you have your copy of the Scriptures turn to Luke 22, verses 14 and 15 for the sermon this morning. Luke 22, 14, and 15. Verse 14, When the hour had come, he, Jesus, reclined at the table and the apostles with him, and he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let me pray as y'all are taking your seats. Our Father and our God, we do thank you that we have an opportunity to not only read Psalm 23 and hear Luke 22, but we also have an opportunity to hear the Word proclaimed to our hearts. Father, we've diligently prepared our hearts, and now we pray that Your Holy Spirit would help us to receive the Word of God with love and faith. We pray that we might lay the word of God up in our hearts, and as we leave today, that we might practice it in our lives. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, first of all, as I get my notes out up here, I should at least tell you, I can't thank you so much for praying for Good Shepherd. And as you heard in the report this morning, we are going through a difficult time. So keep praying and pray for me, pray for my family. We're gonna make some difficult decisions in the next few weeks, but the Lord is good and He's at work and He's gonna do His will. And so we will be happy and good with that. But let me look at this passage of Scripture with you this morning. I want you to take a look at the last three words there in Luke 22 verse 15, before I suffer. The title of the sermon today is A Supper for Sufferers. And Jesus is instituting the supper, the Lord's Supper before He suffers. It's not like He hasn't already been suffering. But he's preparing for more suffering, and he is even suffering, we're going to see, at the table. And so we see that Jesus is the sufferer, instituting this supper for those who suffer. Now, if you have any doubt about suffering, all you have to do is poke your neighbor to the left or the right of you and say, do you have any suffering that you can share? And I'm sure that they will. There's plenty of suffering going on even in this congregation. Now on Sunday mornings I've been preaching. I think I preached my 40th sermon through the book of Job. And of course you know that Job is a book about suffering. And Job is sitting on an ash heap. And two things that Job is suffering. He's suffering physically, and he's suffering spiritually. In fact, one of the things that I carry around in my mind from one of the commentators, he says, Job is always dying, but never quite gets there. He's always dying, but he's never quite dead. And so physically, we know we can, I could sit there and give you the catalog of things he's going through. He's sitting on an ash heap, his skin's falling off. It's a pretty bad physical situation. And it's well, the spiritual suffering that he's going through. He's crying out to God and wondering where he is. And we too, we go through this kind of suffering. We have physical suffering. My wife, I could pull out just one illustration. My wife's been suffering with a foot injury, and then she had the surgery, and two years later we're still suffering. We're getting over surgeries. We're physically suffering. And then there's spiritual suffering. We suffer, sometimes we have dreams and they don't come about. We have desires and wishes we want to happen and they don't happen. And we wonder where God is. We wonder what God is gonna do with us next. We wonder how I'm gonna provide for our families. In fact, I was listening to Mr. Gordon pray and he was praying for people to have a job. How will I provide for my family? We suffer at the hands of others. We suffer at the words of others. We suffer in all sorts of ways. And as we study the book of Job, one of the things that hits us square in the face is this, Job runs straight into God. Sometimes he doesn't say nice things to God, but he doesn't stop talking to God. And as you think about David, one of the men, I preached a sermon years ago in California. Some of you guys have people in California. And this man remembered the sermon. He says, I remember that sermon you preached about Dave in the cave. And I didn't name it that, but he did. And so it was really nice for a guy in Michigan to remember my sermon in California. But here we are talking about Dave in a cave, and he asked, why is Dave in a cave? Well, because there's a madman on the loose after him who's full of jealousy named King Saul, and he wants to put David to death because he's got too much popularity. And what does David do? Well, the first thing he does is he flees to the prophet, to Samuel, to the Word of God. Then he flees to his covenant friend, Jonathan. Then he flees to the priest. Then he makes a mistake and goes to the king of Gath probably hoping to escape notice, but they notice him. And he has to act like he's insane to get away. And then you find David in a cave. He's in the cave of Delim. What's he doing there? We know why he's there. What's he doing there? Well Psalm 57 and Psalm 142 tell us he's suffering and he's praying. He's being pressed up against God. And so there he is and 400 men gather around him and it's really cool. 400 men are gathering around David while he's praying in the cave. It's a beautiful picture of the kingdom of God. God's anointed king surrounded by 400 men and they're praying. Well, this morning I want you to think about someone greater than Job, and I want you to think about somebody greater than David. I want you to think about the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not on an ash heap, he's not in a cave, he's in an upper room. And he's with 12 chosen men, and he says these words, I have earnestly desired to eat the Passover with you before I suffer. And so the first point I want you to consider this morning is the context of this supper. The context is suffering. Jesus' whole life has been about suffering. Before He was cognizant, we know that a madman came after Jesus named Herod the Great. He killed every child two years old and younger in Ramah, and there was a great cry going out across the land because of this. Jesus, as He begins His ministry, He's going to be tempted by the devil. And so Jesus is tempted, and then Jesus enters into His ministry, and He speaks like no other man has ever spoken in the world. He goes and performs miracles like no other man in the world, and instead of being received by His people, He's rejected. He's persecuted and they plot to murder Him. And so even Jesus as He's moving through His ministry, He's telling His 12 chosen disciples who chose to be with Him, He's telling them that He's going to suffer and they just don't get it. And if you'll remember I like to bring up passages I know that everybody remembers. But in Matthew 16 Jesus asks His disciples, who do men say that I am? And they give Him all the contemporary answers. And then Jesus says, but who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter stands up for all of them and he says, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And then Jesus takes them over to the side and He begins to tell them that He's going to die. What? I mean, can you see Peter taking Jesus over to the side to the woodshed and saying, not on your life are you gonna die? No, no. His men just don't get it. But Jesus is telling them, I'm gonna suffer in Jerusalem at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and then I'm gonna be raised up on the third day. Jesus knows about suffering. As he entered into his ministry, remember at the baptism, when Jesus starts his ministry at the baptismal waters, he begins to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, the weight of our sin. And he came to be a shepherd. He came to shepherd people in love and save and ultimately lays his life down for us on the cross. And at this table, there's a betrayer. The enemy is in the room. Don't you like to hear that? The enemy was in the room. And I think Jesus is trying to take that betrayal out of his hands, but he doesn't, of course. In only a little while, Jesus will be agonizing in the garden and great drops of blood will be in his sweat. He'll be pleading for another way besides the way of suffering to save sinners, but there's no other way. And so Jesus comes to the Passover celebration and he says, this is my body which is broken for you. And then he says, this cup is a new covenant in my blood. He says, take it and drink it. This is my suffering. And they don't understand. will. They don't even understand suffering themselves, but they will. And Jesus is telling them beforehand what He's about to do. And He's telling them they also will suffer that evening before. In John 15, 18 Jesus says this, If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If they persecuted me they will persecute you as well. So, this is the context of the suffering. The second point I want you to take note of is the commemoration and the celebration of the suffering. In Luke 22, 19, Jesus says, do this in remembrance of me. Now, you know, most people don't use the word commemoration. I don't use that word very often. I see it, but I don't use it. It means remember. Remember my suffering. And just as the people of God were told to remember the Passover in the days of Moses when they were taken out of Egypt by God's mighty power, you and I, we are to remember, commemorate Jesus' body being broken and blood being poured out. Remember it. Do this in remembrance of me. We hear that. It's probably on the table right there, isn't it? Right in front of you. And we are to remember this, because as we do, we are proclaiming the Lord's death until He comes. And it's in this life, it's in this person, it's in this suffering that we're saved. Now, Jesus goes in Luke 9, 31, and He's on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John, and Elijah and Moses show up. And instead of going too long here, I think the best way to say it is it's like the beams of the sun are shining through Jesus's pores. The glory of God is shining through. The hidden deity is shining through the pores, if you will. And Peter, James, and John are there. And the law and the prophets represented by those two men are there. And they're talking about something. Have you ever thought about what they're talking about? So it says in verse 31, it says they're talking to Jesus about His departure, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. And I bet I've read that hundreds of times and thought, yes, that speaks of the cross. I got it, I got it. But if you go and you look at the word departure, it's the word in Greek, E-X-O-D-U-S, Exodus. They're talking about Jesus, Exodus. Now that really, really hits me in the face. What happened at the exodus? So God saves his people through the blood of lambs who were slain. All their blood was smeared all over the doorposts and lentils of their homes so that they would be protected from the destroyer. first born would be spared. And we have Jesus, He is the final Lamb whose blood is going to be poured out and His blood will be smeared over the lives of all of His people so that we can be saved. His body is broken, His blood is poured out so that we might not have to be saved out of Egypt, but saved out of the Egypt of our sin, our slavery to sin and Satan and death. And so every time we sit for the table, we are to remember that it's a context of suffering. We're to remember Jesus' body broken, His blood poured out. that blood might be smeared over our lives. And we receive that salvation by faith in that blood. Well I want to spend a little bit of time on this third point and bring some applications. And the third point is this, the communication of the benefits of Christ's suffering. Question 96 in the Shorter Catechism reads like this, what is the Lord's Supper? And the answer is the Lord's Supper is a sacrament. wherein by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ's appointment, his death is showed forth. Now that's what we've just talked about, the commemoration and the celebration, his death is shown forth. And now we're coming to the spiritual nature of the supper, and the worthy receivers are not after a corporal or carnal manner, but by faith made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. spiritual nature of the Lord's Supper. Worthy receivers are made partakers of His body and blood, this nourishment, as we have faith in our hearts to receive it. So this is a time where we actually do get something. We receive something. We receive nourishment. And those who receive it are worthy receivers. The Apostle Paul says it like this, you and I are to put no confidence in our own flesh, no confidence in our own achievements or accomplishments or works, but we put all our confidence in Jesus Christ's righteousness alone. Sometimes I say this when I serve the Lord's Supper, I say, how can you be prepared, how can you be worthy for the Lord's Supper? Your worthiness is found in the fact that you're not worthy. and your worthiness is found in that Jesus makes you worthy for the Lord's Supper. It's His righteousness that makes you worthy to eat and drink. And so we come as people who are imperfect with our faith, imperfect in our obedience, imperfect in our repentance, and we come needy and hungry, relying completely on Jesus' righteousness alone. And here's one more thing, and I like to throw this in. Before I understood Reformed theology, which we love, I came to the Lord's Supper and I would say, figure out reasons not to take it. Have you ever done that? I try to figure out reasons not to take the Lord's Supper. Well, maybe I, did I, what did I say to something to my wife I shouldn't have said? Should I, had I did this? Did I not take care of that? We need to come obediently to the Lord's Supper. Listen to me folks, it's commanded take and eat. It's a command. It's commanded, drink ye all of it. My daughter likes me to say ye, King James. Drink ye all of it. These are commands. You and I are commanded to come to the Lord's Supper, and we're not just trying to figure out some way not to take it. That hits me every time. Drink and eat, drink and eat. Don't figure out some way not to take it. Figure out the way you are to take it. Rely completely on Christ's righteousness. As we come to the table, it's a spiritual meal. And in 1 Corinthians 10, 16, the Apostle Paul says, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? And each time we expect a yes answer. We are participating, sharing in, fellowshipping in the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. We're not doing it in a corporal manner. We do not believe that when we eat the bread and drink the wine that we're literally getting Christ's body and blood. We don't believe that in some form or fashion that the body and blood of Christ are in, with, and upon the body and the bread and the wine. But we believe that when we take the bread, this bread, and the wine, this really wine, and we put it in our mouths with faith in our heart, we're getting something. We're getting grace. The same grace that you get as you hear a sermon and you receive the words in your ears and with faith in your heart, the exact same grace you're getting when you eat that bread and you drink the wine. You're getting nourishment, spiritual nourishment as we eat and drink. So seeing that this sacrament is of high priority to Jesus and that we ought to do it often, we also ought to say to ourselves, we need to be here. we need to do this often. I'll say this to our covenant children and I'll move on real quickly. But young people listen, Matthew Henry put it like this, you have unfinished business with Jesus Christ until you sit down and eat and drink with Jesus at the table. Did you hear me? You have unfinished business with Jesus Christ until you sit down and eat and drink with Him at the table. Think about your profession of faith. Think about getting ready to eat and drink with Jesus at this table. Well, first, we see the context of this supper is suffering. Jesus tells us to commemorate and celebrate it. And then we find out that there's something communicated to us, which is grace, as we receive the elements with faith. Now, let me give you some applications. It's all about suffering so far, right? So let's continue. Not all of us are in a season of suffering right now. Are you training for it? My daughter and I are reading Knowing God, good book to read. And in that book, J.I. Packer says, he talks about signs. And one of the signs he talks about is called the dog leg wiggle. Have you ever seen a dog leg wiggle when you drive? If you come to a dogleg wiggler while you're driving, you have to adjust your speed because you're about to wiggle around on the road. And every time you think about suffering, suffering is ahead. You may not be suffering right now, but it's ahead. It ought to be on everybody's refrigerator. Suffering ahead, suffering ahead. Through many tribulations, we will enter the kingdom of God, the apostle Paul says, Acts 14, 22. How do you get ready for this? Well, how do you get ready for a career? How do you get ready for a marathon? You know how you get ready for a marathon? Well, you gotta have a training schedule. You have to go out and you have to do a lot of running, and then you have to have a table, right? The table regimen. What am I gonna eat? What am I gonna drink? And it's gotta all be fitted together. And so your spiritual training and your spiritual training table is right now. It's right now. Now you need to take it home, like I said, as I prayed. I didn't get that, those are words right out of the catechism. But you and I, when you leave here today, you need to practice the things you've heard in your heart. You lay them up in your heart, you practice them in your life, but you're training as you hear the word of God preached to you right now. You're training when you take the bread and the wine. That's your training table, these are the training words. And we all need to be here. One of the things that is really wonderful about our worship service is we have the assurance of pardon. I have people come up to me and tell me, you know, I like you. I like your sermons. But I like the assurance of pardon better. And I'm glad. They want to hear somebody say, they want to hear somebody say, God's Word declares to you that people who repent and believe are forgiven. And then we go on and we move through our liturgy and we take the Word of God. It's coming over our heads. The Holy Spirit is taking it and applying it to our lives. And then we eat and we drink together. And we know, we know that our sins are forgiven. We know that we have righteousness imputed to us by the Holy Spirit. We know that we're in fellowship with God the Father and we're adopted children. We know these things, these are great things. And then we can walk out of this place to go do the will of God. and we're preparing for the season of suffering that's coming. I think one of the things, you know, I say this because Betty Jean Larson was I think dear to many of y'all's hearts, but she's in, somebody came up to me at the church the other day and said, why did you say that she's in the church triumphant? I said, because she's in heaven, she doesn't have to fight anymore, she doesn't have to prepare for suffering anymore. But we're in the church, militant, and we need to remember that. Do not be negligent, do not be complacent when you're going through a time that's not as hard as another time. So easy, water's real calm out there. John Owen said this, he said, when the water's calm, you better get ready. The devil's right at the door. So you and I were preparing for suffering. All right, second, some of us are in a season full of suffering. What are you to do when you go through a season of suffering? Well, let me put it this way, trust your training. Trust your training. What was David doing before we see him running away from Saul? What was he doing? So he's in this quiet place called, out there alive says of David, with you and your few sheep. He's out there with his sheep. So he's out there with his sheep and he's taking his sling and smooth stones and he's striking hares. He's out there wrestling a bear and a lion and killing them. He's out there singing and playing his harp. He's out there fellowshipping with the Lord. enters into his public life and what does he do? He kills Goliath. He plays the harp for King Saul. He becomes the general of King Saul's army and then the women get him in trouble because they begin to say that Saul has killed his thousands, but David's killed his tens of thousands of those Philistines. And so now David is having to flee from a madman who's full of jealousy. What does he do? He Well, all that training that was done in secret, folks, you say, oh, well, you know, that doesn't matter. All that reading the Bible and all that praying and all those things you do with your family, that doesn't really, that's not really, it does matter. All those things that David was doing out there by himself in his lonely times, it did matter. Because the first thing he does is he goes to the Word of God. First thing he does is go to the prophet. Next thing he does is he goes to a covenant friend that loves him. He goes to the priest, and we'll leave that part out about Achish. He goes to the cave and he begins to pray. This is what we need to do. This is what we are supposed to do when the bottom falls out in our lives. I wrote a sermon on this. I had a lady in California call me. I buried her husband. And 18 months later she called me. It was November 20, the day before Thanksgiving. And she said, do you remember me, Pastor Martin? I said, I do. She said, you know, you buried my husband 18 months ago. I said, I remember. And she said, I've been crying ever since. And I said, she went on for 30 minutes, and I said, she told me that the counsel she had received was not, if she was, when she was at church, if she started crying, she should leave. And that if she was in a Bible study and she began to cry, that she should leave. And if she, wherever she was, if she started crying, she should leave. She told me this for 30 minutes. She said, well, what do you have to say? And I said, well, I have to say this, everything you've heard, I disagree with everything you've said. You go to church, well, what if I cry? Then cry? Okay, girls, if you need to fix your makeup, go back there, fix your makeup, come back in here. If you need to cry, if you cry again, go cry again. But don't miss worship for anything. Don't miss the people of God for anything. Don't miss being side by side with each other for anything. worst, the worst counsel I've ever heard. Come to church, come where the sacraments serve, come where the people of God sing, come where the people of God eat potluck meals, be side by side, and receive the benefits of Christ's suffering. And so every week we find ourselves in this place, and I want you to notice this, that our great, to our great amazement, Jesus never fails us. Has he, he doesn't fail us. And so let's say that you and I were in the boat with Jesus and he's asleep and we wake him up with our prayers and what does he do? He gets up and he calms the sea for us. And when we're out on the sea rowing at the oars and Jesus walks out on the water to us and he says, don't be afraid. And then when we get out of the boat and walk on the sea and we trample Satan on the head and we're destroying sin underneath our feet and we're not being, sin's not exercising dominion over us. It's great, our eyes are on Jesus. You take your eyes off Jesus, what happens? You get six inches deep and you cry, Lord save me. You don't wait till you're 600 foot deep, you call him when you're six inches deep. Jesus reaches out his hand, he puts us back in the boat with him. And then with all the rest of the disciples, what do we do? We say, who is this that causes the water and the winds to obey him? Who is this? We bow down at his feet and we worship. Another thought, suffering but not alone. We noticed that David was not alone in the cave, Jesus was not alone in the upper room. He was not alone when he instituted the supper. But there was some work that Jesus had to do by himself. Jesus had to go and pray in Gethsemane by himself. Jesus had to go and be interrogated by the chief priest alone, Jesus had to go to the cross alone. If it would have been Simon Peter's way, Simon Peter would have been going to prison with him. If it would have been according to Simon Peter's way, he would have gone to the cross with Jesus, that's what he said. But Jesus had to do that work alone. He had to be crushed on the cross alone so that we would never ever be abandoned or alone ever. I've taken many people, many women, and buried their husbands, and I've said many times to these women, I've said, you will never be alone, even though you may feel like it, because Jesus never leaves you or forsakes you. Think about how Jesus began to be with his disciples after he was raised from the dead. So Jesus is a stranger to the Emmaus Road disciples. They're going from Jerusalem back home to Emmaus. It's seven miles. They're gonna walk for a pretty good long time. I used to put all this stuff to math and figure it all out how long it would take. About 90 minutes if they walked 3.7 miles an hour. So they're walking, right? don't know who He is. Jesus starts talking to them what happens to their hearts. Their hearts are burning. He's explaining the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms to them, and their hearts are burning. And when Jesus would go further they urge Him to come into a room and stop. And Jesus begins to break bread, bless bread. He gives them the bread and they recognize His hands, and He disappears. Forty days later He ascends into the heavens. How did they recognize Jesus? They recognize in the burning of the words of God in his heart, they recognize it in the hands at the Lord's Supper. Jesus ascends into the heavens and the Spirit of God is poured out. The Spirit of Jesus is poured out on all flesh. And now Jesus is with us in a totally different way than he would have been with the disciples. He's with us, He's with us all the time and He gives from His hands to us the wine and the bread in the Lord's Supper until the day He comes back. So you and I, we're never really alone, are we? We have a King who's always with us. We have a prophet who's always speaking words to us through ordinary men. We have a priest who is sympathetic to us. He's suffered, he's tempted, he's able and willing to help us when we suffer. He never stops interceding for us. One of the things that I would leave with you about Jesus' intercession is this. Think about Moses with his hands held up and all the power that came down from heaven into the valley down below where Joshua was fighting the Malachites. Jesus is drawing down power and grace to you every single day so that you do not quit in this life. If there's ever a temptation that comes our way, it seems to me the biggest one is, why don't you just quit? Why don't you just roll over and die, you know? He's praying down grace for you, and you need to come and take from his hands, as we said, in communion with God's people. We do this together. I'm gonna go quickly here, but 1 Corinthians 10, 17 says, since there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. I want you to remember, sometimes we start taking the Lord's Supper, We go through the motions. Every now and then it's good to remember that as those men pass the tray to you and you hand the tray to your neighbor, you're serving your neighbor. We don't think about it that much, do we? But those hands that are giving it to you are Jesus' hands, and those elders are giving it to you and they're sharing. We're sharing in this together, we're not alone. Well, it's the suffering that we go through, but it's not without meaning. So Jesus institutes the supper for those who suffer. And he, when he suffered, it was not without meaning. Do you know some of the things, I just pulled out the scriptures. Jesus' suffering had meaning. He appeared to atone for our sins. He appeared to take away our sins, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus Christ appeared to destroy the works of the devil. Jesus Christ came to build his church, and he came to surround himself with the people that God the Father had given him. Jesus Christ comes and goes through all that He went through to become a sympathetic and merciful high priest, even now, for us in heaven. And our sufferings, too, have meaning. Our sufferings are not for nothing. As we move through our sufferings, Christ builds His church. As we move through our sufferings, our children watch us parents. and it builds something in them to see mom and dad praying and worshiping and loving him and loving the people of God. Jesus saw his affliction and he persevered through it. He saw his people and he knew he wanted to gain them, so he went through the suffering and got through it on the other side. and you and I, we should fix our eyes on Jesus as we move through afflictions. We need to understand that the Apostle Paul says, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. Just as real as my hand is in front of my face, there's something eternal that I have in heaven. As I move through these sufferings, I'm gaining something, I just can't see it. I have eternal things, weight and value are waiting there. Treasures in heaven are waiting for me. We just can't see them yet. Well finally, I want to end with this. Our suffering is not without nourishment. Now I don't know about you, but when I I've looked in my wife's face many times, I've looked in other people's faces too, but one of the things I notice when I see a person suffering is I see a fog sometimes in their eyes. I don't know if you've ever take notice of that, but when you suffer a lot, it's draining and it taxes you. Enough that you almost, you wonder if they're hearing you because the pain is so much in their lives. And we kind of get to the point where we say, to put it in the kids' terms, when do I get rest time? When do I get a break? And so when we go on trips, I think probably all of you know, I have one pet peeve against buckies, there's no place to sit down. But everybody likes to go to buckies. And everybody likes to go to Bucky's because they have the best restrooms, they have great place to get drinks, coffee, you can go over here and shop on this side, you feel like you're in the mall, just didn't have to go downtown to it. And so you all go there and you can't wait to get out because we all want a break. And that's exactly what happens at the Lord's Supper, not to be too trivial, but when we come to the Lord's Supper, God is, Jesus is here to give us something. It's a place where we can sit down. You can't sit down at Bucky's, but you get to sit down here, and you get to rest, and you get to take bread from his hand and wine from his hand, and you get to be refreshed as you eat and drink with faith in your hearts. I watched a video, a documentary years ago about three of the best marathon runners in the world, and what these scientists wanted to do is they wanted to try to see if they could get these men trained to break the two-hour barrier in the 26 miles, 385-yard marathon. And so they studied all three of these men, and they realized there was one man in the midst of them. They watched him. He never stopped at the fueling station. He never got a drink. He never got a banana. He never got any gels, anything. No calories the whole time. And the other two did, but he didn't. And they had to stop and tell this man, if you want to run your best marathon, sir. Remember, he's running less than two hour and 10 minute marathons already. Pretty good. If you wanna run better, you're gonna have to take some calories, you're gonna have to take some nutrition, you're gonna have to take some hydration, some water. And they had to tell him this. And so the next time you come to the Lord's Supper, you need to see Jesus holding up the bread and holding up the wine so that you can take that from his hands, rest in these chairs with God's people. receive spiritual nourishment so that you can get up from this place and go out and glorify Him and enjoy Him to the next time you come down here and you sit down and you eat and drink again with Him. But that is what we need to see happening. We receive benefits, to go back to the shorter catechism, we receive benefits of Christ's suffering. as we take the bread and as we take the wine from Jesus' hands with faith in our hearts. Well, let us pray. Our Father, we do praise You and thank You for this opportunity to look into Your Word. And we do thank You that our Lord Jesus Christ instituted this supper for us. And we know we don't suffer like Jesus did, but boy, we do know we suffer. And we need strength and we need grace. in these days of our suffering. And we thank you that you're a God who always meets us in our time of need. And we thank you for this place, this rest station, this pit stop we call church, where we can hear the word of God proclaimed to our hearts and where we can sit down at the training table. and we can take the bread and take the wine and be strengthened in our souls. Father, we pray that you will help us as we continue our service, as we finish it out. We pray that we might meditate on these things throughout the day and improve them in our hearts. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen.