Matthew 26:26-29
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to the gospel of Matthew. Our reading will be Matthew chapter
26 verses 26 through 29. We last week began a little series
on the means of grace or the ways, the ways or the means by
which God communicates his grace to us. Some of you this morning
were in the Sunday school class on assurance of salvation. And
in chapter 18 of our confession of faith, as well as in the Westminster,
shorter catechism and larger catechism, we are reminded that
in this life, our assurance of salvation may go up or down. It may increase or decrease,
and it may altogether disappear depending on our sinfulness.
depending on our attention to the means of grace, depending
on our attention to growing in the Lord. And so one of the encouragements
I hope that we’ll find out of this series as we study preaching,
as we study the Lord’s Supper, as we look at baptism, as we
consider prayer and Christian fellowship, as we look at the
subject of suffering and how God uses that in our lives, and
other things such as private and family worship, public worship,
the Sabbath day, we ought to take encouragement to meet the
Lord in his house each Sunday, to come to the divinely appointed
times where God says, I will give you my grace. The Puritans
have always called and referred to Sunday as the market day of
the soul, where we come and we gather the stores from the market
of his grace. And we live out of those stores
for a week until we return again. Let us consider God’s word together. Matthew chapter 26, beginning
at verse 26. This is speaking of Jesus and
his disciples, the 12. It says, now, as they were eating,
Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the
disciples. And he said, take, eat. This
is my body. And he took a cup and when he
had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it,
all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured
out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not
drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when
I drink it new with you in my father’s kingdom. Pray with me.
Our Lord, give us eyes to see, give us ears to hear, give us
hearts tender to your wonderful words. Give us hands and feet
ready to go and serve you. Lord, this is your word. It is
divine revelation. It is scripture. It is thus saith
the Lord. And so we ask, oh Father, that
you would give us Give us attention. Give us the ability to have attention
so that we can receive from you this day. We ask for your help
and grace in this and we pray it in Jesus name. Amen. 5000
years ago. Our Lord appeared to a man named
Abraham in the Ur of the Chaldeans. Abraham was a pagan. He worshiped
other gods. He lived in a foreign land. He
had customs and practices that were not of Yahweh. God came to him and promised
Abraham, if he moved to a foreign country, if he established himself
in the land of Canaan, that God would make an everlasting covenant
with him. that God would be his God and
his people would be God’s people. God made a promise that his offspring
would outnumber the stars in the heavens and the sand on the
seashore. After Abraham, we read of Isaac
and of Jacob and of Joseph. And we remember the story of
Joseph as he landed in Egypt after his brothers sold him to
the Midianites into slavery. and how he rose up in the ranks
of the king’s house. He spent time in the Egyptian
prison, but God had raised him up for such a time as the famine. And as the people of God suffered
in Canaan, they came to Egypt and they were blessed by the
wisdom of Joseph as he stored up food in the granaries of Egypt.
And we read in the beginning of the book of Exodus about how
the Israelites increased in number. You can hear an echo, a ring
in your ears from when Abraham in chapter 15 of Genesis was
promised that your offspring would outnumber the sand of the
seashore and the stars of the heaven. The people increased
in numbers and a Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph or Israel. And he commanded that the midwives
of Egypt, whenever a Hebrew woman was giving birth, that they would
put to death any male born. Midwives feared God. They did
not do as Pharaoh had commanded. And God dealt well with these
midwives. And we’re told in the book of
Exodus that the people of Israel multiplied. They became strong
and God gave them families. We see the unfolding of the covenant
blessings of Almighty God. Well, Pharaoh was not to be outdone
by Yahweh. And he said that all males should
be thrown into the Nile River. If the Hebrew women are strong,
as these midwives said, and they give birth too quickly, then
we’ll just take these baby boys and we’ll toss them into the
Nile. But the people of Israel became
too many and too mighty. And so Pharaoh and his wicked
leaders oppressed Israel. And that cry of the Israelites
rose up to the ears of God. And one day is Moses, an 80 year
old man was tending his flock. He had before him the appearance
of Yahweh in a burning bush. And God at that point in time
raised up a deliverer to deliver his people out of Egypt, out
of the house of slavery, out of bondage, out from under these
wicked and ruthless taskmasters. And he would give them exodus
out of Egypt. And during this period of time
when the Israelites were preparing to leave, when they were preparing
to go up out of Egypt and into the wilderness and eventually
into the promised land of Canaan. During this period of time when
Moses and Aaron were going to Pharaoh and pleading with him
to let the people of God go and threatening plagues one and two
and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and nine,
the locust and the frogs and the river turning into blood
and the back and forth between Yahweh and the magicians of Israel. Well, finally, plague number
10 is threatened. And in preparation for the Passover,
in preparation for the destroyer, as the book of Hebrews calls
God himself, God, through Moses, instituted the Passover observance. Take a lamb. A spotless lamb,
one without blemish, and you shall keep it in your house 14
days and at twilight you shall kill it. You shall eat it along
with unleavened bread, bread made in haste and with bitter
herbs. You shall eat this meal with
your belt fastened, your sandals strapped, the staff in your hand,
and you shall eat this meal in haste. And this night, God warned
Israel, I will pass through the land and I, the destroyer, I,
Yahweh, will strike. I will strike every firstborn
son, every firstborn male. And the word of God tells us
that there was not a house in Egypt where someone did not die. But not so the Israelites, for
they took hyssop and dipped it in the blood that was sacrificed
with this lamb. And they took that blood and
they painted the doorpost of their houses. They painted the
lintel, the top bar, and they were then passed over by the
destroyer, by God himself. The Pharaoh of Egypt, after backing
out of his promise to let the people go, when the firstborn
of Egypt, in the great cry of distress, went through the land,
he tells Moses and Aaron, take your flocks, take your herds
and be gone and bless me also. There was utter confusion in
Egypt. There was rage, there was indecision. We know that
the Israelites eventually pursued Israel But the word of God tells
us in Exodus that it had been exactly 430 years. As God promised in Genesis chapter
15 to Abraham, your people, your offspring will suffer oppression
430 years and I will bring them out. There will be an Exodus,
there will be a deliverance. And that very day, Not a day
before, not a day after, not a hundred years difference. That
very day, the word of God tells us Israel came out of Egypt with
great possessions. You remember that God told the
people of Egypt, ask your neighbors for their silver and for their
gold. And the people willingly out of fear for God gave the
people of Israel their riches. And so that very day, the people
of God came out of Egypt. Fast forward about 1500 years. Jesus and his disciples have
entered Jerusalem for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. They’re
there to observe the Passover. And of course, Jesus knows it’s
his appointed time of death. The Son of Man and his time have
come. And he tells his disciples. go
into the city and a certain man will be there and tell him that
it is the appointed time for the son of man. And we must keep
Passover at your house. And they went and found this
man. And as it was said by Christ, the Passover was prepared and
they kept the night of watching the night of remembrance when
they remembered Israel and Egypt. They remembered the oppression,
the making bricks, the making of bricks without straw. They
remember the whips upon the backs from the taskmasters. They remembered
all of the oppression of Israel in Egypt, and they kept this
night of watching. And Jesus, as he ate with his
12 disciples, one who would betray him and flee into the night,
not too many moments later, Jesus ate this meal. And as they were
eating the feast, as they were keeping the Passover, as they
were observing this night of watching, Jesus took bread and
he gave it to his disciples. And he said, take and eat. This
is my body. And he took a cup. And he gave
thanks and he said, drink of it, all of you, for this is my
blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the
forgiveness of sins. Do you see what is taking place
in this upper room? And do you see some 2000 years
later, what we are participating monthly in our worship services?
Jesus has taken the Passover. Jesus has taken the most ancient
festival, the most important festival of the people of Israel,
and he has taken the Passover and made what the Apostle Paul
calls the Lord’s Supper. He has taken the Passover and
turned it into what we sometimes call communion. We call it communion
because of the word koinonia, which is our fellowship word
or our participation word. He’s taken the Passover and in
some traditions we call it the Eucharist, the word meaning to
give thanks. He took bread. And he gave thanks
and he gave it. He took the cup, he gave thanks
and he gave it. And so Jesus took this ancient
rite, this ancient feast, the Passover, and gave us the Lord’s
Supper, communion, the Eucharist. He takes the oldest festival
of the people of God and he says, this is a shadow. This is a thing
of the past. This is a relic. It is extinct
and it is expired because tomorrow Christ will become the Passover
lamb. Christ would take the place of
the thousands, even millions of lambs that for year after
year after year were slaughtered family by family, house by house. You see, the Passover led up
to the cross. It pointed to the cross. The
Lord’s Supper looks back. One event, one festival, one
feast was bloody. It was a difficult feast, and
now we come to one that is neat. And Jesus says, you keep this
feast for as often as you eat this bread and drink from this
cup, you proclaim my death until I come again. You keep the feast. Now, if you were going to set
up a memorial activity, if you were going to set up a family
tradition, that would be a reminder. that would give assurance, that
would give comfort, that would nourish and strengthen and get
your people all the way to heaven in the midst of this crazy, dark,
decaying and dying world. Would you take a little wafer
of bread and a little thimble full of the fruit of the vine
and say, eat this often in remembrance of me? We probably wouldn’t. But Jesus did. And so before
us, we have the Passover turning into the Lord’s Supper. And I
want us to think very quickly about three things about this
wonderful thing Christ has done before our eyes. The first thing
I want us to consider about the Lord’s Supper is that it is a
sacrament. The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament.
We have this funny little book that was written about 100 years
ago. It gets passed around our house. We were hunting for it
last night and couldn’t find it. But it’s a little book that
was written by a little girl, a little girl’s perspective on
life. It’s called Oyee Jigs and Juleps. Now she was from Kentucky
and maybe some of you yesterday watched the running of the Kentucky
Derby and you know, their fancy drinks are a part of the big
day. But she writes in her little book about sacraments and she
says, sacraments are something that you do in church. Now, this
little girl is Episcopalian, so she talks about sacraments.
Sacraments is coming in and the preacher patting you on the head.
The sacraments are you getting born and baptized and being made
a child of God. Sacraments are you coming back
in the church at age 12 with the prayer book that your grandma
bought you. The priest pats you on the head, says a few wonderful
words, and you’re all of a sudden Episcopal. And from her perspective,
sacraments are something you do in church. Friends, it’s so
much more than that. And this is what I want you to
hear today. This is what I want you to leave with today, that
God, through Jesus Christ, has instituted sacraments in his
church. Next week, we’ll look at the second one of the church,
which is baptism. But today, we look at the Lord’s
Supper. And Jesus has given us sacraments for our own good.
These are not the crown jewels of the church where on special
Sundays we do this weird thing where we pass out wafers and
grape juice. This isn’t some weird thing that
really has no meaning, but we do it because we’ve always done
it. No, this is a real meal. It is a sacrament where God,
through the sign of bread, God, through the sign of a cup of
the fruit of the vine, reminds you of his death. And he seals
his promises in your heart. The sacrament contains signs,
outward things, and it contains seals, inward things. Today you
will touch bread, you will touch a cup, but you will feel something
inside you. And as Reformed believers, we
believe that Christ comes to us and in a real and special
and present and mysterious and even unexplainable way, as you
eat this bread, as you drink this cup, as you touch it, as
you taste it, as you smell it, as it goes into your body, Christ
spiritually communes with you in a special way. It’s a sacrament. It’s a sign. It’s a sign in the
bread and wine of Jesus’ atonement, his death, his substitution in
your place, his sacrifice, his propitiation, his standing in
your place for your sins. I don’t know of any other thing
in this world that can awaken a Christian other than to sit
in church and remember that Christ died for your sins. And I don’t mean your sins collectively.
I mean yours, yours, yours individually. Name your own name and say Christ
died for me. I don’t know of any other wonderful
truth that we get to proclaim Sunday after Sunday than that. And with the bread and with the
wine, Christ is reminding us, I stood in your place. I took
your sins. I gave you my obedience. I took
the wrath and curse of God. As you drink this cup, you remember
that I drank a cup that you could not stand to drink. That was
the cup of God’s wrath. It’s a sign. Some of you are
wearing wedding rings today. Many of you who are wearing wedding
rings remember the day you were married. You remember the special
event that it was. You remember the commitments
you made. And the ring that you wear on your finger is a reminder.
It’s a sign. It’s a sign of a reality that
you are married. The ring does not make you married.
You take it off, you’re still married. And if you’re like me,
you have white skin under yours and it never goes away. But it’s
a sign of a reality. And the bread and the wine are
that way. But it’s also a seal. Jesus is saying to you, my crucified
body, was beaten, it bled, it suffered and it died for you. My blood was poured out for you. It’s a sacrament. Second thing
we consider is that it’s part of worship. There’s a proper
context for everything in the Bible. There’s a proper context
for understanding stories and proverbs and wisdom and events
of the Bible. But friends, there are also proper
context for doing the things that we are supposed to do in
our relationship, in our service to almighty God. And most of
our acts of worship Apart from our daily living and our private
devotions and our family worship, most of our acts of worship are
to be done together in the Lord’s house on the Lord’s day. We gather
Lord’s day after Lord’s day to worship God, to receive word
and to receive sacrament. Some of you have probably been
maybe in a Greek Orthodox church. And there’s some other traditions
that may do this. And our baptismal font that stays back here is
very often at the front door. In most churches, you only walk
in that one way. And as you walk by the baptismal
font, you may touch it. You may look at it. And you remember,
at least in that church context, it is through the waters of baptism
that I have entered the church. Sometimes we think too little
of sacraments. Sometimes we think too little of worship. But what
in fact is the title of a pastor? If you read our form of government,
if you read our Presbyterian theology, he is a minister of
word and sacrament. And so worship is the highlight
of our week. Word and sacrament is the highlight
of our activity. We come to church every week
for a divine dialogue. Our Lord greets us. Grace to
you and peace. He calls us to worship. Oh, come,
let us worship and bow down. We sing a hymn of adoration.
We recite our creeds. We sing glory be to the Father
and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was way back then.
It is now and ever shall be and it will be until eternity forever.
And then we confess our sins. God assures us of our pardon.
We sing of the redemption. We hear the word of God read.
We pray together. We hear the word of God sung.
We read the word, we preach the word, we sing a hymn of response
to almighty God. And then he gives us his benediction
and says, go into the world with my blessing and serve me. And the Lord’s Supper is part
of that. For us, it is monthly. We keep this ceremony, we keep
this feast together as the body of Christ in unity, because Jesus
says, drink of it all. of you. And so it’s a sacrament. It’s to be done in the context
of worship. It’s one last thing I want us
to think about. This third point simply is this.
Come to the table. Come to the table. When I was
a elementary school student at Burlington Christian Academy,
the school back in those days was only in the church building.
And we did a lot of things in the sanctuary. And as we sat
on the front rows of the sanctuary, very often we looked right at
the front of the communion table. And on the front of that communion
table, it said, this do in remembrance of me. And I want to encourage
you in this way today. Jesus in his gospels, Jesus with
his disciples, Jesus in the context of taking the Lord’s Passover
and turning it into the Lord’s Supper. He doesn’t issue an invitation. He doesn’t say when you’re feeling
weak, come to the table. If you’re in need of a midnight
spiritual snack, you just find your way into the cupboard or
into the freezer or into the refrigerator. Like some of us
do at night. He issues an imperative, this
do in remembrance of me, take, eat, take, drink. Friends, these are imperatives.
These are not suggestions. These are not three little ways
that you can grow in grace as a Christian. These are divine
imperatives from Christ himself, because he in the human nature
had just suffered and was about to suffer even more. And he knows
exactly what we need as Christians who live life in this world and
who live under the weight and the circumstances of a sin-filled
and cursed world. And so Jesus implores us. He commands us to come, to take,
to eat and to drink. And we fence the table. Right? We invite, but we also
exclude. When we come to the table, we
invite those who have faith in Jesus. We invite those who’ve
been baptized. We invite those who’ve made a public profession
of faith and are united to an evangelical church. But we also
exclude. We say things like this. If you
are an unbeliever, let the elements pass you by. If you are living
in unrepentant sin, let the elements pass you by. If you have aught
against a brother, let the elements pass you by. If you are under
the discipline of the church, let the elements pass you by. But if you love the Lord Jesus
and you have faith that he has died and paid for your sins and
you desire to live an obedient life with his help and you come. You see, there’s a solemnity
to the table. There’s a approach to the table that we just don’t
come and say, hey, I’m here. It’s time to eat. Serve it up.
No, we come ready. We come prepared. We’ve thought
about it in our minds. We pondered it in our hearts. We know ourselves. We know our
sin. We’ve examined ourselves. We’ve repented of our sins. Our
faith in Jesus is strong. We discern that this is bread
and this is wine, that these are signs of a greater spiritual
reality. We come with a proper attitude,
with a love for God and a love for the brethren in the church.
We come. We come because our lips are
parched. We come because we are thirsty.
We come because our belly is empty and our stomach is spiritually
growling. And we say, I need to feed on
Christ. Now, some of you. Some of you find yourselves in
a position where you say, I’m unworthy. Some of you come and
you are in despair of your sin, you accuse yourself of your own
unrighteousness. And dare I say, some of you overthink
it. Some of you are so introspective that you say there is no way
possible that I am worthy to come to this table. And let me
encourage you that if you see yourself as a sinner. If you
know that the only way into salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ,
believing that he took your sins to himself on the cross and that
he bore your sins in his body on the tree, that he who knew
no sin became sin for you, that you might become the righteousness
of Christ, then you are worthy to come to this table, no matter
how you feel. And let me encourage you in this
way. If you feel unworthy, you remember that Christ has made
you worthy. And if you are feeling despair,
Christ in this meal will lift you up to heaven. And if you
are feeling accused of your sin, particularly that sin that so
besets you and easily falls and takes you away, you remember
that you and Christ are justified. All your past and present and
future sins are paid for. You see, God’s grace is for sinners. God’s grace is for the weak.
God’s grace is for the feeble and the defective. And let me
challenge you in this way, and I don’t mean to be upsetting
to anyone. I just mean to challenge you
and encourage you. You come up. With a just reason. Why you should let the elements
pass you by. Other than you just don’t believe in Jesus. I dare
you, trust Jesus and feed on him by faith. For Jesus says,
come, he says, come to the table and eat. And he promises to come
and to be with you. Pray with me. Our Lord and God,
we pray that you would in your wounds. Help us to find safety
in your stripes, our cure, in your pain, our peace, in your
cross, our victory, in your resurrection, our triumph. And that a crown
of righteousness in the glories of your eternal kingdom would
be ours. Lord, make this your word, make
this your sacrament, an effectual means today to build us up in
our faith, to comfort us in our salvation, to assure us of your
everlasting love, to remind us that you have wiped away our
sins. And yes, to remind us that life is not over. There is more
to come, more days, more struggle, more hardship, more suffering,
more sin, more weakness, more falling, more getting back up,
more desiring to do what is right, but failing to do that thing.
But remind us in this meal that you know that, and that you want
to be a comfort to us, and that you want to help us land safely
on Canaan’s shore with all the riches of glory ready for us. Help us in this. We do pray in
Jesus name. Amen. Let us stand together and
sing as we prepare for communion with Alasin did my savior bleed
number 208.