Gooding, David: The Centrality of The Lord’s Supper

I would choose to speak on something that is central to our Christian faith and fundamental thereto. Something that stands very near to the affections which every Christian bears towards our Lord Jesus Christ. I have chosen, therefore, to think with you about the institution of our Lord's Supper. And I propose to read four passages relevant to this topic, two from the Gospels and two from the Epistles. Our first reading is found in Matthew's Gospel, chapter twenty six, Matthew's Gospel, chapter twenty six, verse one. I happen to be reading from the Revised Version. It came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these words, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days the Passover cometh, and the Son of Man is delivered up to be crucified. Then were gathered together the chief priests and the elders of the people unto the court of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas. They took counsel together that they might take Jesus by subtlety and kill him. But they said, not during the feast, lest a tumult arise among the people. Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, there came unto him a woman having an alabaster cruse of exceeding precious ointment, and poured it upon his head as he sat at meat. When the disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, to what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much and given to the poor. Jesus, perceiving it, said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? For she has wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you, but me ye have not always. For in that she poured this ointment upon my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which this woman has done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas, went unto the chief priests and said, What are ye willing to give me, and I will deliver him unto you? He weighed unto him thirty pieces of silver. From that time he sought opportunity to deliver him unto them. Now, on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, Where wilt thou that we make ready for thee to eat the Passover? And he said, go into the city to such a man and say unto him, the master saith, my time is at hand, I keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus appointed them, and they made ready the Passover. Now, when even was come, he was sitting at meat with the twelve disciples, and as they were eating, he said, Verily I say unto you that one of you shall betray me. They were exceeding sorrowful and began to say unto him every one, Is it I, Lord? He answered and said, He that dipped his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. The Son of Man goeth even as it is written of him, but woe unto that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed. Good were it for that man if he had not been born. Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, is it I, Rabbi? He saith unto him, thou hast said. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread and blessed and brake it, and he gave it to the disciples and said, take eat, this is my body. He took a cup and gave thanks. He gave to them, saying, Drink ye all of it. This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sin. But I say unto you, I will not drink his- henceforth of this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. So stands Matthew's account of the institution of the Lord's Supper, and the three other, two other accounts in the Gospels naturally follow Matthew very closely. In turning now to Luke's account, I merely wish to pick out certain salient points that Luke has, which Matthew has not. The account, of course, is found in chapter twenty two. Verse twenty four of Matthew twenty two: There arose also a contention among them, which of them is accounted to be greatest. He said unto them, the kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them, and they that have authority over them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so. But he that is the greater among you, let him become as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serve? Is not he that sitteth at meat? But I am in the midst of you as he that serve. Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and I point unto you a kingdom, even as my Father appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom. She shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Simon, Simon, the whole Satan asked to have you that he might sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. Do thou, when once thou hast turned again, establish thy brethren. He said unto him, Lord, with thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day until thou shalt deny thrice that thou knowest me. He said unto them, when I sent you forth without purse and wallets and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said, nothing. He said unto them, but now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a wallet. He that hath none, let him sell his cloak and buy a sword. For I say unto you, that this which is written must be fulfilled in me, and he was reckoned with the transgressors. For that which concerneth me hath fulfillment. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, it is enough. Now let us leave the Gospels for a moment and turn to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, first of all in chapter ten. First Epistle to the Corinthians in chapter ten, verse 16. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ? Seeing that we who are many are one bread, one body. For we all partake of the one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh, have not they which eat the sacrifices communion with the altar? What say I then, that a thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. I would not that ye should have communion with devils. He cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. He cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of devils. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Or are we stronger than he? Finally, from chapter eleven of this same epistle, verse twenty three: For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, how that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread. When he had given thanks, he brake it and said, this is my body, which is for you. This do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself if he deserve not the body. For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep. But if we discerned ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait one for another. If any man is hungry, let him eat at home, that your coming together be not unto judgment. The Lord himself draw near and expound to us his holy word. Our Lord left us only two ordinances, which therefore become remarkable by their very fewness of number, and concentrate our attention on their singular importance. He left us the ordinance of baptism, the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. And so tonight, as we survey together the familiar theme of the Lord's Supper, inevitably we shall constantly think of its importance. This is a something that our Lord asked us to do, a something very rare that our Lord asked us to do, rare in the sense that it is one of only two ordinances. But in addition to perceiving its importance, we shall I trust be helped of God to see the wisdom which lies behind our Lord's injunction. It is a lovely thing for every believer when he is given to see the wisdom of God behind God's gracious command. It goes without saying, of course, that we owe to our Lord unquestioning obedience to every one of his commands, even if we cannot perceive the wisdom behind them. Suppose we cannot see the reason why. Ours is not to question, ours to do, trusting the heart of him who loves us, trusting the mind of an all-wise Savior and God. But how lovely when God, uh, treats us not as infants merely to be commanded without understanding why, but rather as grown-up sons to whom he may entrust his secrets and explain his ways, that we might perceive their wisdom, and with all the more wholeheartedness cooperate with him in the carrying out of his instruction. Let us then, by God's grace, see tonight the importance of this ordinance, and also its exceeding wisdom. I want then first to say a few words on our Lord's Supper from the historical viewpoint, to see what we may learn from its very institution. For I some submit to you that it shows us what is and whatever must be the prime and central Christian emphasis. But let us reflect a moment that, um, when our Lord instituted this thing, he was instituting a something by which we should remember him. How many things there were about him that we love, and which he might have chosen, by which he should remember him. There were all those wonderful miracles that he did, full of grace and kindness, every one of them. But we do notice that it is not his miracle that here he bids us recall by this constantly repeated rite. And again, we think how lovely were his teachings, how glorious those parables he taught, how striking and how, um, gripping his moral teaching. And yet we cannot fail to notice that when he wanted something to be done to recall him, he didn't order us to stand publicly and recite his parables that we might remember what he said in those parables, or to recite publicly the Sermon on the Mount that he might, we might remember his ethical teaching. He chose to select this from all his life and ministry. He chose to select something that should recall the offering of himself as a sacrifice for our sins. Bread and wine. His body given and his wine, his blood given for us. Expressly said, given for us for the forgiveness of sin. We cannot, of course, think that this is some casual thing that our Lord did, uh, without forethought or deliberate intention. It must be that in asking us to do this, which recalls his sacrifice and death, that our Lord wished to imprint it as the central thing in the whole of Christianity. This is it. This the thing that lies nearest the Lord's heart. This the most important thing that we are to gather about all that he said and ever did, this. We should remember that he gave his body a sacrifice and shed his blood for the forgiveness of human sin. I want to submit to you that herein we may perceive our Lord's wisdom in this provision for his church. A glance back at the history of the Christian church will show us that there have been days when the church has not seen too clearly what was its main emphasis. Days when the church felt that its main task was a program of social reform, that its message to the world was a message for the improvement socially of the masses, or for the political setting up and putting down of kings. Days there have been many. When the church has spoken, uh, to the world as though the main thing in Christianity were its rules and regulations. The church has bid the world to try and keep the golden rule. Now that we are exhorted to do good works unto all men and should have a care for our neighbor, this is transparently clear in the New Testament. But these, I venture to say, are not the central thing in Christianity. The central thing about Christianity is the thing which is unique among all religions of earth. Our Lord was a savior, come to die for human sin, that sin might be forgiven, man might be put right with God. Happy the church, who has allowed the constant celebration of this central thing of Christianity, to imprint upon its mind that this is the fundamental thing. Should we forget all else, then we must remember this, preach it with all our hearts. Our Lord came as a sacrifice for sin. My brother, if you have a heart for the souls of men, yield not to this world's incessant clamor, suggesting that you would make a bigger impact on the world if you dropped these mysterious things and got on with social reform. But my brother, listen rather to the Lord's will. Let him by this institution imprint upon our minds that this is the message of Christianity. This is the thing by which we remember Christ. This preeminently what he came to do, not to relieve men's poverty necessarily, but to die for their sins. Bring man and put him right with God. We have lived to see a day when, in the name of Christ and Christian theology, there are many who would preach to us that our Lord's, uh, divinity, his atoning death, his bodily resurrection, that these are ideas that exist, that originated with the church and were not taught by our Lord himself. Liberal scholars will call our attention to the fact that the records that we have in the Gospels of what our Lord said and did are records compiled years after our Lord went back to heaven, compiled by the church. They will argue to us and say, but look, Jesus himself never claimed divinity, it was the church who claimed divinity for him. As looking back over the years and remembering him, his wisdom and his teaching, affectionately they put a halo of divinity round his head, and thinking to honor him, gave him the status of Godhead. But that was the church, they will tell you, who wrote the gospels, not our Lord, who wrote nothing. His atoning death? Say they again, this is not what our Lord intended by his death at all. His death was to show us how we ought to deny self and say to God, not my will, but thine be done. But if you please, they will tell us there came later apostles, and notably Saul of Tarsus, with a mind soaked in Judaism and his Old Testament sacrifices, and alas, the liberals will tell us, men like Paul went and spoiled the whole thing by interpreting the death of Christ in the light of Old Testament sacrifices, suggesting to us that God needed blood and fire before he could forgive his erring children. They are liberal theologians, you see, that's not what Christ thought, that's what the apostles taught, that's what the church taught. We come to the glorious fact of the resurrection. How would they say? It's not a fact at all, not really. It's only a belief. Say there, you mustn't believe that the bones literally came out of the grave. That's not what our Lord meant at all. He meant that if you were willing to say no to flesh, to crucify self, you would find new life in your experience of God, and that's all he meant. But those later Christians made a fable out of it, made a myth out of it. Whereas our Lord only meant, uh, that we should find, by being willing to crucify self, we should find greater life and experience of God. They misunderstood it and thought he meant that he was going to literally physically rise again from the dead. If you haven't, uh, come across those kind of theories, then don't. How wise of God, who foresees the end from the beginning, that our Lord himself, before he died upon the cross, years before the first gospel was written or the first epistle penned, our Lord himself would have instituted a ceremony that gives the lie to all these liberal fancies. Well, we shall observe that whereas Matthew and Luke, uh, are written sometimes af- sometime after our Lord's ascension to heaven, recording for us the details of the institution of the supper. The supper itself was instituted by Christ before he died, and was celebrated from the very word go in the Christian church. It stands as the earliest record we have of what our Lord claimed, and what our Lord, uh, taught about himself and his work on Pentecost Day onward, if not before. Little groups of Christian men and women gathered together, there they enacted a record that the Lord himself told them to enact. And you will observe that that record contains what is vital to true Christianity. Our Lord's atoning death, my body given, my blood poured, specifically said for the remission of sin. Specifically described as the blood of the New Covenant, and long before there was an ever a book called the New Testament, Christians met to celebrate the New Testament. For the New Testament is not this book, you know. The New Testament. The testament, the covenant that Christ performed and secured for us when he died, whereof the symbol is the bread and the wine of which we partake at the Lord's Supper. This is the blood of the New Testament. Not only did he claim before he died that he was going to die for human sin, but implied in that claim is inevitably the claim to divinity, to deity. What ordinary human could claim to come and die as a sacrifice for the sins of the world? What sane man would ever breathe any such notion? Moses, in his highest flights of oratory, never dreamed of, uh, making any such claim. And Isaiah, in his own ministry, thought himself never once expressed any such notion. There is only one who, being sane and commanding men's respect, ever claimed he had come to die for the sins of the whole world. For the very claim implies he was more than man, yea, God incarnate. For only God incarnate could offer a satisfactory sacrifice for sin. Do we not perceive that that very claim that he was about to die for human sin involves the claim that he rose again? For he ever and anon said it thus, that he would be delivered, crucified, and the third day rise again. Indeed, if he be not risen, as a later apostle said, we are still in our sins. He is not God's son, and of all men we are the most miserable. I would like now to point out how Matthew, in his record of the supper, goes out of his way to demonstrate to us that the idea of the atoning death of Christ, enshrined here in the La- the Lord's Supper is not an idea that originated with the church, not even an idea that originated with the apostles, but an idea that originated with Christ. See how Matthew does it. Passover was coming, Passover on which Christ should die. And our Lord said that the Pharisees would want to take him, but that he himself had determined to die on the Passover, only a few hours distant now in time. And he came with his followers to a certain house of Simon, and there they made him an ordinary supper, during the course of which a woman anointed his head and feet with ointment. It gave rise to severe criticism. Said the disciples one and all, what a waste of money. All that money poured out and lost just on one occasion. Our Lord defended the woman and said something remarkable. Said he, she has wrought a good work. The poor you have always, me you have not always. In that she has done this, she has anointed me for my burial. I suggest to you it descended upon them like a thunderclap. Burial? Burial? The evidence, as I read it, suggests that those po- apostles, for all that Christ had said, were not really expecting him to die. For had they been expecting him to die, had they had the slightest notion that this was the last occasion ever on which they might have the opportunity to express their gratitude to him, they would have given him anything, wouldn't they? Or do you, sir, think that those apostles were meaner than you are? Well, come now, you wouldn't think of, um, spending every month, perhaps, on your wife, a new dress, a mink overcoat. You would say, yeah, hmm, well, yes, I do love a good woman, but, um, you know, four hundred fifty pounds e- e- every month, I mean, isn't that a bit stiff? Where for this waste? The money might have been, yes, given to the poor or something, eh? Or, or, well, no, not that, put in your car maybe or something, but four hundred and fifty pounds on my wife every month. Ah, yes. I suppose one dark day the doctor said to you that your wife has only two months to live. It would, uh, do her good maybe. At any rate, it can do her no harm. If you gave her a cruise in the Mediterranean. So, if it were your last chance to show your love, would you grudge the four hundred and fifty if you had it? It being the last, and you knowing it the last opportunity? Would you write off Peter and John and James as so impossibly mean? They would have grudged our Lord that token, that tribute, if they had realized that almost tomorrow he would be dead. No, they thought they had him always. No, says Christ, the poor you have always, but you see, gentlemen, you've forgotten, haven't you? That you're not having me always. They weren't even expecting him to die so soon. After you say they found out. Our Lord told them, and when they found out, of course, they said, ah yes, now we see. Um, ah yes, of course, that's what the Old Testament said. Yes, and uh, he's going to die for sin. Now we shall help him to get arrested. We shall do everything in our power. Huh? And they fell in with the scheme, and they said, this will be a good thing. We hadn't thought of that before. Now if only we could get our Lord crucified by the Jews, we could, uh, we could tell the people he had fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy. Hi, this is a scheme, this. And this will prove to them that he's Messiah. So, Peter? So, John? We fancy not. They went out into the night. Slept while our Lord prayed. And presently there came the squad to arrest. Manfully Peter drew his sword. Surprised that the Lord did nothing. And then, to his utter dismay, was told Peter, put up your sword into its place. What was this? Bold men prepared to give their last drop of blood to save him from dying. Knowing the disappointment of a zeal that would have given everything, only now to be repulsed, and said, no, I don't want it, uh, Peter. I don't want it. You're not going to stand there and let, let them take you, are they, says Peter. Don't you know what they're going to do to you if they get their hands on you? They're not going to stand there just like that and let them take you, they said our Lord. But then you see, Peter, that I could, if I wanted, call for twelve legions of angels, each with a sword, you know. Then how should the scripture be fulfilled? What scripture? Why, that thus it must be that I must be taken and die. Oh, said Peter, oh, said John, oh, said James, and oh, said they all. Oh, well, if that's your idea, that isn't ours. Goodbye. Then all his disciples forsook him and fled. For the Messiah that willingly, uh, gave himself up to his enemies to die, that wasn't in all their theological vocabulary. It is sheer nonsense to say the idea originated with the church. Let's finally look at the very chiefest of the apostles, Peter himself. For when the others ran, he came back and entered the judgment hall where our Lord was on trial before the religious authorities. He went to see the end. What would this Jesus of Nazareth do now? Here's the situation, if ever you saw one. Now, if he had resisted the squad of soldiers and done a miracle and called angels to deliver him, then there was some sense in claiming to be the Son of God. But for a man who lamely gave himself up like that and let himself be overpowered and taken into the judgment hall, well, now he better be careful. They're bent on getting evidence to crucify him, and if he dare squeak now about being God's son and Messiah, they'll have his head. And Peter listens with bated breath as the high priest at last challenges the prisoner himself. Are you then the son of the blessed? I think I see Peter tremble in his shoes. Whatever will he say now? Now he's given himself up, bound hand and foot. What will he say now? He'll never still claim to be Messiah, will he? He'll never still claim to be the son of God. It'll be suicide if he does. The voice came back from the bound prisoner. I am. And somebody nudged Peter, people around, it was a girl. She says, you're one of them, aren't you? Look here, he says, I'm not with him. If Christ had stood there with a sword drawn and legions of angels, laying his enemies low and claiming to be Son of God, Peter would have been with him to the last last drop of blood. Willingly to give himself up to in- to death and still claim to be God's son. And he says, Peter, I'm not with that. I'm sorry, I'm not with that. I'm not with him. He never heard such a suicidal thing in all his life. And it was knowledge, common knowledge in Jerusalem, that when our Lord both claimed to be the Son of God and at the same time willingly gave himself to death, that his chiefest apostles washed his hands off him. I say again, it's arrant nonsense to say that our Lord's claim to give himself to an atoning death as a sacrifice for sin originated with the church. Arrant nonsense. This, the central thing of Christianity, that one should come to our world claiming to be God's son and human together. He claimed to willingly give himself to death. This was a something that originated in the heart of God. It was written in Old Testament scripture. Was spoken to us first by the Lord. First by the Lord. Confirmed unto us by them that heard him. So I come back to my main point. Time and time again, we gather to celebrate the Lord's Supper. We stand, so to speak, on the bedrock of God's divine revelation to men. Oh, cling to it, my young brother. Be you only faithful to the Lord here. Come at his injunction constantly to remember him. God will write it on your very heart. You will come to such understanding of God's gospel. Such an appreciation of God's divine revelation that you should be kept safe from that insidious attack of liberal theology, which is overthrowing the faith of so many. But someone will say, suppose only now that, uh, Christ did want to remind us of his death, because this is the central thing in Christianity. Why please did he do it this way, to institute a ceremony with bread and wine in which the congregation of the church takes part, receiving that bread and wine? Surely the memory could have been perpetuated somehow else. Someone could have got up and read a book that Christ himself wrote, or he could have written, surely, in which he explained the doctrine of the atonement in full, and we just listened. Why did he make it something in which we not only listened, but there's something in which we had personally to take part, eating the bread and drinking the wine? You say, first of all, because the thing graphically portrays his death, the body and the blood separate. So often, so obviously. May I suggest another reason? Because this Lord's Supper is not merely a record, but it is a symbol of a covenant. A symbol of a covenant. A covenant under which we are the beneficiaries. A covenant under which we receive all our spiritual blessing. And as we take the symbol, we reaffirm again and again that we receive God's salvation on God's terms. You see, this is the new covenant. The cup of the new covenant. New because, uh, it stands distinct from the old covenant. What was the old covenant? Now, the old covenant, being the Ten Commandments, was put inside the ark, which formed the throne of God. The old covenant expressed the principles upon which God proposed to govern that nation of Israel. And he offered them the covenant at the foot of Sinai and said, now these are my terms if you and I are going to be in communion one with another and in relation, and you shall be my people, and I shall be your God, and I shall be your king, and you will be my subjects. Now here are the terms upon which I propose to, to rule you. Are you prepared for the terms? My sacrifice has obtained for us a great salvation. There are terms that do. We take these symbols, we are saying, yes, Lord, I receive you as Lord, and these your times. Come, let us consider the situations Luke gives it. Luke points out that when our Lord arrived on his final visit to Jerusalem, he found the nation's hearts barred against him. Robbers in the temple, vineyard men who had appropriated for their own pockets the vineyard and its produce that belonged to God. Even as the rightful heir came to the vineyard, they said, this is the heir we'll kill him and take the inheritance ourselves. Jerusalem city that should have been his, occupied by the enemy. What did he do? He had come as Messiah, as Israel's king, riding upon an ass, hailed as the king that cometh in the name of the Lord, but the city was occupied by the enemy, and presently they were to cast him out, put him to a tree. You go back to heaven defeated. I'll see now. But as for many nights before Calvary, he had been going out of the city at nighttime because it wasn't safe for him to stay in the city. During the day, the multitudes hung upon his lips, but, uh, at night he took the precaution of going outside the city because the vineyard men were after him. Came the last night, said he to his disciples, now go into the city, you shall see a man bearing a pitcher of water, a most unusual thing, like an Irishman pushing a pan, you know, a man bearing a pitcher of water. Follow him in and, uh, find out who owns the house where he goes in. It won't be that man, it will be some other man who owns the house, and speak to him. Why all this secrecy, Lord? Have you made arrangements? Yes, I've made arrangements. I'm quiet. Because Jerusalem is a hostile city. They're after my blood. Humanly speaking, it's dangerous for me to be found there. But there's one man in Jerusalem who's prepared to take the very best room in his house, and knowing that, uh, my enemies are after my blood, is prepared to open his door and have me right in the very heart of enemy's territory. There tonight I go. While all was dark around, the city that was thirsting for his blood, not only kept the Passover in that upper room, but he instituted his kingdom, gave the terms of the covenant, in token gave his body and blood to seal the covenant. Happy that man who gave his lounge at a place where in enemy territory Christ might establish his kingdom. Honor. He forms a picture of every human heart that dares to receive Christ. For this world's night is not yet past. The day cometh, the night is indeed past since, but it's not yet past. And our Lord is still rejected. All those human hearts that, being in en- enemy territory, have opened the very best room and said, Lord, come in and set up your kingdom here. Ah, those lovely little groups of Christians around the Roman world, when the Caesars raged, tried to blot out the very name of Christ from the earth, all those lovely little homes, those barns, those secret meeting places where a few Christians gathered to take bread and take wine. What doing? Pledging again that they were members of his kingdom, that in this little spot of earth, I Strange Supreme, their Lord and God, and they were his. Ah, think you not have cheered the heart of God and touched the heart of the ascended Christ? In answer to his request, they thus pledged their loyalty. That same heart looks down upon us now, Brett, now in the left touch, when in a hostile world you gather and you break the bread and drink the cup, affirming again that here at least Christ is king. And oh, what a kingdom. What are the terms of his covenant? How much superior to that old first covenant, where the responsibility lay upon men by the keeping of God's law to earn salvation? Oh, what a different covenant this. And all we have to do is bankrupt sinners is to receive for nothing salvation that Christ has secured, with it forgiveness, and with it the promise that God's Holy Spirit shall write his laws upon our hearts and minds. Well, our Holy Spirit also is witness to us, and he says, I'll write them on their hearts and minds, and their sins and iniquities. I will remember no more. What a lovely covenant. We said yes to him when first we came in our bankruptcy. But do we not love to say it as often as we can possibly say it? Look up into his face and take the cup bread and take the cup and say, Lord, I affirm it. I take it. Yes, I do. Had I never done before, I should do it right. Then they jangled, forgetful of the solemnity of the occasion, forgetful of the depth of the Lord's suffering. And he reproved them gently, saying, Brethren, now it's not the big man that's the bar, that the big one serves. The one who serves is greater. Oh, what a lovely kingdom when the very king holds this viewpoint. He said, you know, I'm among you as one that serves among. Now tell me, said he, who in this world is counted the bigger, the man that serves at the table or the people that sit at the table? Well, it sounds like that. It's the man that sits as the big man, isn't it? And the man that serves with him, the small man. You go home tonight, you push a button by the fireplace in your lounge, and suddenly the waiter comes and says, yes, sir. Oh, wouldn't you feel important? My brother, suppose you could go home tonight and press the button, and God's own son came and said, what would you like? I am among you, said he, as one that serves, and you're the ones that sit at meat. Oh, how it tugs our hearts. How can we have it otherwise? Do we not sit at meat? Great banquet of salvation. Watch him go and serve. Ah, the toil he had to prepare the feast. We sit and eat. It's there, again, we take the bread and take the cup, unworthy to sit and eat, but he insists on doing the serving. It's there that we begin to learn the ways of heaven. How can you do that, my brother, and immediately turn round and try to barf it over your fellow Christians? And says he, yes, hi, he says, gentlemen, now I had to borrow this room. I had to borrow it, you know, didn't mind this room. You continued with me, he said, all this long while, how grateful I am to you men. And we think on the quiet, well, I hadn't done very much, but oh, how grateful Christ is. You've continued with me right to this very present time. It was genuinely a comfort to him, was it not? What would you think if, uh, when he said, now, now, now, my good brethren, you'll be here at Passover hour, won't you? I'd like you to be here to take this bread and wine. And Peter turned around and said, oh, sorry, Lord, but I can't come today. No? I don't think it's important, Lord. No? I don't get much out of it, Lord. I don't think even Peter, though, really knew how much Christ got out. You continue with me. Oh, how he valued it. I'll do better for, for you than this one day, said he. One of these days it won't be any more a borrowed up a room. I'll appoint you a kingdom, and you'll sit and eat and drink with me at my table in my father's kingdom. This for now. You see, he says, I'm rejected. My good brethren, he says, you'll have to pay your own expenses in this world now, for they cast me out, and I shall be reckoned with the outlaws. One of these days I shall give you a place at my table in my father's. Prophesying not only his death, but his coming again. For at this supper are the fundamentals of our faith. His atoning death, his deity, his resurrection, his promised coming again. And in the meantime, Peter, he says, you're running into some trouble presently. Your faith is going to be tested almost to breaking point, but I pray for you, Peter. And you who sit here today, my disciple, are keeping this covenant. I pray for you so that I'm s- a certainty your face shall not pale, and you'll sit down with me in the courts of heaven. Oh, lovely kingdom and lovely king. I to sit with him, be it only a borrowed room, and only bread, and only wine. Lovely thing to sit with him. While he says, look, and as sure as you sit here today, I shall see to it you'll sit with me at my father's table in his kingdom, for I shall pray you there. I shall pray for you that your faith shall never fail. At that they went out. Says he, you have to pay your expenses and fight your own way, he says, because I am to be, uh, reckoned an outlaw. And for this time, you must be prepared to take your place with me and share my rejection. Why have a supper constantly repeated in which we take part. That in this world that still rejects him, we might as constantly reaffirm our loyalty to the Lord. Or you say that it's only a small thing, and I'd rather get busy serving the Lord. Oh, I see, yes. Yeah, what I say now, I'm no expert, but I'm told that when dutiful husbands go away on business, say for six months, they write once a month. I'm told that deluxe husbands, you know, the very super sort of husbands, write, uh, once a week. I have occasionally come across extraordinary men who write every day. Very needy angels, I reckon. You say I shouldn't bother old fellow writing home to your wife. Aren't you, aren't you doing the business for her? I mean, get on with the business. Aren't you earning her a new coat? Well, don't bother to write and tell her anything about that. Just get on with the business. Ah, but love won't have it that way. Affection won't have it that way. He could write the whole six months, but if he never wrote, and maybe he only said that cold weather today and we had cabbage for dinner, whatever folks say. Uh, but you see, is it not the gesture? You say, but never mind, old man, even if you don't write, you said I will once. You don't have to keep on saying it. Don't you have to keep on saying it? And the Lord said, yes, I know your mind. I should like you to come, please, and reaffirm it to me. Shall we say, Lord, but I'm too busy getting on with your work, shall we? Or shall we not see that the Lord wants it and values it, though he never requested that we do it. If you walk around the walls of the city of Chester, they will show you into a little museum of a place on the walls, and inside there a table, and on the table a ball painted in dark browns and blues, a smudge of meaningless color, it looks. And then the keeper will come and bring a brightly polished tankard and set it down on the ball. And as he does so, tell you to look in the side of the tankard, and there reflected in the tankard are these colors. Ah, but now reflected in the curve of that tankard, they are no longer a meaningless shamble of colors. There grows a face. And the face was the face of the exiled king. His loyal followers in a country that was against their king gathered to think about him and plot for him. And as they drank their cup, they put it on the board. The colors meant nothing to the world outside, but to those who know where to look, they saw the very face of the king himself. And the world thinks it's a cheap thing, my brother, they see nothing in that bread and wine. But oh, can you not see as you take that cup and take that ordinary breath, can you not on time see the very face of your absent king? Someone will say this is all very good, but this is, uh, somewhat remote, isn't it? Uh, devotional may be, but, uh, ought we not to have something practical, practical? Indeed, we ought to have something practical, and a tremendously practical emphasis in our Christian life. Not good merely to dwell upon our blessings in Christ without seeing our responsibilities. Now, should we wish to find a place where Christianity blossoms in all its practical implications, we said there certainly should find no place out better than the Lord's Supper. For when it comes to the practical advancement of Christianity in my life, the real strivings of God's Holy Spirit to make me into a holy man, there is a place where God's Spirit has calculated to do it supremely above all, and that is the Lord Saba. So Paul writes to the Corinthian church, now alas, in a quagmire of misbehavior, and calls their attention to the Lord's Supper and says, brethren, you must take this supper seriously, you know. The Lord instituted it on the night in which he was betrayed. Ah, ugly word, that any could betray the Lord. When we think of his lordship, yes, says Paul, I want to talk to you about his lordship, for I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you. How that the Lord Jesus, in the night when he was betrayed, took bread. Brethren, he says, if you were to take that supper unworthily, you would be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. For this is the Lord's supper. We have not merely a savior, but we have a divine Lord, and he has put the seal of his lordship on the command that we break bread and drink wine in memory of him.