This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We're looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 11 together this week. This is day four.
I think this might be my favorite day because we get to look at the passage on
the Lord's Supper.

I love this passage because it talks about this holy moment that we have
together as a church. Paul is talking about worship and what keeps worship
healthy. In the next two days, we're going to see that the way that we take the
Lord's Supper can both show how healthy we are in our worship, but can also show
how unhealthy we can become in our worship.

Today, he focuses on the healthy side. He says this in verses 23 to 25, "For I
received from the Lord what I passed on to you. The Lord Jesus on the night he
was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,
'This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. ' In the same way, after supper, he took the cup,
saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it
in remembrance of me.

'" There's many things that I love about these verses. At the very beginning,
Paul says, "I received from the Lord what I passed on to you. " There's
something miraculous there.

Think about this with me. Paul was not with the other apostles when they took
the first Lord's Supper in the upper room. He was still a Pharisee.

He hadn't become a Christian yet. But on that Damascus road, he met Jesus. And
then he goes out into the desert, and he's taught by Jesus.

Jesus appears to him. He speaks to him. And in one of those meetings, Jesus says
to Paul, "I want to tell you about this supper that I want my church to take.

I want to teach you about it, because not only do I want the other apostles to
be teaching about it all over, but I want you to have a personal experience with
me. " So from the Lord, from Jesus, Paul hears, "Here's what you do when you
take the Lord's Supper. " And he talks about what happened.

What a moment that must have been with Paul and Jesus, whoever else might have
been there. And out of that, Paul is passing on this teaching to us, to the
church, an exhortation and encouragement about the Lord's Supper. The truth of
the matter is, when you think of that supper and think of what happened with the
apostles, the first of those who were in the upper room and they took the first
supper with Jesus, or you think about what happened with Paul as Paul sat with
Jesus and learned about the Lord's Supper.

The same thing happens with you. We are just as relationally connected. And as
we hear this passed along to us, it's as if it was from Jesus just to us.

We're relationally connected not only in the teaching about the Lord's Supper,
but also in the meaning of the Lord's Supper. The meaning has to do with the
cross. You know that old song, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

" The truth is, you were there when Jesus was crucified, because it was my sins,
it was your sins that He died for on that cross. In a spiritual sense, every one
of us was present at the cross when Jesus was dying for every one of us. And
that's hard for us to picture.

I was there. Jesus gave us a celebration to help us to picture that. Both the
importance and the personal nature of the cross is called the Lord's Supper.

And in that Lord's Supper, very simply Jesus said, "I want you to take this
bread, I want you to eat it, it's my body, and you do this in remembrance of me.
I want you to take this cup, I want you to drink it, it's my blood, you do this
in remembrance of me. " It's a symbol, it's a picture of what Jesus did for us.

It's a symbol of the body of the Lord. This is my body, which is for you, He
said. Jesus gave Himself.

Crucifixion was a cruelly devised torture for the body. It combined elements of
exhaustion and exposure and humiliation and pain and suffocation to bring about
a slow death. And Jesus gave Himself on the cross.

He gave His body. Why His body? Why so physical a death for our spiritual
freedom?

Jesus met you at the point of your need. Sin occurs in my physical body. And
Jesus dealt with the problem at its source.

Now I understand that the truth of sin is that I think of the sin first in my
mind. First I'm tempted. And then I decide I want to do it, but I act it out
with this physical body.

And so Jesus, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thought of the cross in
their minds, intended to go to the cross in their minds, and then worked it out
in their physical body, in Jesus' physical body. The body of the Lord given for
you. And then the blood of the Lord given for you.

This cup, Jesus said, is a new covenant in my blood. If you read about the blood
of Jesus in the New Testament, we find out it is our propitiation in Romans 3,
it's our justification in Romans 5, it's our redemption in Ephesians 1. We've
been brought near by the blood of Christ in Ephesians 2, it's our peace in
Colossians 1, it's our forgiveness in Hebrews chapter 9.

It is our promise. It's the new covenant, the new promise in the blood of Jesus
Christ. The blood that Jesus shed on the cross is the sealed promise of God's
love, God's forgiveness, of God's life for every one of us.

That's what's happening. When I'm in a church and the Lord's Supper is being
taken, there's always a hush. You've felt it.

You know what I'm talking about. It comes over the church because we sense the
importance of the cross and what it means. Individually we're experiencing
something, but more is happening than that, Paul says.

It's not just an individual experience. The reason we take the Lord's Supper
together is because it is a worship experience. Jesus said, "When you do this,
do this in remembrance of me," talking to them together.

Jesus passes along to Paul, "I want the people in the church to do this
together. " Why? Because together we are proclaiming, we are remembering what
Jesus did for us.

Paul brings out doubt in verse 26. Verse 26 he says, "For whenever you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. " To me
verse 26 is the exclamation point in this passage.

It tells us exactly the why behind the Lord's Supper. It's an exclamation of
affirmation and expectation. There's an affirmation in this and there's an
expectation in this.

The affirmation looks to the past. The expectation looks to the future. The
affirmation is you proclaim the Lord's death.

When you eat the bread, when you drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death.
That's why we do it together. We are proclaiming something.

You look back and you proclaim the meaning of the cross. Now if you've done a
little study of the New Testament, you know that the word proclaim and the word
preach is the same word. We're actually preaching a sermon to each other when we
take the Lord's Supper.

There's something about that moment we are proclaiming the importance of the
cross in our lives. If you're like me, you can rush through life and get caught
up in this, caught up in that, caught up in this new thing that has to happen,
this schedule that has to be kept, this need that's in a person's life. And
forget the most important thing, most important moment in your life.

The death and resurrection of Jesus. Those two moments actually that changed
everything for all eternity. And when we take the Lord's Supper, we're saying to
each other, don't forget it.

Don't forget what's most important in your life. You proclaim the Lord's death.
But then this passage ends and says until he comes.

That's the expectation. It's affirmation, but it's also expectation. The Lord's
Supper not only looks at the past, but it also looks at the future.

The Lord's Supper not only looks at Jesus's first coming and what he did for us
on the cross, it also looks at his second coming and the fact that he's going to
come again. Each time that we eat the Lord's Supper, there should be this sense
of expectation, a looking forward to the day when we celebrate at the banquet
table of our King, of our Lord. Now as we end today, I want to end just in a
holy moment between you and the Lord, remembering what he did for you and
focusing on what the meaning of the Lord's Supper is so that the next time you
take it in church or with your small group, your heart will burst with joy at
what he did for you, Jesus.

Right now, together, as we pray, we remember, remember your body given for us.
Thank you. Thank you that you stretched out your hands, allowed them to be
nailed to a cross.

You offered up your feet, allowed them to be nailed to a cross and you stayed
and you gave and you died. Thank you that you gave your body for me and thank
you that you shed your blood for me. Through the piercing of your hands and your
feet and then also the piercing of your side, that blood that flowed down as a
sign of the promise that you have for my life, Jesus, I need life and you poured
out your life, you gave your life so that I could have life.

Thank you for that life. Thank you for the promise of life in you, Jesus. I turn
to you right now and I ask that not only in this moment, but the next time and
each time I take that supper, that Jesus, my mind, my heart would be on who you
are, what you did, how great your love is for me.

In your name, I pray. Amen.