[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints, we gather tonight on the anniversary of the institution of the Lord’s Supper,
not just to remember what our Lord did those hundreds of years ago, but also to receive
the same gift that he put in place, the body and the blood, for our life and salvation
and the forgiveness of all of our sins.
I want to start with a few questions about what it is, the Lord’s Supper.
What is it that we come to week after week when we come to the altar and we come to this
sacred and holy meal?
I remember one time a few years back I was on a podcast with a Calvinist guy in Florida.
We were arguing about something, I can’t remember what, and it was at the end of the interview
and the Lord’s Supper came up and he said,
oh Brian, I never can understand the Lutheran view
of the Lord’s Supper.
I’ve gotta have you on so we can spend another hour
talking about it.
And I told him, we don’t need an hour.
I can explain it to you in 30 seconds.
And he laughed at me like you were laughing there.
He says, all right, try.
I said, well it goes like this.
Jesus says, this is my body.
And we say, okay.
And then Jesus says, this is my blood, poured out for you for the forgiveness of all of your sins.
And we say, okay. It’s just that simple.
What is it that we come to at the altar?
It is just what the Lord Jesus says.
It is His body, and it is His blood,
which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of all of your sins.
How can that be?
I don’t know.
But if the Lord says it, that’s enough.
In fact, sometimes the catechumens ask the question,
well, when is it?
Because we put bread on the altar,
and we put wine on the altar,
and then when we get there,
we’re taking the body and blood.
When does it become the body and the blood?
Even that we don’t know,
but here’s as close as I think we can get.
When those words are spoken,
When I’m celebrating, or Pastor LeBlanc, or in a few weeks when Pastor Davis is celebrating
the Lord’s Supper, when those words are spoken, this is my body, they’re true.
The body and the blood are there.
In fact, there was an old controversy during the Reformation because it was called the Crypto-Calvinistic
Controversy because there were some who were pretending like they were Lutheran, but they
had a more Reformed idea of the Lord’s Supper.
They had the idea that Jesus was truly present, but He was spiritually present, and we communed
with Him by faith, and so the Lutherans thought of a question to sort out the difference.
The question, it’s kind of, this is one of those fun ones, it has a Latin name, it’s
called the manducatio indignorum, the eating of the indignant, but the question was this.
Because when an unbeliever comes to the altar and they come to communion, what do they eat?
If they don’t believe that Jesus is present, if they don’t even believe in Jesus at all,
what do they eat?
And the Calvinists said, well, they just get bread and wine.
But the Lutherans said, no, no, it is the body and it is the blood that your mouth tonight
and every time you come to the supper takes into it on your lips the true body of Jesus
and His true blood given and shed for you. This is His New Testament.
I got an email this morning. Someone was asking me, Pastor, why don’t Christians live according
to the law of Moses? Why don’t we keep the Torah? Why don’t we have the sacrifices like
they had in the Old Testament, or the food laws, or the clothing laws, or the worship
laws, all that that they had in the Old Testament, why don’t we keep all of those old laws?
And I was thinking about how to answer that question, there’s a lot of different ways
to get at it, but I think the simplest answer is this, when our Lord Jesus Christ on the
night when He betrayed took bread and gave it to them saying, take and eat, and then
with the blood take and drink, this is the New Testament.
When Jesus says those words, New Testament, He makes the Old Covenant, the Old Testament
old. Obsolete, it says in Hebrews. It’s finished. It’s accomplished the purpose
for which the Lord put it in place, and now we are part of the New Testament,
established not on Mount Sinai or in Egypt before the Passover. We are part of
the Testament established in the upper room in Jerusalem on the eve of the
Lord’s crucifixion, the church that gathers around baptism and the body and
blood even as the Lord instituted it. And it’s an amazing thing for us to consider
how all those years ago the Lord Jesus was even thinking past the cross,
thinking to you and I, and thinking of how he can give us his mercy and kindness
and the assurance of his love for us and the forgiveness of all of our sins and
And so he puts this meal in place, the body and the blood, for the forgiveness of sins.
Now there are two things that happen when we come to the Lord’s Supper, and it’s
just good for us to review this.
The first thing is that we come to confess.
We come to declare the Lord’s death and resurrection until He comes.
Coming to the Lord’s Supper is an act of witness.
When you come to the altar, you are saying that the things that are confessed in this
place are the things that I confess.
The things that are believed and taught in this place are the things that I believe and
teach.
You proclaim, says St. Paul, his death when you eat and drink the bread and the wine when
when you come to the supper.
Now we don’t think much about this,
but I think we should, it’s hard for us,
especially because, well, our lives are just much different
than they were in the ancient world.
But can I tell you how this truth
really kind of pressed home to me?
I remember when we were visiting some ancient ruins
in some ancient town, and we realized
how close the people lived to one another.
People didn’t have garages back in those days,
or really even backyards. Everybody lived in an apartment complex. You had public
toilets, public kitchens, you knew your neighbor’s business, and you knew when
your neighbor was not going with you to the Zeus altar but was instead going to
the altar of this God-man Jesus. When the Christians were gathered together to
take the Lord’s Supper, they were standing apart from all the rest of the world, and
they were saying, this is my confession.
This is my doctrine.
This is my teaching.
And so whenever you leave your home and drive down here to come to this table, you are making
that same confession.
You’re preaching to the world that you belong to the name of Jesus.
But more importantly than that horizontal reality of the supper, there’s a vertical
reality of the supper.
And this is the most important, that the Lord Jesus Himself comes to us, He comes to you
to give you his promises, to give you his life,
to give you in the pledge of his body and blood
the assurance that he is not mad at you.
Can you think of it in this way?
Here the devil is busy trying to press into your ear
and into your conscience the idea that the Lord is angry
and the Lord Jesus says it just can’t be.
When He comes this close to us, when He puts His own body on your lips, and when He pours
His own blood into your mouth, He’s saying, there is now no room for the devil to come
and accuse, to come and condemn, to come and threaten.
You belong to Him.
So, so much does the Lord Jesus want you to know that your sins are forgiven, that He
gives you His body and blood as a pledge of it and a down payment.
It’s not just that when we come to the supper we preach, but that the Lord’s blood already
preaches.
And there’s one more mystery that I want us to think about, it will take a little bit
of work, and I maybe should have done this at the beginning, but it’s okay, we can
do it now.
If you look at the epistle lesson on Hebrews 9, it’s in your bulletin on page 5.
This text takes a little bit of work, but it’s pretty amazing because it’s not just
that when we come to the supper that we are proclaiming our own faith in the Lord Jesus,
but that His blood is also preaching.
And here’s the reality that the epistle of Hebrews wants us to know, is that before the
blood preaches tonight here on the altar, it first preaches in heaven.
Here’s the background.
You remember in the Old Testament the Lord instituted the Day of Atonement, the day when
the high priest would sacrifice a bull for his own sins and then he would carry the blood
of that bull into the Holy of Holies and he’d pour the blood of the bull on the corners
of the mercy seat, the golden seat that sat on the top of the Ark of the Covenant, and
And then He would go back out and sacrifice the blood of a goat for the sins of the people,
and He would carry that blood back into the Holy of Holies, and He would put that blood
on the mercy seat.
And the picture, which is there, which is stunning and beautiful, is that the Ten Commandments,
which are close to the Lord, that’s what He’s sitting on, that the Ten Commandments
are covered over.
Remember that the testimony of the law is washed away by the blood of the sacrifice.
That’s what that’s preaching, that day of atonement.
But when Jesus dies, he does something even more incredible.
He fulfills that picture.
He takes his blood, and he does not carry his blood into the holy of holies in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, Jesus carries His blood into the true holy of holies, into the tabernacle
not made with hands, into the heavenly throne room of God, and there He presents His blood
before God the Father as the testimony, as the witness, as the evidence of your innocence.
Look at how it says it here, Hebrews 9, when Christ appeared as High Priest to the good
things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, that’s the heavenly
tent, the one not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for
all into the holy place, not by the means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means
of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
If you can think of it this way, your sins stand before God.
Your sins and all your breaking of the law rises up to heaven to declare your guilt and
your deserving of His condemnation.
But Jesus now enters into that place, into that throne room, and He brings evidence of
your innocence, not of your works, not of your efforts, not of your whatever.
However, He brings into that place the evidence of His sacrifice, even His own blood.
And He presents that blood to God the Father who receives it and declares you to be innocent,
to be holy, to be without spot, to be righteous and acceptable to stand before Him forever.
Word, so that the blood of Jesus is the evidence of your salvation in heaven.
His blood preaches there and wins for you.
Not vengeance, but mercy.
Not justice, but peace.
And then, Jesus says, that same blood, the same blood that prevails, the same blood that
wins this eternal life, Jesus says, now I want you to taste it. I want you to drink
it on earth. I want you to have it on your lips so that you would know without a
doubt, without a question, without any wondering, that Jesus loves you and that
his death is your life. So, moment after moment, your own flesh puts your guilt before you,
and the devil accuses your conscience. He says, how could you possibly think that you’re
a Christian and to be saved? And your answer? I’ve taken into my mouth the body of Jesus.
on my lips report his blood. How can he who has lived and died and given me such
a treasure ever forsake me? He cannot. Dear Saints, he is yours and you are his.
Amen. The peace of God which passes all our understanding. Guard your hearts and
minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
