Today is September 11th. If this were the year 2000, you might well think, well, so what? But it's not the year 2000, it's the year 2011. The 10-year anniversary of September 11, 2001. The expression 9-11 is now a fixture of our common consciousness. It's been everywhere this week. Every station you've turned on, every radio station, television station, magazine, it's everywhere. Its mere mention brings to mind a flood of memories, hopes, and shared experiences. The mere mention of its foremost symbol, the Twin Towers, or an image of them directs our thinking to the greater realities of that day, the destructive events, and how they changed the lives of many. It was a defining moment, like December 7th, 1941. Many of you remember Pearl Harbor. It was a defining moment, like May 10, 1940. Some of you remember the Blitzkrieg of Rotterdam. Mankind has always seized on such historical events as these to serve as touchstones to the past, to motivate us for the future and to bind us together in the present. And we as a nation today, our Senate has called us to do just such things, to remember the past, to be confident about the future and to spend time with one another about these things. And because this is how we are throughout the history of redemption, God has accommodated us in our tendency to do this memorialization. He's accommodated us by giving his people sacraments. By way of sacraments, the Lord anchors us to the past. He anchors us to something that's already been done as he orients us towards the future and binds us together in the present. Under Moses, he established the bloody sacraments of the circumcision and the Passover. And Jesus Christ came to fulfill both of these bloody sacraments by his bloody sacrifice on the cross and to institute two bloodless sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper. This morning we're going to give our attention to the Lord's Supper. The sacrament instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ in the upper room at the Passover on the night he was betrayed. So please turn in your Bibles this morning to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. And mark that spot. That's where we are going to end. That's what we will read last. And once you've found that, turn toward the front of your Bible about midway to the Gospel according to Luke. A little more than midway, I should say. The Gospel according to Luke. Chapter 22. You'll have one finger and a thumb left to write with by the time we're done here. One more. So 1 Corinthians chapter 11, Luke chapter 22, and finally, at the front of your Bibles, Exodus chapter 12. and there we'll begin at verse 21, Exodus chapter 12, beginning at verse 21. We'll read these in chronological order, beginning with Exodus, followed by Luke, and finishing in 1 Corinthians. Hear now the word of God from Exodus chapter 12, beginning at verse 21, which takes place right after the Lord had met with Moses and told him how to celebrate the Passover. Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin, and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and the sides of your doorframes and will pass over that doorway and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you what does this ceremony mean to you, then tell them it is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians. When the people bowed down and worshipped, the Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. Now we turn forward to the Gospel according to Luke. Gospel according to Luke, we're going to pick up at verse 14. Jesus had already instructed his disciples to prepare the Passover meal in the upper room. And in verse 14 we read, When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after the supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which he poured out, which is poured out for you. And finally, turning to our text this morning from 1 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul's letter to a troubled church, trouble in many ways, in particular trouble with the Lord's Supper. They had turned it into a party rather than a sacrament. And in his long discussion with them about what needed to change, he sets down in verses 23 to 26 the basis for all that he has to tell them when he says in verse 23, chapter 11, For 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. 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. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Here ends the reading of God's Word. We trust Him to add His blessing to it by His Spirit. Well, in our text this morning, Paul reminds the church at Corinth and the church today of the purposes for which Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper. Jesus said whenever you do this, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you commemorate the past and you count on the future and you commune in the present. And we begin with what is most clear, perhaps so obvious, we wonder why we even need to talk about it. We take it for granted. According to Jesus, whenever we do this, whenever we eat the bread and drink the cup, we commemorate the past. We commemorate the past. Now, to commemorate something like today, 9-11, or the Lord's Supper, is to mark an event with a ceremony that does at least two things. First, it remembers the event. And secondly, somehow it announces or it proclaims the significance of that event. And on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples in which he remembered an event. And he announced the significance of that event as part of the ceremony of the Passover. A Jew among Jews, Jesus celebrated the Old Covenant Sacrament that commemorated the events that we read about in Exodus chapter 12. To commemorate the Passover was to remember those events of that night, in particular the shedding of blood of a lamb. The Passover lamb. the flesh of which they would eat in the meal the blood of which they would paint it on the doorpost to turn aside the avenger of death that's what they remembered but it was more than that to commemorate the Passover was also to proclaim as a community the significance of that event in Exodus chapter 12 we heard Moses instruct the Israelites He said, when your children ask you, what does this ceremony mean to you? Why do we do this? Why do we remember this? Tell them. It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians. It's a Passover sacrifice to the Lord that saved us. At its core, to commemorate the Passover was to remember and to proclaim the shed blood of a sacrificial lamb that turned aside the wrath of God from his people. On account of a substitute, a sacrificial lamb, God not only spared Israel from his wrath, he redeemed them from slavery in Egypt, he went on to establish them as his covenant people at Mount Sinai and he ushered them into the promised land to live with him. All of that secured by the blood of the Lamb. And Luke tells us how when Jesus ate this final Passover with his disciples, he reinterpreted this Passover meal in terms of what he was about to accomplish as he instituted the Lord's Supper. he is, as John the Baptist announced, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And the time had come for him to be sacrificed. To be sacrificed in order to rescue God's people from the judgment of God. To redeem us from the slavery to sin. To establish a new covenant with us in his own blood. And to secure for us entrance into the heavenly promised land, the new heavens and the new earth where we will dwell with Him in glory. The time had come. In three days' time, He would be put to death, buried and resurrected. And as He instituted this supper using the form of the Passover meal, He introduced to His disciples the events that were to be so that they would know what they were to remember. Whenever you do this, whenever you break bread and lift the cup in the future, from here going forward, do it in remembrance of me. No longer that lamb in Egypt. Do it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death. You proclaim my sacrifice. You see how he reassigned the sacrament from what had been a promise to that which would be a fulfillment in him. Now it was only after Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church and the apostles were illumined and they were inspired to understand all that Jesus had told them. Remember what he had said and start to put things together. Only then did they understand that the Passover had been fulfilled by Christ. That he had instituted a new sacrament for the church, the new covenant people of God. And so this morning as we come to the Lord's table, as members of the church for which Jesus Christ shed his precious blood, and as we partake of the bread and the wine, we will commemorate the past. We will remember the Lord's death on the cross. And we will publicly proclaim the Lord's death to each and every one here who observes, whether they partake or not. By this meal we remember and we proclaim. We commemorate the past. Well, according to Jesus, whenever we do this, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do more than commemorate the past. You also count on the future. You count on the future. I want to explain myself here a little bit because there's only three words that express this sentiment in our text, but it's an important reality. What's it mean to count on something? It means really count on something. It means that you consider something or someone as worthy of your trust, so worthy that you will live your life in some degree of dependence upon it or upon them. We all live this way every day. We trust people. We trust things because of how they've been toward us or served us in the past. We have a basis for expectation in the future or so we think. But that's how we live. Even when Wall Street tells us that past performance is no indication of future performance, we still trust the past. And even though we trust for our light switch to work every day when we turn it on, we found out we can't necessarily depend on that. But see, we trust these things until in the nature of things because they're created or because they're creatures, one day they will let us down. That's the nature of the case. Therefore, Psalm 146 warns us, do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men who cannot save. every created thing or person will disappoint. And so really it's a form of self-deception, if you will, that we look to the past in order to have security for the future. It's how we like to work. When we really look at it, we don't know much about the future. No one here knows what's going to happen when you walk out that door today. Who are you going to see? What are you going to do? You might think you do, but you really don't know. We really have no basis for trust in our own capacity to see the future. And that's because God who has determined the end from the beginning hasn't revealed these things to us. He hasn't revealed the details of life to us. But even though He hasn't revealed everything, He's revealed some things and He's revealed enough. He's revealed enough for us to count on Him in the present. To count on things that God has revealed is to hope for these things. When we read about hope in the Bible, it's this, we're counting on that which God has said He will do. And so the basis of our confidence is not in the fact that we thought it up or that we anticipated the future. it's because God has said this will be. And by faith we count on it. In fact, that's the essence of faith, is it not? Faith is not a blind leap into darkness. Faith is a running leap into what God has said He will do. The author of Hebrews describes it this way, chapter 11, verse 1, Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the convictions of things not seen. and these things of which faith is assured and convinced are not the product of our own vision casting. There are things that God has revealed in His Word to be true. Now this is important because when Jesus sat with His disciples, with His apostles at this last Passover meal, He did so with a different perspective from all the rest. He did not need to count on the future. Jesus Christ did not have faith. He didn't need faith. He's God. He not only knew the future, He determined the future. And when He celebrated the Passover with His apostles that night, He knew Himself to be the Lamb of God who was to be slain. And He knew that He would fulfill all that had been promised in the Passover. And he knew that he would suffer death on the cross, that he would be buried and be raised to life the third day. And he knew that he would speak with his disciples for 40 days before he ascended to heaven. And he knew that he would pour out his Holy Spirit on them to teach them and to lead them so that they would in turn establish his church by their testimony. And he knew that he would be with that church through all the ages until he comes again in glory. He knew all of this. But his disciples didn't. They only had what the Word of God had told them. And as we know from, we look back and it seems so clear to us. They had the Old Testament. They knew that the Son of God was going to come, the Messiah was going to come and he was going to pay for his people's sin. And they knew that the Son of God was going to come and judge his enemies. And they trusted God that these would happen at the same time. And so Jesus, when he comes to them in this Passover meal, he has to reorient them to the future. They think the future is now. They think it's happening now. He says, no. There's still a future that you have to look forward to, even as you participate in this supper. So when Jesus instituted the supper, he revealed more of that future that they could count on in the present. a future that they needed and we need to orient us for living between his cross and the end of time. And he revealed all this before they could possibly understand. They had no idea what he was talking about. It seems so clear to us because they wrote it down afterward, but at the moment they had no idea what he was talking about. He revealed to them that not only could they count on him to die as he had been warning them he would, not only could they count on him to be raised the third day even as he had promised them he would, they could also count on him to leave, to go away, to leave them behind before he would come again in judgment. And this was new. This was new for the apostles. He revealed to them, He promised them an end to which they could count on in the present. In the closing verses of chapter 14 of the Gospel of John, Jesus explained Himself more fully. He said, you heard me say, I'm going away, and that I'm coming back. I'm going to the Father. And I've told you now before it happens, so then when it does happen, you'll believe. This is why when Jesus told them in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 26, He says, Whenever you do this, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Until He comes. This sacrament we've been given here in the Lord's Supper is a temporary sacrament. It anticipates a future reality in which it will no longer be necessary. It anticipates the day when Jesus Christ will come again to bring us to be his people, to live and dwell with him, body and soul forever, where we'll no longer need means like this to remind us of him. And so by this temporary sacrament, we are not only anchored to the past, to his suffering on the cross, we are also oriented toward the future when he comes again in glory. And this is where we live. This sacrament is for here and for now. And so this morning as members of the church for which he shed his blood, as we come to partake of the Lord's table, we not only commemorate the past, we also count on the future. And until that day we live as his people by faith, knowing that one day we will see him face to face. And finally, according to Jesus, whenever we do this, whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup, not only do we commemorate the past and count on the future, but we live in the present, and in this present we commune. We commune. We don't use that word much, and it's a word that might have bad connotations when we think of communism, or the communes in Haight-Ashbury years ago. Perversions of this word. To commune is to participate in close, intimate, personal relationship. Either with one other person or within a group. There's an intimacy, a participation between. There's a communion. And to participate in the Lord's Supper is to commune in the present publicly. Participating together in close relationship, not only with Jesus Christ our Lord through faith, but with one another. by His Spirit. The Passover Jesus ate with His disciples on the night He was betrayed was the last in His lifetime of observance. We sometimes might think this was the only Passover Jesus attended. He attended every one, every year, all His life. And each time He ate this Passover, He did so as an Israelite, amongst Israelites. He ate in communion with God's chosen people. around the table and across the years. He identified with them and they with him as fellow members of a covenant community. Together they shared in the history of God's faithfulness. Together they held out hope for the redemption and the glory that was to come. Of course, Jesus in all this was unique. He is the only truly faithful Son of Israel. He's the only true faithful Israelite. So, he's different, but we don't want to forget in his humanity, he had fellowship with other men. He is God in the flesh, but as John tells us, he dwelt among us. And as Hebrews tells us that in the bringing of many sons to glory, speaking of the people of God, It was fitting that God should make the author of their salvation perfect, that is, fit for his service through suffering. It was fitting that Jesus Christ came in the flesh to dwell among us, to commune with us, to suffer with us, to be fit for his service to save us. And it goes on, both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family so that Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. Jesus communed as an Israelite with the Israelites. And together Jesus and his disciples ate the flesh of the lamb that was sacrificed for that meal. Now according to the law given to Moses to eat the flesh of a sacrifice that was offered to the Lord God Almighty was to commune in fellowship with God. It was to commune in fellowship with the God to whom that sacrifice was offered. Now, it's important to know that it's not because of the eating of flesh that people communed with God. But God had commanded sacrifice and he commanded that when you make the sacrifice, you eat it in my presence and as you eat it in my presence, I will be with you through faith. The faith that offers a sacrifice pleasing to God. The faith that receives the blessing of God through faith. And so Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, a chapter back, talking about the Lord's Supper and what it means to eat it, as compared to eating sacrifices to idols, he says, Do not all those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Back up. Consider the people of Israel. He's pointing back to Israel. do not those who eat of the sacrifice participate, commune, fellowship at the altar? And this point is, yes, they do. Through faith, there is a communion in the sacrament. There was a communion in the sacrament of the Passover and there's communion in the sacrament of the Lord's table. Little did the disciples realize that as they partook of that lamb that day, physically with their mouth, That by faith, in the one to whom that sacrifice pointed, they were communing with the very body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that would be shed for them within hours. They had no idea. And at that Passover meal, Jesus communed in the present with his disciples, both as a man, a fellow Israelite, and as the Lamb of God, who would soon suffer and die. Communion. Fellowship in the sacrament. And when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, He extended that communion that He would purchase by His blood beyond the Jews to every tribe and nation and people and tongue. And in this communion of saints, we confess it every Lord's Day when we say the Apostles' Creed. The communion of saints. That's what we're talking about. In this communion of saints that is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, there is no Jew or Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, but Christ is all and is in all, and we are communing. He instituted this sacrament to be participated, to be celebrated in, only within the communion of the saints. Only as we gather in corporate worship. This is not a sacrament for my living room or the park bench. It's not for me alone. It's not for you alone. It's for us. He communes with us here as we commune with one another. And this sweet communion is displayed by the one loaf that Jesus held up in the Last Supper in the Passover and in the one cup that they all drank from. It's this picture, this unity that we have in the one loaf. And he says in chapter 10, verse 17, Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. This is what it means to commune together. But there's more. When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, he uttered what might be the four most disputed words in the history of the world. This is my body. Holding up a loaf of bread. This is my body. Holding up a cup. This is my blood of the covenant. What are we to do with those words? Well, we don't have time today. It's been centuries on that. But we are clear in what we believe, and I would encourage you, make a note in your notes, that you spend some time looking at questions 75 to 80 in the Heidelberg Catechism. We do a beautiful job of explaining what these words mean. And also in Belgic Confession, Article 35, prayerful consideration of these and the scriptures to which they point will be helpful and fruitful to you. In short, however, this is what we believe and confess. Is that in the institution of the Lord's Supper, Jesus established the bread and the wine which we will soon behold and partake of. He established them as a holy sign and seal for us to see. something to come into us by way other than our ear for us to see and to touch and to taste. And by calling them holy sign and seal, we are saying that they are designed to point us to something like a sign does and to promise us something. So as a sign, the bread and the wine, they point us to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. When we see bread and wine, we're supposed to think of the cross where Jesus' body was lifted up and his blood was poured out. It's the only ground of our salvation. That's where we must look by faith. And as a seal, the bread and wine promise us, they promise us communion, participation, fellowship with that Christ. We confess this in Article 35 of the Belgic Confession, listen carefully. He promises us that as certainly as we receive and hold this sacrament in our hands today and eat and drink the same with our mouths today by which we will be nourished in our bodies, we also as certainly receive by faith which is as it were the hand and mouth of the soul the true body and blood of Christ our only Savior in our souls to nourish our spiritual life as certainly as we hold this bread and hold this cup and we eat and drink them by our mouth as certainly by faith we receive and commune with the body and blood of Christ in our spirit where he strengthens us in the inner man. In other words, we believe and confess that when we eat this bread and drink this cup, we commune with Christ himself who is at the right hand of our Father in heaven. Through faith in Christ alone, we really participate. We really participate in his body and blood in our spirit. Not by mouth, and we do so right here and right now. This is not a past something. This is not a future hope. This is a present reality when we participate and commune together in this supper. And so, people of God, as we come now to the table of our Lord, the Lord's Supper, that He instituted us on the night He was betrayed, we come together to commemorate the past, Remembering His death and proclaiming His death to all who are present. Even as we continue to count on the future when Christ will come in glory to bring us to Himself and commune with us personally, face to face. We'll see Him as He is and we will be like Him, John says. And so that we can together commune in the present with the body and blood of Christ Himself through faith and with one another by His Spirit who joins each of us to Him.