So if you're visiting with us today, we're taking a break through what we systematically do is preach through books. We finished up Galatians and Lord willing soon we'll be starting Matthew. But one of the things we're going to do in between that is we've been in a three-part series on the Lord's Supper. So you're coming today at the third part. So we've been using chapter 30 of the 1689 confession kind of as our outline and just walking through that to get hopefully a holistic picture of the biblical testimony of the Lord's Supper. And also you'll see what the framers of the confession were standing up against in the Roman Catholic mass with transubstantiation and some of those things, and we'll even touch on that once again this morning. So two weeks ago, we looked at Articles 1 and 2, where we talked about the institution, purposes, and the nature of the supper. Last week, we looked at Articles 3 and 4, where we talked about the celebration of the supper, including the physical nature of the elements, bread and wine. And then last week, we moved from what has been the tradition here for I think the last 15 years or so of a monthly partaking of the supper to a weekly partaking. And we moved from using unleavened bread and juice as the elements to using unleavened bread and wine. been lots of things here in the supper that we've seen. So today we're going to be wrapping up that study looking first at Articles 5 and 6, which deal more with the elements of the supper and particularly their relationship to Christ himself, and then Articles 7 and 8, which deal with participation in the supper. So before we jump into that, let me pray and ask for God's help. Heavenly Father, we come in the name of Christ. Lord, we do come asking for your help today. Lord, I come asking for your help in the preaching. I pray that you would help me, Lord, to hold fast to the truths found in your word. Lord, not dissuade to the right or to the left. And I pray for all of us hearing. Lord, I know, I'll confess for myself, and I know many here, that we have too low of a view of the supper, that it's something we haven't given attention to and study over the years. So Lord, where we've swayed from the truth in your word, I pray that you would grant us to repent. And Lord, I ask all this in Christ's name and for his glory, amen. So as I mentioned, first we're gonna be looking at Articles 5 and 6. I'm just gonna read those to start us out. The outward elements in this ordinance, properly set apart for the use ordained by Christ, have such a relationship to Christ crucified that they are sometimes called, truly though figuratively, by the names of the things they represent, that is the body and blood of Christ. However, in substance and nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine as they were before. In article eight, article six. The doctrine commonly called transubstantiation teaches that the substance of bread and wine is changed into the substance of Christ's body and blood by the consecration of a priest or some other way. This doctrine is hostile not only to scripture but also to common sense and reason. It destroys the nature of the ordinance and has been and is the cause of many kinds of superstitions and gross idolatries. You can see those are pretty firm and clear words by the authors of the confession. They're not mincing words when it comes to standing up for biblical truth in opposition to heresy. And so, last week we already talked about the physical nature of the elements. In this case, bread and wine. But here, the confession is turning and really looking at the spiritual nature of the elements. Basically, the relationship between the elements and Christ himself. And so we've already touched on this, of what is transubstantiation, but here it makes very clear that transubstantiation teaches that the substance of bread and wine is changed into the substance of Christ's body and blood, by the consecration of some priest or some other way. So that's what the Roman Catholic Church believes and teaches, that the priest, in performing the Mass, actually brings Christ down from heaven. And miraculously, the body, or the bread and the wine, actually become the physical blood and body of Christ. And there's a double miracle happens, in that it doesn't actually appear to be the body and blood of Christ. And so, Article 6 makes the case against transubstantiation, making it clear that this doctrine is hostile to Scripture. Scripture is not neutral on this, as we'll see. The doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and the mass and transubstantiation is hostile, it's contrary to Scripture. But then Article 5 actually summarizes the positive teaching of Scripture. where it says, the outward elements in this ordinance properly set apart for the use and ordained by Christ have such a relationship to Christ crucified that they are sometimes called, truly though figuratively, by the names of the things they represent, that is the body and blood of Christ. However, in substance and nature, they remain truly and only bread and wine as they were before. We talked about this a little over the last two sermons, kind of the background, the context of the institution of the supper was the partaking of the Passover meal. And if you'll remember, this was a meal filled with figurative elements, filled with symbolism. And so we have to take that into account when we try to step back and put our feet in the shoes of those first hearers of Christ instituting the supper. Remember in Exodus 12, 8, we see there in Moses describing the institution of the Passover, he says, And so the blood of the lamb was to signify the Israelites' trust in God so that the angel of death would pass over them. So they would paint the blood of the lamb on the doorpost, on the lintel, and the death angel would pass over them and go to the places where that blood of the lamb was not found. We see in Exodus 12, 13, which says, Then we see in Deuteronomy 16, that the unleavened bread was to remind them of their affliction. and basically the haste, the quickness that they were brought out of Egypt. We see in Deuteronomy 16, three, you shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. Then we have the bitter herbs, which symbolize the suffering of the people of Israel. And so, Again, take yourself back, put yourself in the shoes of when the disciples, when the supper is instituted in the midst of the Passover, they're looking at a table already filled with these symbolic elements. All these things have a meaning that's different from what they physically are, right? And so we have to understand that actually would have been the first thing that comes into their minds is, oh, Christ is speaking of figurative things in the same way that the Passover that we're already partaking in is speaking of figurative things. And so we talked about this earlier when we looked at Luther's view of the supper, that he couldn't just get past Christ saying, this is my body. That's what he wrote on that table at the Marburg Colloquy, that he just, hey, this is my body. This is what Christ said. And so Luther wouldn't bend from that. And so what he was doing is he was letting his tradition and eisegesis form his position, not exegesis, and being faithful to what the word of God says. And so we see that in 1 Corinthians 11, 24 through 25, this text that gave Luther all that consternation. He says, when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In verse 25, in the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. So again, speaking, saying of the bread, this is my body. Christ is speaking figuratively in the same way in the very next breath. He takes the cup and says, this is the new covenant. Right? That physical cup wasn't the new covenant anymore than that bread was actually the physical body of Christ. So that would have been, I think, easy for the disciples to see, right? I think that would have honestly been their first thing to think of being in the context of the Passover meal. It's not surprising for us to find that this sort of language is not uncommon in Scripture. Here's just a few examples. So Genesis 41, 26. The seven cows are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven years. The dreams are one. John 10, seven. So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. Then Revelation 1, 20. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my hand and the seven lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. So we read those things. And in their context, we understand what Scripture is trying to say. We understand the use of figurative language. We understand that even in our own parlance, right, in English, just as we talk to people, we understand that people use figures of speech, they use metaphors and similes and things like that to communicate, and we have to, in the context, actually listen and understand, okay, what's the person trying to say? So this is where we have to understand what it means when we say we take Scripture literally. What we're saying is we take scripture according to the literature. that it was written in, right? Like, it's different to read poetry, right, versus a letter from Paul written to somebody. Like, we understand that, right? I mean, poetry was always something that I struggled with. Like, my concrete brain just, it doesn't work in there, right? And so it's even hard for me to read that. But it's like, oh yeah, hey, give me a letter written by, you know, in the context of Rome, this just didactic teaching, that lines up and makes perfect sense to me. And so that's what we have to understand, that what does it mean to take things literally? And it's according to the literature and the context. And so we use that to understand what the Holy Spirit intended to communicate. So we're gonna look now at John chapter six that's gonna give us kind of some different additional background and information related to the supper. It's gonna give us some context that I think is gonna be helpful. What we have to understand is that John chapter six doesn't specifically address the Lord's Supper. But when we step back and look at the context, what we'll find is it's gonna tell us a lot about some of the theological things happening in the supper. In John chapter six, this was actually occurring as the Jews are going up for Passover. It's actually a year before Christ institutes the Lord's Supper. And so this context is very much the same, just a year earlier. And so Christ here is not speaking directly to the Lord's Supper, but what he's doing is he's pointing to the same spiritual reality that the Supper points to. So if we understand that spiritual reality, it's gonna give us a deeper and more full understanding of the Supper itself. And Colin Brown in the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology puts it this way, he says, John 6 is not about the Lord's Supper. Rather, the Lord's Supper is about what is described in John 6. So I hope that can help you see the difference there, that we're not saying that John 6 is about the Lord's Supper, but it's describing these biblical, theological truths that the Lord's Supper is about. So in John 6, 43 and 44, we see this. We see Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. So again, if we were to take Jesus' words here literally, to have eternal life, we have to feed on his flesh and drink his blood. If we were to take just those two verses without any other context, I think we would probably arrive at, man, it sounds like the Roman Catholic mass in transubstantiation is right. It sounds like that's what Jesus is talking about here, and that's what you'll see Roman Catholics do when they go to John 6, but they're not willing to look at the greater context of John 6. All we have to do is just go there, and let's let Jesus define for us what He's saying here when He's speaking of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. So this is earlier in John 6, just 20 verses earlier, John 6, 35. And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst. So if we'll just let Jesus speak in his own words, it's absolutely clear that to feed on Jesus' flesh is to come to him. To drink Jesus' blood is to believe. That's what Christ is saying here. It couldn't be any more clear if we'll just let scripture speak. And so we have to understand this hermeneutical principle that we must let Scripture define Scripture. Scripture is the very best interpreter of Scripture. And often, if we come to a text that we're having some trouble with, all we have to do is go back a few verses and get some context, and it'll really aid us in what the Holy Spirit is trying to communicate to us in those texts. And so what we see here is that I think it's crystal clear as the confession says that transubstantiation, the Roman Catholic mass is something that is hostile to scripture. But the confession doesn't just say it's hostile to scripture, but it's hostile to common sense and reason. And so think about this, when Jesus is speaking these words of institution, where is he at? He's right there with them, right? His physical body is right there. And he's saying, this bread, this is my body. This cup, this is the new covenant in my blood. And so, it wasn't like his flesh at that time was divided in any way, right? It wasn't like he just plucked off a piece of skin there, and oh, this is my body, right? Or pricked his finger, okay, this is my blood. It didn't happen, and we all recognize it didn't happen that way. Those things were not his physical body and physical blood. And then we've mentioned this before, in having a right understanding of the incarnation. It's so important that we understand that Christ is fully God, he's fully man. He has to be fully God to actually take the wrath that we justly and rightly deserve, and he has to be fully man to actually stand in our law place. He was one of us, so he can stand before God and represent us as he takes the wrath that we justly and rightly deserve. And so Christ, in the Incarnation, had a physical body, just like ours, that was limited, finite. And where is that body now? Seated at the right hand of the Father, the clear testimony of Scripture. And so, His physical body cannot be present in the partaking of the mass once, much less millions of times as that's done around the world. Just physically impossible when we have a right understanding of what the incarnation was. And so, that gives us a summary of the elements of the Lord's Supper and the relationship to Christ. So now, let's go to the final two articles here of this chapter of the Confession, which deal with participation in the Lord's Supper. This is articles seven and eight. So worthy recipients. who outwardly partake of the visible elements in this ordinance, also by faith inwardly receive and feed on Christ crucified and all the benefits of his death. They do so really and truly, yet not physically and bodily, but spiritually. The body and blood of Christ are not present bodily or physically in the ordinance, but spiritually to the faith of believers, just as the elements themselves are present to their outward senses. In Article 8, all ignorant and ungodly people are unfit to enjoy communion with Christ and are thus unworthy of the Lord's table. See this connection here between participation with Christ and participation with the table. It continues, as long as they remain in this condition, they cannot partake of these holy mysteries or be admitted to the Lord's table without committing a great sin against Christ. And those who receive the suffer unworthily are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, eating and drinking judgment on themselves. So what you see here in these two articles is Article 7, we have worthy recipients. Contrasted in Article 8, with all ignorant and ungodly people, unfit to enjoy communion with Christ and unworthy of the Lord's table. So basically, if we were to summarize what a worthy recipient is, I would put it in this way, that it's a Christian who is in good standing as a member of a biblical local church and not having any unrepentant sin. As the confession says, those who outwardly partake of the visible elements in this ordinance also by faith inwardly receive and feed on Christ crucified and all the benefits of his death. So let's again kind of step backward in redemptive history. Let's think about the Passover. Who were worthy recipients of the Passover? All of Israel. Basically, if you were in the Old Covenant, you were someone who was to partake of the Passover. So who then are worthy partakers of the Lord's Supper? They are partakers in the new covenant and the better covenant. We're gonna flesh this out more. And so we heard in the scripture reading this morning from Luke's recording of the institution of the supper where Christ says, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. And so those who are worthy partakers of the supper are those who are partaking of the benefits of Christ's blood. And we've seen from the biblical background in John 6 that the feed on Jesus' flesh is to come to him, and to drink Jesus' blood is to believe. So worthy participants, worthy recipients, are those who have come to Jesus and believed, right? You see this in this redemptive historical context of the supper, particularly going back to John 6, where I think that helps us really to see, to put all these things together. Now let's look specifically at the New Covenant itself in Jeremiah chapter 31. This is Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34, and as we read this, just try to observe some specific things that Jeremiah here is saying about the New Covenant. I'm going to pull a few of those out. "'Behold, the days are coming,' declares Yahweh, "'when I will make a new covenant "'with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, "'not like the covenant that I made with their fathers "'on the day when I took them by the hand "'to bring them out of the land of Egypt, "'my covenant that they broke, "'though I was their husband,' declares Yahweh. "'For this is the covenant I will make "'with the house of Israel "'after those days,' declares Yahweh. "'I will put my law within them, "'and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know Yahweh, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares Yahweh. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more. I just want to look at three specific things about the new covenant here that I think will help us to see who is a worthy partaker of the supper. So notice in verse 32, one of the things different about the new covenant versus the old is the new covenant is unbreakable. It's unbreakable. In verse 33, For those in the new covenant, God's gonna put his law within them, and he's gonna write it up on their heart. God is going to regenerate them, and they are gonna such be that now God's law is written on their hearts so that they want, not just know it, but they want to obey it. It's their heart's desire to walk in obedience to God. Then verse 34, from the least of them to the greatest, they will know Yahweh. And how will they know Yahweh? They're gonna know him in a saving way. He will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. So those are the things that are empirically true of someone truly in the new covenant. As Jesus said, The cup that's poured out for you is the new covenant in His blood. So to me, just the overarching, clear testimony of Scripture is that those not actually participating in the covenant should not be participating in the covenant meal, the sign of the covenant. And those participating in the new covenant are who? They're born again believers in Christ. So those not in the new covenant must not partake of the meal of the new covenant. So that gives us, I think, the redemptive historical context of the supper. But now let's think about, okay, now what? How then do we work that out into practice in the church? Well, there's generally three ways that the Lord's Supper can be practiced, and I'm sure there's nuances with all these, and there's probably other views out there. This is gonna be the three primary ones. It's gonna be open, closed, or restricted. So an open table would basically be, the table's open to all professing Christians that would come in. And so an open table then recognizes any baptism or it recognizes no baptism. It recognizes any church membership or it recognizes no church membership. And an open table ignores the issue of church discipline. So whether they've made this theological decision or not, most evangelical churches in America practice an open table. Even though they probably wouldn't ever use those words, that's functionally what's happening. A closed table, on the other hand, is open only to members of that particular local church that are in good standing. And so if we practiced a closed table and you weren't a member here in good standing, you would not be allowed to partake with us today. That's definitely the case in some reformed churches today. But I would say just like how we looked at memorialism versus consubstantiation, and then we saw Calvin's view that I think tread that biblical middle ground. Well, I think in this case, the biblical middle ground is what has been called restricted or close communion, not closed, but close. So basically, it's open to all Christians in good standing in a biblical local church. So I think that that's beautiful and it demonstrates the unity that we have with other brothers and sisters that are not part of this particular congregation, while at the same time recognizing the authority of those elders in other biblical churches in cases of church discipline. And so I think that that seems to me to hit that narrow blade of truth down the middle of those two other ditches. So we've seen the confession make clear that even though we don't believe in a physical and bodily presence of Christ, it's no less a real and true presence of Christ, right? Things that are spiritual are real, right? I mean, is the Holy Spirit dwelling inside you real? Can you see him, can you touch him? No, but that doesn't make him any less real. And so in the same way, when Christ is present here at the supper, just because we're saying it's a physical presence, it's no less real than if there was a physical presence. And so that being said, that should guide us, right, in who should be partaking of the supper. So Sam Waldron, I think, summarizes the biblical data here well, he says, The physical presence of the elements to our senses is a special assistance to God's people in making real to them Christ's body and blood, the purchase price of our redemption. Thus, they make Christ's body present, not corporally, but spiritually to the eyes of faith. The only significant thing about Christ's body and blood is that they were the purchase price of redemption. They had and have no special physical composition. Thus, there would be no benefit in eating them, even if we could. So again, you get back to why the doctrine of transubstantiation is against reason. It's not like Christ's body has some kind of mystical, magical powers, right? If someone just could have come up to him and sliced a little bit of skin off, right? and partake, it's not like something magic would have happened to them in that, right? And that's in effect what the doctrine of transubstantiation is teaching, that there's something special, mystical, magical about the physical body and blood of Christ that can't be there if it's just a physical presence in the sufferer. So we've talked about the worthy recipients of Article 7, so now let's move on to that counterpart in Article 8, the ignorant and ungodly people, unfit to enjoy communion with Christ and unworthy of the Lord's table. So when the confession speaks of ignorant and ungodly people, it's speaking of the openly unconverted. To be ignorant means to be unknown or unacquainted with. So here the confession is speaking of people where the saving power of the gospel is unknown to them, something they're not acquainted with. And therefore, what does that lead to? It leads to them leading ungodly lives. And so, again, those people not in the new covenant, and in this case, we're talking about people that wouldn't even profess to be in the new covenant, must not partake of the covenant meal. We see the confession say that doing so is sinning against Christ. In 1 Corinthians 10.21, Paul says, you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons, you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Now maybe you're sitting here today outside of Christ. And you go, what's Paul talking about? I'm not partaking of any table of demons. Like, I mean, you have some kind of satanic ritual type mind, something like that comes to mind. Well, that's not what Paul's talking about here. Yes, it could include that, but... We've used the analogy over the years that goes something like this, if you expect to see someone come into the church that is a follower of Satan, that is seeking to draw people after themselves, they're most likely not gonna come in looking like the Grim Reaper, right? They're not gonna be in some big black robe with a sickle, and oh, okay, we're gonna avoid that guy, right? That's not how Satan works, he's an angel of light. And so, if you're outside of Christ, Don't deceive yourself into thinking that you're somehow neutral. Paul in Ephesians chapter two describes, here he's describing what the Ephesian Christians were like before and making universal statements about people outside of Christ. This is Ephesians 2, one through three. It says, and you were dead in trespasses and sins. in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among who we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. So these are universal statements and principles that apply to you today if you are outside of Christ. This is why Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 10, you can't partake of the cup of demons and the cup of the Lord. These are two mutually exclusive things. So if you're outside of Christ, Paul says, you're dead in your trespasses and sins. You stand spiritually dead, condemned before God. You're a son of disobedience. And by nature, you're children of wrath. So don't deceive yourself into thinking you're a good person. Like right, we've talked about this as we went through the Galatians. One of the purposes of the law is a mirror to hold up to you, to say, here, image bearer of God, this is what God's law says. and you fall completely short of being able to keep it. And that's very bad, terrible news for you. But the good news is that Christ obeyed that law perfectly. He came, lived a perfect life that we could never live. He goes to the cross and takes the wrath that we actually deserve. And then when we come to Christ, when we believe that perfect righteousness, that perfect law-keeping, it gets credited to our account, gets imputed to us. In our sin, our law-breaking gets imputed to Christ so that we can be reconciled to a holy and righteous God. That's the beauty of the gospel. But to understand the beauty of the gospel, you have to understand and see God's law rightly and how you stand condemned before it. That's the nature of you if you're outside of Christ today. You're not a good person. You're not neutral before God. You are a son of disobedience that stands condemned before him. And so the unbeliever is not to come and partake of the table until they're ready to come and partake of Christ himself. Remember John chapter six, to feed on Jesus' flesh is to come to him. To drink his blood is to believe. And so the call for you today is not to come and try to fit in by partaking of the table. The call to you is to repent, to turn from your sin, to come to Christ and receive forgiveness and be reconciled to a holy God. And notice the confession says that it would also be a great sin to admit an openly unconverted person to the table. It's speaking here of the obligation that we have as Christians to keep someone from committing sin if it's possible for us to do so, to keep them from incurring additional guilt. The confession not only addresses the openly unconverted, but it addresses the apparently converted, those people that make a profession of faith who can also partake in an unworthy manner. So what does it mean to partake of the suffer unworthily? We recognize in one sense, none of us are worthy, right, on our own. But we also recognize that in Christ, when we're talking about just merit, then we're perfectly worthy, right, when we're speaking of a legal justification sense, that we've been made perfect, perfect righteousness has been credited to us. So in that sense, all of us would always be worthy, but that's not what Paul is speaking of here. He's speaking, or that's not what the confession is speaking of. The confession is speaking of gospel worthiness. We see Paul speak of this same thing in Philippians chapter one, verse 27. He says, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. And so, for us as Christians, we can let our manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, or we can live in a way that's unworthy, that's contrary to the gospel of Christ. And so Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, he addresses this in verses 27 through 32. As whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So Sam Waldron, in his modern exposition of the 1689 Confession, I think summarizes this excellently, speaking about worthiness. He says, worthiness is a matter of, firstly, remembering Christ in our partaking, believingly and personally. Secondly, examining ourselves, proving and approving ourselves as those who are remembering Christ in the supper and not thinking of the supper as common food. Thirdly, discerning the body, believingly appreciating the holy symbolism and spiritual significance of the supper. And fourthly, judging ourselves, passing judgment on our failure to remember Christ in the supper and repenting of such failure. Worthiness is not a matter of passing a morbid, super strict examination of our lives. It is a matter of a serious believing understanding of what we are about to do. It is a matter of seeing the Lord's table for what it is and taking it as repentant and believing sinner. Staying away only says, I refuse to repent of my approach to the Lord's table. So we see here, what does it mean to partake unworthily? It means being a Christian, unrepentant in sin. It means not examining, seeing the supper rightly. And it says, those who partake unworthily are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. So they are, in effect, treating the bread and the wine, which symbolize the body and blood of the Lord, as nothing special, just as ordinary food. And in doing so, they're eating and drinking judgment on themselves. So saints, that's why we give that warning every time we partake of the Lord's Supper. And that's why we practice a restricted or close communion. I wanna end with an illustration that I hope will help us to see just how seriously the reformers Not just the reformers, but even church members at that time took the supper. So this is a story from Geneva in John Calvin in his time there. The tradition had been that the town council, so the civil magistrate, would be the ones that would determine who shouldn't partake in the Lord's Supper. And Calvin, looking at scripture, vehemently disagreed with that. He believed that that was the responsibility of the church to determine who should come and partake of the ordinances. So in Geneva in 1553, there was a man named Philibert Berthier. He was a prominent man in the town. He had been excommunicated by Calvin. and had been forbidden to partake of the Lord's Supper, along with some other men who, they were Libertines, was the group they were a part of. The town council had originally upheld Calvin's decision, but then, I'm sure with no politics involved, they reversed that and said, okay, they should be able to partake. And so at that point, Berthelier and his friends, they come into service, I'm sure with a little bit of a swagger, right? They're coming wearing their swords and they come with hands on their swords. And they don't choose to sit in the back, they choose to come right up to the front, right across from where the elements of the Lord's table will be distributed. And so Calvin, preaches his message. He comes down from the pulpit at the end of the service and stands behind the table there where the elements are displayed. And here's what he says. He says, these hands you may crush, these arms you may lop off, my life you may take, my blood is yours, you may shed it, but you shall never force me to give holy things to the profane. and dishonor the table of my God. And then he proclaims in the words of Christendom, he says, I will sooner die than this hand shall stretch forth the sacred things of the Lord to those who have been judged despisers. And I kind of try to picture this scene in my mind, right? I think of Calvin standing there. you know, behind the elements, with literally men with swords in front of him. You'd have to think that after this, you could have heard a pin drop in that room, right? I mean, like, everybody just like, man, okay, but what's about to happen here? And what happens in the end is that those words hit Berthelier and his friends like a ton of bricks, and they end up not coming and trying to partake of the supper. I think when we hear a story like that, I mean, it strikes me, not just for Calvin, how the high view that Calvin had of the supper, right? Think of the high view those men had of the supper. I mean, they're coming in with swords because of their desire to partake. I think that's very foreign to us. And I'm not saying that pastors have some kind of obligation to guard the elements of the supper with their lives. But what I am saying is that the high view of the supper that I've tried to communicate over the last few weeks, that seems really consistent with that. And it seems really, really disconnected from the view of the supper in most churches out there today. And so, Saints, that brings us to an end of our teaching on the Lord's Supper. We saw the institution, the purposes, the nature of the supper. We saw the celebration of the supper. And we saw today the elements and participation of the supper. And so I love this because this is an opportunity we have to make immediate application of the things that we're hearing. And so now we are going to actually partake of the supper.