COMMUNION- ROUTINE? WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

When I was growing up, there was an expression that was used if you were kind of having a cranky day. And this is an older expression. I'm not sure if you'll remember it or not, but what would be said if you were having kind of a cranky day was you must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. Remember that one? You're getting a lot of blank stairs. Maybe that was just my family. You got up on the wrong side of the bed. And the idea was you didn't start your day in the routine way that you always did and so nothing has gone quite right since, right? I mean, everything's gone wrong. We do a lot of things in life just by routine, don't we? We don't have to think about them. We just do them automatically. Getting up, getting ready in the morning is one of those things. Probably if you were to think through what all you do to get ready in the morning to go face your day and your world, you might not be able to write it down. You just do it automatically, routinely. When you drive to work, there are just certain routines. You get in the car, you start it up. Put your seat belt on, you put it in drive and you go, you never think about those things. You just do them. And on your way to work, you drink your coffee and eat your biscuit and talk on the phone and shave and put on your makeup and all that kind of stuff, dude, that's just routine. You don't even think about those things. You just do them. You go to work and there are certain things that just happen routinely at work. Maybe you have a routine job that you do the same things over and over again. Nobody has to tell you to do them. Nobody has to explain how to do them. You could get to the end of the day and not even really remember what you've done. You just do things by routine. We all live at least to some degree, that kind of a life. The danger is when that routineness bleeds over into our walk with God. It bleeds over into what we do in the church and as an expression of our walk with Christ. I think there's no place that that's more dangerous than a communion service. It's very possible for us to come to a communion service and to very routinely go through the steps of taking the bread and the cup and not even remember why we're doing this or not think about it. It's on the church calendar every so often. It comes and it goes. We do this because it's just part of the routine of church life. Well, if that's the case with you or with me today, I want us to stop. Take a step back for a few moments and ask ourselves and force ourselves to answer the question, why are we doing this? Why communion? What does this really mean anyway? What is it all about? Why do we even do this? In 1 Corinthians chapter 11, please locate that if you would in your Bible, Paul gives us five reasons why we observe communion. We're going to look at them very briefly this morning before we partake of the elements. We want to set our hearts in the right context before we take communion this morning. We partake of communion first of all because communion is an act of obedience. An act of obedience. Look at verses, well, let's begin in verse 23, 1 Corinthians chapter 11. I received from the Lord what I also 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. Now, notice these next words. 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. Notice the next words. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. This is something that Jesus commanded. He said literally, do this. Now, there are not a lot of ceremonies that Jesus commanded for us to observe. Really, only two ceremonies that we are commanded to observe on a regular basis to remind us of what Jesus did for us on the cross. One of those is baptism, the other is communion. We're commanded to be baptized. That when we're a little bit more familiar with as a command, that one is often stressed to us when we come to know Christ is Savior. It is stressed that the Lord wants you to follow Him in believers baptism. It's a step of obedience. And we know that because Jesus commanded His disciples to go to disciple all nations, baptized Him in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then teach them to observe all things that He had commanded them. So that's a part of the great commissions, part of the command for the church. So we understand baptism as a command. Have you ever really thought of communion as something we are commanded to do? This is not a suggestion. This is not a nice little object lesson that we thought of somewhere down the line to kind of remember what Jesus did for us. This is something that was commanded by Jesus. He said, do this. So it's not optional. We are to observe communion. It's a command of Christ. I was encouraged this morning before the first service, and someone walked up to me and said, you know, I'm supposed to be in North Carolina at one o'clock. I usually come to the second service, and I didn't want to miss communion today. So I'm here at the early service so that I can partake of communion. And I know this person will have to know that they were not thinking this is going to save me. This is some kind of spiritual grace that comes down to make me a better person or anything like that. They were simply saying, this is important enough for me to make the effort, to be here, to go out of my normal routine because Jesus said, do this. Do this. We observe communion as an act of obedience. Secondly, we observe communion as an act of remembrance. We saw it in the two verses we just read. Jesus tells us the essence of these elements that we have are reminders. We do this as an act of remembrance. We took the bread, verse 23, verse 24, when you had given thanks, you broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Same way with the cut in verse 25, do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. Now we don't per take of communion to get to heaven. That there is no magical grace or blessing of God that comes through the juice and the tracker. They do not literally turn into the body and blood of Christ. Thus they do not literally communicate the grace of God to us. There is nothing magical about the elements. There is nothing spiritual about the elements themselves. What is significant about what we do is that we use these elements as an object lesson to remind us of what Jesus did for us on the cross. So we have a small piece of cracker, a small piece of bread. And with that small piece of bread, we remember that Jesus took a human body. And please remember this as you per take of the bread. Remember what that signifies. It signifies that Jesus gave his body. Jesus said, this represents my body. This is my body. Remember that Jesus took a body for the expressed purpose of laying it down as a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus had existed forever in heaven with the Father and the Holy Spirit in perfect communion for all of eternity in the past. And he expressly came down to this earth taking on a human body so that he might give himself as a sacrifice. Hebrews 10 makes it very clear where Jesus says, oh, a body has now prepared for me. I come willing to do thy will, oh God. The body coming into a human body was for one reason only and that was to be the sacrifice to lay that body down so that a death could be accomplished. God could have chosen to save us in any number of ways. He could have written it across the stars. And if we understood the message entrusted in our heart, we'd be immediately justified. He could have sent angels to announce it. He could have just given it in other ways. But the only way for us to be saved because the penalty for sin is death is for someone who is perfect and does not need to die for their own sin, for someone who is perfect like the Son of God to die in our place, to be our substitute. So Jesus had to have a body in order to die. So when you per take of the bread, think of the fact that Jesus gave his body, he came to this earth and took on a body for the express purpose of dying for us. Remember that. And then when you take of the juice, remember that Jesus says, this is the new covenant in my blood, the shedding of his blood, the literally pouring out of his life's blood in death indicates that he is establishing a new covenant. That is a kind of a legal representation of we being the people of God. It's like a will signifies what the desire of a person is when they die. And it was Jesus' desire by shedding his blood that we would become his people, that we would be his family. It was his desire that you be in his family, that you be in his family, that we all be in his family through faith and Christ. That's why he shed his blood to put that will, that testament as Hebrews calls it into effect. So remember that when you take the juice. We do this as an act of remembrance. We remember that Jesus took a body and gave that body as a sacrifice for us, died for us, and we remember that he shed his blood so that he might establish with us a covenant relationship as his people, that we might be in his family. So it's an act of obedience, it's an act of remembrance. Thirdly, it's an act of fellowship. Communion is an act of fellowship. And when we observe communion, we're expressing our fellowship, first of all, with one another. Now Paul doesn't stress that in chapter 11, but he does back in chapter 10. If you would have split back a page, chapter 10, verse 16, as he introduces the whole concept of the Lord's suffer, the communion service, he says in verse 16, is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks. A participation in the blood of Christ is not the bread that we break. A participation in the body of Christ. We're expressing fellowship with Christ in that way. But then notice verse 17. Because there is one loaf, we who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. Now, we miss a little of this symbolism in the way we do communion today, just because our setting is different. In the early church, actually when Jesus established communion at the Passover meal, he took a large piece of bread. And there was one loaf, if you will, and it was passed around in each person, took a little bit of that. That's obviously the way the early church began observing communion, probably in the same way that Jesus established it coming out of a fellowship meal and then taking a loaf of bread and each taking a little bit. And the symbolism was very clear in that setting that we are all one loaf, we're all one body in Christ, we each are part of that. And so symbolism really in communion is of the unity of the family of God in the church. We lose a little bit of that today because in Western world we're structured in pews, we sit behind somebody else and we don't use one loaf. In fact, it's a little bit dangerous to do that. I remember back in the early 1980s, I was at a banquet in Indiana. John MacArthur was the speaker of the pastor of church out in California and he was just at this banquet, he was speaking at a Bible conference at the seminary that week. At that banquet he was just telling stories about funny things that had happened in his church and he said, you know one time we decided that we would try to do communion like the early church did it and we would have a loaf and we would put those in the trays just a big loaf like a French bread piece and we passed that out and we tried to emphasize the unity of this. And he said, people were taking like whole slices, grabbing whole chunks of bread, the bread made it to about the fourth row and we ran out of bread. It was gone. He said, we never did that again. And that's why we don't do that here. Okay, because I know some of you were thinking, oh this is lunch. No, and it's not. It's not. We have a small piece of cracker but the symbolism is supposed to be that we are all a part of a bigger hole, we're all a smaller part of that, we're all a part of the body of Christ and we represent our fellowship with one another in the communion service. Secondly, we represent our fellowship with Christ, our fellowship with Him. And Paul does talk about that in chapter 11 where he says in verse 27, therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord, a man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. Without going into all of the background of that, there were some problems in the Corinthian church that were surfacing at their fellowship meal and then on into the communion service, problems that indicated a lack of unity in the church. Things that indicated real divisions in the church body. And Paul says, that's sinful and you're carrying that sinful attitude and action right into the communion service with you which really disqualifies you to be taking communion because communion is representing our fellowship with Christ. Again, we're representing the fact that we've come into fellowship with Him through faith in Christ. If you come to the communion service out of fellowship with God, that's a contradiction. So it's important as we approach a service like this that we make sure that whatever has broken fellowship with Christ, whether it is a sin of attitude or thought or speech or action or relationship, whatever it may be, there's anything we have not gotten right with Christ. We need to make sure we confess that, get it right with the Lord so that we are in fellowship with Him. Whenever we come to this table with sin in our hearts, just like Paul would say to the Corinthians, that might be reason for God's discipline and chastening in our lives. So we need to make sure that we are in fellowship with Him as we come to this table. We come to this table as an act of fellowship with one another and with Christ. Fourthly, we observe communion as an act of praise. It really is an act of praise. In verse 24, when He had given thanks, He had taken the bread, when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, this is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me. So this is not the pre-meal prayer, thank you for our food. They had already had the meal. That's not what this is about. I used to read this verse and think, well, it's just like what we do whenever we sit down and eat. We pray and give thanks for the food and then we eat. That's not what this was about. Jesus was praising the Father for what was going to happen and the significance of it. There was joy in that. It was not just sorrow. It was a very solemn moment, no doubt. But communion is not just sorrow. Communion is to be joyful. I'm reminded of what Jesus told His disciples in Luke 22, when He starts the supper, when He starts the Passover meal, He says, with great eagerness, have I looked forward to eating this Passover with you? And He explains, this will be the last time I observe Passover with you until the kingdom. So Jesus was looking forward to this with great eagerness. There was joy in His heart and His expression in His voice, no doubt, as He gave out these elements, realizing what they stood for. When you partake of communion, do so with thanksgiving. Yes, it is a solemn reminder and we're to be engaging our mind in thinking and remembering Jesus broken body and shed blood for us and all that that means for us. But we should also do so in a spirit of thanksgiving and praise for what that means. As you partake of communion, thank God for the death of Christ. Thank God for the salvation that is freely offered to you because of the death of Christ. Thank God that one day He reached down into your life and mind and heart and caused you to realize you needed that sacrifice for your salvation. Thank God that you're part of His family. This ought to be an act of thanks, an act of praise. Lastly, we observe communion as an act of hope. It's an act of hope, verse 26. Paul says, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death. You're literally preaching in an objectless inform the Lord's death, but notice the last three words until he comes. Until he comes. It's my understanding that these symbols will no longer be needed when we get to heaven. When Jesus comes back, when we see Him, Revelation 5 describes the saints in heaven, see Him as a lamb that was slain. With the marks of death very evident, I think we will be visibly reminded when we see Jesus that He died for us. We will not need a reminder like this. We will not need bread and juice to remind us. We will see in the very person of Christ we will be reminded every time we see Him that He gave Himself as a sacrifice for us. And so every time we per take of communion, we're actually saying, okay, Lord, one more time until you come. I believe you're coming. And this could be the last time that I observe in this reminding way that I observe communion. I remember your death. Maybe the next time I see you. And so really this is an act of hope. It's expressing our hope that this is only valid until Jesus comes back. And we're expecting Him to come back. You know, this could be the last communion service we ever per take up because He could come back. And there's a sense in which when we observe communion, we do so saying, well, Lord, you didn't come back since January. This may be our last time, though, I believe you're coming and it could be any time. So when you per take of communion this morning, please don't let it just be routine. Please don't let it just be something you do. I'll a piece of cracker, a little bit of juice. Okay, now let's go home. Please don't do that. Remember that it is an act of obedience to our Savior. Please remember that it is an act of remembrance and do remember Him and His death for you as you per take of these elements. Please remember that it is an act of fellowship. So prepare yourself to be in fellowship with Him. Please remember it's an act of praise. Thank Him for what He's done for you. And by all means, please remember it's an act of hope. And as we per take this morning, we are in essence saying one more time, Lord. Until you come back, would you pray with me? Father, we are grateful this morning for the fact that you devised a plan whereby we might spend eternity with you, that we might be saved, delivered from our sin, from ourselves, from our destructive paths in life. Thank you to devise the plan where we could be in your family, be called your children, where all of our sin could be wiped away and we could be declared righteous. And you would see us as righteous as you see your own son. Thank you that you devised a plan whereby we could be in heaven with you. And Father, we know that plan required the death of an innocent substitute. And so we thank you that Jesus gave Himself for us to be our Savior, to be that one who would substitute for us and bear your punishment for our sin so that we might have His righteousness. Lord, as we take these elements and very graphically remember what you've done for us, help us to be mindful of what it means in Jesus' name we pray.