this morning. When we think of Jesus, we know that Jesus, as the scripture teaches, is God and man, two natures and one person. And that that's what the Bible and our confession and catechism state clearly, that Jesus is a person. This one person. who is God and man, two natures in one person. And he's God, very God, and man, very man. But does the Bible ever say that Jesus is God? And there are those who say that it does not. And they have gone to great lengths to try to show that it does not. And where that seems to be indelible in the text of Holy They've tried to, in some way, undermine the idea that this is, in fact, truly scripture. And they've tried to undermine our confidence in the verity of the text. And so we have a lot of criticism of the Bible, and that, well, Paul didn't really write this, or Peter didn't really say it, and that kind of thing. But we have some remarkable passages that we want to look at this morning which demonstrate that Jesus is explicitly identified in the term. God is directly applied to him and is to be understood in a most striking way so that when we think of the names and titles of Jesus, that is when we think of the names and titles given to our mediator as the Word where the Son has come and been incarnate and been presented to us and has died on the cross to pay the penalty of our sins. And we ask the question, who is it that is our Savior? Who has died for our sins? Who has risen from the dead? Who intercedes for us in heaven? One of the answers that we have to give most explicitly is our God, Jesus. Now we're going to talk about that more and apply it more in later coming to the supper and returning to the name Jesus, returning to the name Savior. In the case of Savior, filling in what it means in regards to the fact that he is the man Jesus, who is our Savior and mediator. In terms of Jesus, this sense then of the fact that he is God, very God, and man, or a man, our Savior, and what that means in terms of the Old Testament passages that we should think of when we come to the Lord's Supper. Because after all, all of this is to inform us and our faith before and regarding the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ever that's to be before us. It's not only the emblem of Christianity and the very heart of the Christian faith, The cross being the thing which is really that which separates Christianity from every other faith, or every other religion, for it's faith in Christ that marks true saving faith, and it's faith in Christ crucified, risen from the dead. I was dead, but now I am alive forevermore, Jesus says to us. What a wonderful Savior is Jesus our Lord, and we should be able to confess as we come to the Lord's Supper. We receive it as Thomas himself declared when all these things came crashing in upon him. My Lord and my God. That's the first passage in which this is explicitly applied. The term Jesus is God is explicitly applied that I want to look at with you this morning. Thomas' confession. We know what brought Thomas to this moment. Thomas said, I am doubtful. I am not going to believe it. I'm not going to be caught up in something that I can't be sure of. I'm not sure that we should condemn Thomas for that necessarily. He wanted to be sure and God wanted him to be sure. because he was to be an apostle. He was to say, I saw it. I didn't believe, but I saw it. And those humiliating moments for Thomas have made for us something of a testimony to every one of us that would doubt, or that had doubted. And he pressed. I would put my fingers in the wounds in his hand, thrust my hand into the wound in his side. And in John 20, verse 24, Thomas, one of the twelve called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we've seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will never believe. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hand. Put your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. What are we not seeing to believe? This one, we come to the Lord's Supper and receive those tokens that remind us of our salvation. That Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty. Real blood was shed. A real body was rendered a sacrifice and there died for me, and as I receive strength in eating my daily bread, so Jesus is to me the bread of life, and his sacrifice is my life, my forgiveness, my argument with God, that plea that is made that is effective to my salvation. And this is the one who from heaven supplies me. with the Spirit and a life that will never end. And all of that under the emblem of His dying for me. And when I come to Him and I receive these tokens from Him, I am to acknowledge to Him. Because you see, not seeing if I would be blessed. I must say with Thomas, my Lord and my God. And there are other places then that we read of a most explicit application of this term God to Jesus. We notice in 1 John 5.20, 1 John 5.20, what is said. There are some who have tried to explain this away, but if you take the wider context of 1 John and then the immediate context of the words, and of course Thomas' own confession, we begin to see that this term God here in 1 John 5.20 must apply to Jesus Christ. And I'll begin reading back in verse 18. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning. But he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. Now, think of this. He who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. Remember what's said of the Lord Jesus, what's said of Christians. Christians do sin. But what John is saying, we don't continue in a course of life marked by sin. We don't continue in a pathway of sin. In fact, the Lord's Supper is to help us in that. We come to the Lord's Supper so that we might not sin, so that we might remember and confess our sins once again and keep covenant with God. Just as the design is set out in the gospel here in 1 John, the first and second chapter, when we are reminded in 1 John 1, 9 that I often quote to you in prayer, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us. That's hard upon verse 8, which says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. He's writing to Christians. Christians have particular sins. they have the crumbs, and in some case a good bit of the crumbs, of sin from the old man that still remains. There are vestiges, there are elements that still remain in us. But the dominion of sin has been broken in us, or we're not a true believer. Sin no longer is a Lord's sin. We belong to Lord Jesus. Therefore we are servants of the Lord, but there are still elements of the old nature. We are mortifying, putting to death, confessing our sins. We come to the Lord's Supper for that purpose. Strengthen us, Lord. The cross is before us. Your once-for-all saving work we receive. We confess our sins, Lord, by that life which is ours. Taking this to ourselves, we show that this is ours and a part of it. We partake of it and your intercession from heaven. Keep us. Well, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. John repeats in verse 10 of 1 John, but he says, I'm writing, my little children, these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He's the sacrifice, the propitiation for our sins, not only for ours, but, and then he says these words, but also for the sins of the whole world. That is, if sin is to be confessed anywhere in the world, those sins will have to be covered by the blood of that sacrifice, that lamb. Here it is. Our way to God. In that light, then, we know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning. 1 John 5, 18, 19, 20. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God. We are from God. And the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. There's a great divide. We are from God. He's begotten us to a new course of life. Jesus Christ is protecting us. He once for all purchased us with his blood. We have sins. We need to go confess it. And if we say we don't have sins, we're a liar. But God is working in us, protecting us and keeping us. The evil one really doesn't have the power over us that we feel he has. Our sins are not as native to us as we feel them to be. We need to confess them. Go to Jesus. The power of the cross applied by the Holy Spirit is going to... And we are from God. We need to be reminded of that. The Supper reminds us of that. And the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. And we are in Him who is true, speaking of the Father. And in His Son, Jesus Christ. Now the reference is back to the Son. He is the true God. Jesus Christ is the true God and eternal life. You see the point that's being made. The point that John is making is we know that Jesus has come. He's given us understanding to know the Father. And we're in the Father. The Father's in us. And that is by Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ is the true God and eternal life. That's how we're to understand this passage. So we come to the Lord's Supper this morning. And we have access to the Father. And we can really know and understand who God is. And the true representation of God. The final and the real and the true God in Jesus Christ. We'll explain that more when we get to talk more about the name Jesus again and its relation to the name Yahweh, having a look at these things. But here's the word God explicitly applied to Jesus. The true representation of God is Jesus Christ. Philippians 2 will just mention in passing where Jesus is a partaker of the true nature of God. didn't think it was robbery, you see, to be equal with God. He has the form of God and there it means that he partakes of the divine nature. And then in 2 Peter, the first chapter in Romans 9, 5 and Titus 2, 13 that we have made reference to last week, 2 Peter, 2 Peter the first chapter, the first verse. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. We have in first Peter and in second Peter Sim Simon Peter of Simeon Peter a servant and Apostle Jesus Christ to those who obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ now in first Peter He said to the elect They were elect according to the love of God that has chosen them and that was God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, including Jesus. But here in 2 Peter 1, he says to them that they are like the apostles and they have a faith that has given them equal standing with the apostles. By that he doesn't mean that we are apostles, but that we have that same communion. That's very much what John says in 1 John, in his introduction, that we've been ushered into the communion that they who saw Jesus have with Him. We saw it, we handled it, we touched it, but you now get to commune with Jesus. That's what this supper represents, you see. It is a communion, first of all, with Christ. It is a communion with one another. Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of who? Well, you know, our faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not the righteousness of God the Father as a result of his sacrifice on the cross. The Father didn't suffer on the cross. Jesus Christ, the Son, suffered for us. To those who obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness which is attributed to Jesus Christ. You see, it's Christ's righteousness. By the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our God and Savior. And so that term is applied in Romans 9.5 and we saw it in Titus 2.13. And when we understand that we have these references, these three references, the God and Savior, and understand that that was something that the apostles used as an expression in the church, it's not then completely beyond our understanding when we read such things as we find in Acts 20, 28. An expression such as this is Acts 20, 28 is understood in the light of saying our God and Savior. Jesus Christ. And Paul says, I'll begin reading in Acts 20, verse 26, Therefore I testify to you, he says to the Ephesian elders, this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. What an expression. He's not talking about the blood of the Holy Spirit. It was Jesus who died on the cross. He's not talking about the blood of the Father. The Father was not incarnate. The Son, the Word, is incarnate and has blood. He poured out his blood. So look at the way that's expressed. Pay careful attention to yourselves, Paul says to the Ephesian elders. And do all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. That is, pastors. Should be translated pastors. It's the word episkopos. Often translated elder. Often translated in the King James Bishop. Both of those are best translated pastors, because we have several words in English for shepherd. We have shepherd, we have pastor, and they do also. Shepherd, which is the cruder term, comes from the word sheep, and overseer in the Christian church would have been understood as pastor. The Holy Spirit has made you pastors to care for the church of God. It's another reason why Jesus' name is left out there. They're pastors. The reference is back to Jesus. You see, he's the great shepherd of the sheep. And Peter speaks that way as well. So he is the God and Savior Jesus Christ. And he is the God who has purchased he has obtained with his own blood, his precious church. Jesus Christ is God. He is God to us and us to God. And he has come to us God incarnate, our Savior God, God of the Old Testament, which means all-powerful to save, of infinite value and worth, completely able to do all that was necessary on God's part in His atoning work and therefore the only source of life and forgiveness and cleansing. It is His life to which we are joined and it is His life which is shared in the supper when we come and we acknowledge that a man of flesh and blood died on the cross to pay the penalty of our sins, a second and final Adam to represent us, and in whom we may be included, but he is God, very God. And as we receive the Lord's Supper, we receive it confessing, my Lord and my God.