Tonight, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. We read together the first 22 verses. First 22 verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 10, focusing more particularly on verses 14, the section including verses 14 through 22, but even a bit more narrowly on verses 16 and 17. Paul has an interesting discussion here regarding a comparison between idol feasts and the Lord's Supper. And what we want to do tonight in connection with Lord's Day 29, so I also invite you, ask you to turn to page 39 in the back of the Psalter hymnal. But that is the second of three Lord's Days on the Lord's Supper. Dealing really quite specifically with the bread and the cup. The elements of the Lord's Supper and how we are to consider them. What it is the Lord does with them and through them. And I believe in this section 14, verse 22, again, especially, well, in this section, especially verses 16 and 17, Paul clearly gives us some powerful instruction about those elements. Before we read together from 1 Corinthians 10, page 39, Lord's Day 29, as we give expression to what we confess in this Lord's Day. Question 78, are the bread and wine changed into the real body and blood of Christ? No, just as the water of baptism is not changed into Christ's blood and does not itself wash away sins but is simply God's sign and assurance so too the bread of the Lord's Supper is not changed into the actual body of Christ even though it is called the body of Christ in keeping with the nature and language of sacraments. Why then does Christ call the bread His body and the cup His blood or the new covenant in His blood Paul uses the words of participation in Christ's body and blood. Christ has good reason for these words. He wants to teach us that as bread and wine nourish our temporal life, so too his crucified body and poured out blood truly nourish our souls for eternal life. But more important, he wants to assure us by this visible sign and pledge that we, through the Holy Spirit's work, share in his true body and blood as surely as our mouths receive these holy signs in his remembrance and that all of his suffering and obedience are as definitely ours as if we personally had suffered and paid for our sins. 1 Corinthians 10, beginning at verse 1. Hear now, beloved, the word of our God. For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. Their bodies were scattered over the desert. Now these things occurred as examples to us to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry. We should not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in one day 23,000 of them died. We should not test the Lord as some of them did, and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble as some of them did, and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man, and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. Consider the people of Israel. Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too. You cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons. Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than He? Again, may God bless the reading and the consideration of His Word tonight. Well, beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, when it comes to the Lord's Supper, have you ever wondered about that tiny piece of bread and that small sip of wine? I mean, we call the Lord's Supper a meal, we call it a feast, we claim that it nourishes and refreshes, but really, just how much nourishment and refreshment and satisfaction does it give? and do you actually feel any different after partaking? When it comes to that tiny piece of bread and that small sip of wine, physically speaking, probably not. Not like after that big Sunday dinner. When you feel fat and sassy for a while until it wears off. But we know, don't we, that it's not about the bread and the wine themselves. It's not about what we get from them physically, but about what they represent. And therefore, it's about the benefit of the Lord's Supper to the believer by faith. And Paul, I believe, in this passage, points to that benefit through those elements, through the symbols of the bread and the cup, the benefit that we receive at the Lord's table. He points this out again in the context of giving a warning. A warning to the Corinthian believers about participating, to keep from participating in the Feast of Idols. and that day we know that there were huge, magnificent temples to idols and magnificent feasts took place to these idols. Now in verse 19 he says that an idol and a sacrifice to an idol in and of themselves, these things are nothing. But the problem, he points out, is idolatry. And that idolatry is from the devil. And therefore a sacrifice to an idol is really a sacrifice to demons. And when it comes to an idol's environment, that environment is a religious environment. And those who participate then, it implies worship. And it implies the worship of demons, which is sin against God. And in verse 14, at the very beginning of this particular section, Paul says to flee from this. Flee from idolatry, like running away from a threatening or a dangerous situation. Flee from it. yet far, far away from that kind of a situation. And he points out the danger of those idol feasts using, comparing, with the truth of what takes place for the believer at the Lord's Supper. And that truth for the believer is union and communion with Jesus Christ. And therefore, the simple point that Paul is making here is that if partaking of the Lord's Supper brings believers into communion with Christ, then it only stands to reason that partaking of the table of demons must bring one into communion with demons. And Jesus said we know that you cannot serve two masters. But again, as I said in the introduction before the reading, it's in this context that Paul gives some powerful instruction that we kind of want to take out of here. Some powerful instruction about what takes place as believers partake of the bread and cup. Some powerful instruction about the important place of the elements of the Lord's Supper. Beloved, when we come together around the Lord's table, we are celebrating union with Christ through the Lord's Supper elements. First of all, those elements for which we give thanks. Paul says the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks and the bread which we break. Our celebration of the Lord's table, the Lord's Supper, is a celebration of thanksgiving. And these elements, and boys and girls, I hope you understand, when I say elements, I'm talking about the bread and the wine or the juice. These elements of the Lord's Supper are important in our celebration of the Lord's Supper as by partaking of them by faith, As believers, we are expressing gratitude to God for all that these elements stand for. And we are expressing gratitude to God for what God has done for you and me and what He continues to do for you and me through the Blessed Sacrament. And we give thanks by way of blessing. These words are also translated in some versions as the cup of blessing which we bless. And the idea of blessing there is the idea of setting apart. Setting something apart. Setting something apart from a common use to a sacred purpose. Because not all wine and juice and bread that you find on the store shelf or even in your own cupboards, it does not all represent Christ's blood and body. What we use indeed at the Lord's Supper is ordinary bread and wine, that which we use in our home. Well, not our bread possibly because our bread is a little bit different because you know of those who struggle with particular physical difficulties and the bread we use helps them instead to keep from feeling ill. But it's still ordinary bread, ordinary wine and bread that we use in our homes. But when we come together, when we come together to celebrate the Lord's Supper with thanksgiving, we are asking God to bless those ordinary elements. To consecrate those elements. To set them apart for a specific purpose. To use them as Christ intended them to be used in the Lord's Supper. For example, when you pray for God's blessing upon a meal around your table, you are asking Him to use that food that you are about to eat to bless that food to your body. And to give your body physical nourishment. In the same way, we are asking God to bless the bread and the wine or the juice of the Lord's Supper that it might be used, that it might answer to the purpose for which Christ intended it in His Supper. And that is that these elements, beloved, are set apart to communicate something, to communicate, to make known to the believer something specific. And that is as we see the cup and the bread, as we just simply lay our eyes on the cup and the bread, we are to see by faith the blood and the body of Jesus Christ. As Jesus made clear in Matthew 26, this is my body, this is my blood of the covenant. Giving thanks, as we partake of these elements, for what they represent. And it's not becoming Christ's real body and blood, as the Roman Catholic Church believes and teaches. That's what question 78, question and answer 78 are addressing. Are the bread and the wine changed into the real body and blood of Christ? No. Just as the water of baptism is not changed into Christ's blood and does not itself wash away sins, but is simply God's sign and assurance, so too the bread of the Lord's Supper is not changed into the actual body of Christ, even though it is called the body of Christ, in keeping with the nature and the language of sacraments. The Roman Catholic teaching, which we know, is called transubstantiation. Boys and girls, that simply means that the bread and the cup, the wine, still look and feel and taste and smell like bread and wine, but they're not. They're not those things. They're completely changed. Transubstantiation teaches that they actually become the real physical body and blood of Christ. And therefore, people are literally eating and drinking Christ's body and blood, physically speaking. Now, another teaching that's not quite as drastic that we know is called consubstantiation, the view that our Lutheran brothers and sisters hold to. And that teaches that the bread and the wine is still bread and wine, but because Christ, they say, is omnipresent, everywhere present physically, which we know is not true because He's physically present at the right hand of God, but they teach that He is physically present everywhere, and therefore He is present somehow physically in, with, and under the bread and the cup of the Lord's Supper. And therefore, in both teachings, transubstantiation and consubstantiation, in both cases, even an unbeliever who eats and drinks the elements then receives Christ. Yet we know that that's impossible. We know that that is not what Jesus was saying when he said, this is my body, this is my blood. When we come together to celebrate the Lord's table, to give thanks, we give thanks for what the bread and the cup represent. And they represent the body and the blood of Christ, which further than represent the bounty of God's redeeming love and work. That's what the bread and the cup point to. The bounty of God's redeeming love and work, that most precious gift for which we give thanks. The bread and the cup set apart in the Lord's Supper communicate to us the body and blood of Jesus, His body given, His blood shed into a complete remission of all of our sins for our eternal salvation. That's what we celebrate. That's why we celebrate. That eternal rescue plan, our justification before God. But beloved, the Lord's Supper is not just a Thanksgiving celebration for what Christ has done in the past. It is not just a simple memorial feast as the Reformers Zwingli believed and taught. but it is also a celebration of thanksgiving for what He still is doing for you and me by the work of the Holy Spirit. As we celebrate union with Christ through the Lord's Supper elements, we do so by those elements by which we are nourished in the second place. Question 79 asks, Why then does Christ call the bread His body and the cup His blood or the new covenant in His blood? Paul uses the words of participation in Christ's body and blood. The answer begins, Christ has good reason for these words. He wants to teach us that as bread and wine nourish our temporal life, so too His crucified body and poured out blood truly nourish our souls for eternal life. Boys and girls, this is something even you can understand, isn't it? You know that the food that you eat and the bread and the wine represent the food that you and I eat for our bodies. That food nourishes and strengthens our bodies. And what we are to learn from the Lord's Supper is in the very same way, the crucified body and the shed blood of Christ nourishes our souls. And that means, beloved, that something wonderful is really happening to the believer when we come to the Lord's table. It is a part of our sanctification. We are nourished through participation with Christ. Verse 16, Paul says, is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? A participation. You see, Paul argues here in this passage that there is something inherent, something essential in the nature of this Christian meal that makes participation in a pagan meal absolutely incompatible. And that is because the believer is participating in the true body and blood of Jesus. The Greek word for participation here, many of you know, I'm sure, is the word koinonia. Sharing in. Communion with. Participating in. The same word that the writer of Hebrews uses to talk about Jesus sharing in the flesh and blood of our humanity. He became one with us. We become one. With the real body and blood of Christ. Answer 79 says, He wants to assure us by this visible sign and pledge that we, through the Holy Spirit's work, share in His true body and blood as surely as our mouths receive these holy signs in His remembrance. As surely as that food goes into our mouths and becomes one with us. We become one with Jesus Christ, with his body and blood. There's an intimate connection. Jesus in John chapter 6 says, For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. And the Catechism, again, gives us a little bit more of an idea of this sharing. What it is we share in, it says we share in Christ's suffering and obedience. When we share in His body and blood, beloved, we share, therefore, in His suffering and in His obedience and all that that means in what it accomplished. We share. We become one with the reality of the effects of Christ's body crucified and His blood shed. We participate with Christ by faith. When we partake of the elements. With our mouth, we eat nothing more than bread and wine. But in our heart, by faith, we receive nothing less than Jesus Christ himself. And that's why the Lord's Supper is not for unbelievers. Even if an unbeliever eats of the bread and drinks of the cup which has been set apart by God, it is of no value to them. In fact, as Paul makes clear, it is to their detriment. They eat and drink judgment unto themselves. It's not for unbelievers because faith alone, which they do not have, faith alone is the instrument to receive and share in Christ. There is no magic worked by the bread and the cup as transubstantiation would have us believe. But it is indeed a mystery. You and I cannot begin to fathom how it is that we share in the real body and blood of Christ, but we do by the power of the Holy Spirit through faith. We are nourished through participation with Christ and this throughout life. What I mean is sometimes we must admit, sometimes, oftentimes when we partake of the Lord's Supper, we don't feel much different at the time, do we? We may feel uplifted, emotionally charged, To a point. But sadly, often by Monday morning, the feeling is gone. We often come to the Lord's table having not adequately prepared as we ought to have, not given it any sort of consideration as we were called to do. We often show up at church on the Sunday morning or Sunday evening of Lord's Supper and we see the table prepared and we go, Oh, I forgot all about that. Praise be to God, beloved, that this spiritual nourishment with which we are fed by the Holy Spirit does not depend on how we feel at the time that we partake. And the same is true when it comes to the nourishment of the preached Word. How we feel about a sermon, whether good or bad, whether we like it or not, a sermon that is faithful to the Word of God. It doesn't matter at that time. What I mean is when we eat a physical meal, when we eat a meal at our dinner table, whether it's your favorite meal that tastes great, or it's your least favorite meal that tastes bad, Brussels sprouts are the worst thing that you can imagine. Or indeed, either way, whether you like it or not, you may feel full for a time physically, but the feeling goes away and we get hungry again. Yet that food, whether you liked it or not, if it was true nourishment, that food nourishes the body even when you don't realize it. It keeps your body going. It keeps your body strong. It keeps it going for the long haul. And praise God, the same is true with the spiritual nourishment. No matter how you and I may feel at the time, yet the Holy Spirit strengthens our faith in and our understanding of what Jesus Christ has done for us. The Holy Spirit, through that nourishment, draws us closer to our Savior. He directs our hearts and our minds to more and more put off the deeds of the old man and to put on the new man. He directs our lives in love and service for our God. He keeps us alive spiritually and growing in the knowledge of God and His will. That is spiritual growth. He uses the nourishment of the preaching of the Word in coming together around the sacraments. But that growth takes place over time, no matter how you and I may have enjoyed the taste. He uses it in spite of us. Isn't that awesome? And all of this as the Holy Spirit nourishes believers with the benefits of Christ. That's the nourishing power, isn't it? That's the nourishment, the benefits of Christ. those benefits which naturally flow from participation in his body and blood the catechism in a general way again at the end tells us what that is all of his suffering and obedience are as definitely ours as if we personally had suffered and paid for our sins all of it is communicated to us through the symbols, the elements of the Lord's Supper by faith and dear people of God those blessings include the benefits of Christ's blood as we considered this morning what can wash away my sins nothing but the blood of Jesus the benefits of Christ's blood is that all of our sins are paid for they are forgiven completely we are cleansed those blessings of participation with Christ with his body and blood include the efficacy the effect of his sacrifice that which He has accomplished. Namely, that our guilt and the curse that was upon us is removed. And that God's justice and wrath that was against us is satisfied. And that we are accepted by God, we who were His enemies, who treated Him as an enemy. He takes us unto Himself and we now call Him Father. And those blessings also include, beloved, the blessing of new life so that as we continue to walk this life for the long haul, we are no longer in bondage to sin and Satan. By the grace of God, we are able not to sin. And therefore, that is to be what we are to desire. Spiritual growth includes fighting against and striving not to sin. And indeed, we finally sometimes see that spiritual growth in our own lives when there are sins which we used to fall headlong into without thinking that now, by the grace of God, we stay away from them. Beautiful, wonderful, spiritual growth. But the ultimate blessing, the ultimate benefit is an eternal benefit. Eternal benefits. In John 6, Jesus says, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Dear people of God, every time we have the privilege to come together around the Lord's table, and it will be our privilege, the Lord willing, on Good Friday evening again. Every time it is our privilege to partake with one another. May it be that we would see the elements of the Lord's Supper as a glorious representation of life in and union with Jesus Christ both now and forever. And also see them as a beautiful reminder of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit nourishing our faith as one body. Paul says in verse 17, because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. That one loaf is talking about Jesus. Paul here is pointing to the unity of the church, which he says in other places is one body with one head. That head is Jesus. And as one body, we have one Lord. We have one source of salvation through his bloodshed. Through his body given for us. It's in this context of the Corinthian believers that Paul is pointing to the solidarity of the redeemed community as one body in Christ. and as that body participating in Christ. And He would have us to understand that that solidarity then in Christ, that participation in Christ, forbids all other unions. It makes them impossible. It is not possible to be united to Christ by faith and at the very same time to have a heart devoted to evil. And God will not share His glory with pretenders, Not with idols, not with the demons they represent. Instead, by faith, the believer does not want to participate in that which opposes the will of God or the work of Christ. He does not want to participate in that which causes compromise with true Christianity. Instead, by faith, the believer is comforted that not only do our sinful failures that we still struggle with, not only do they not separate us from God or put us back under sin's curse again. but even those our sinful failures are covered by the grace of God, covered by our participation in the accomplishment of the blood and the body of Christ in all that He has accomplished. Beloved, the bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper may be tiny and small, they may seem insignificant, but they represent a most glorious and I dare say a gigantic truth of our salvation through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in applying that salvation to you and me. The Lord's Supper is indeed a feast. Even though the bread and the cup, the bread and the wine themselves may not satisfy us physically, As you and I partake in faith, the body and the blood of Jesus Christ satisfies us eternally as He alone feeds us unto that day when we will no longer be in want. And therefore, as we celebrate union with Christ through the Lord's Supper elements, we celebrate complete salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ. Salvation freely given to you and me by faith. And a complete salvation which is ours forever and ever. Never to be taken away. Amen. Let's pray together. O Lord God, humbly we thank You again for the visible instruction that You do give to us through the sacraments and in a particular way through the bread and the cup of the Lord's Supper. May it be that we would never turn these elements into idols of a sort, as many have. May it be that as we come together around the Lord's table, we would never fall into idolatry. But that more and more we would understand exactly what it is you have done and are doing for us by your Spirit. Father, we do pray that You would continue to strengthen, nourish and strengthen our faith and our spiritual walk with You. That by Your Spirit You would continue that work which You have begun, that You have promised to complete until the day of Christ Jesus. We must confess for any one of us that there's a long way to go. Yet we know that You are faithful and You will complete it. And we look forward to that day, O Lord, when you will deliver us from this life at your appointed hour and bring us cleansed and perfect into your presence. Father, continue to bless us as you have in the past, so in the future. Lead us by your Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray these things. Amen.