Lord’s Supper: The Place of Grace

Well, thanks so much for joining us this weekend. I have a heavy, but I also think really hopeful and hope-filled sermon to preach this weekend. And so, as you can see, I've asked some of my friends here to join me and help me preach it, just to clear a few things up before you start sending some emails.

One, yes, they are socially distant. These are family units that are together, so they're good. Number two, as you can see, we are going to take the Lord's Supper together, and I'm going to go ahead and tell you, this is grape juice, it's not wine, okay? And then each of these families, they're going to have their own piece of bread, and so I haven't touched them, it's all packaged, we're going to let them open it up, and so everything's fine. So is that all cleared up? You ready to go?

All right, let's do it. Listen, growing up, you could call me, let's say, a cultural Christian, if you will. What I mean by that is I was in church every single Sunday, I believed that God loved me, I believed that Jesus died for me, I believed the Bible was God's inspired word, I even believed in a God who heard me when I prayed, and that I could ask for forgiveness, and he would give me forgiveness of my sins. And the way this kind of religious belief played itself out week to week was that every Monday through Saturday, I kind of spent the week accumulating this list of sins. And so for me, it was partying and drinking and pride and sleeping around, whatever, and each night, I would come to God right before I'd go to bed, and I would ask for forgiveness from these sins, and then I just believed we were kind of good until the next day when I would fill up my proverbial whiteboard full of sins again that needed to be cleared the next day. And that was fine and good for kind of this day-to-day spiritual maintenance, but I firmly believed that on Sunday, I needed to be in church to remain in God's good favors, to remain on his good list. You know, I believed that religion was something you were supposed to do in order to remain on God's good side, because, you know, all the good people, they go to church every week, right?

And so that's what I thought. I needed to be a good person. So I kind of had this nightly check-in, if you will, with God. I had my weekly attendance check with God at church, and then at church, we had this occasional event that I would partake in that would make me feel really spiritual for a while, and it was called communion, taking communion.

Now, the church I grew up in, it wasn't this big church like the Summit Church. It was this small church, and we didn't take communion with these little dinky wafers. Now, we took the real stuff, okay? We had Miss So-and-So, Auntie B., Aunt Rosie, who thought it was her spiritual gift to bake up loaves of bread just for communion, and let me tell you, that junk was legit. Like, it was delicious. I can remember multiple times coming, going through communion. We walked down the aisles, took it, dipped our bread.

We came back, and I remember looking at my dad being like, hey, can we go get seconds? Like, we'd be on our way out of church, and I'd be looking for kind of the pop-up communion bread stand to buy some to take back home. You know, that's kind of how I grew up taking communion. Well, fast-forward to 2008, and I, for the first time in my life, I turned 21, funny enough, and it was the first time I fully understood what it meant for me to be a sinner and to truly be in need of Jesus as a Savior. And so now, instead of coming to God each night with my head held low in shame, I met with God each morning with my head held high in gratitude. Instead of attending church each week out of obligation, I became part of the church out of delight and desire to be connected to the very people of God.

And then communion. Instead of communion being some rote religious ceremony with tasty bread, communion became my regular reminder that Jesus loved me enough to die for me, that my sin is what put Jesus on the cross, that Jesus was pierced for my transgressions, that he was crushed for my iniquities. See, communion became my reminder that his body was broken for me, that Jesus' blood was shed for me, that upon him was the punishment that ultimately brought me peace, and that by his wounds I was healed.

Communion became my reminder that while I was yet still a sinner, Christ willingly and lovingly chose to die for me. You see, y'all, what makes a church is not a budget or a building. What makes a church is the people of God united under the Son of God who come together to hear and sing the Word of God and have the sacraments administered as a reminder of the love of God. And so the people of God are here, right? Like I've got some people of God with me, maybe wherever you are in your living rooms or wherever you are.

Do you know that even if you're by yourself right now, there are hundreds if not thousands of other people watching right now with you. And so the people of God are here. And here at the Summit Church, I promise you, we are certainly united under the Son of God. If you hear nothing from me for the next 20 minutes, what you're going to hear is the name Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, because it's all about Jesus.

That's it. We've sung some praises to our God. Now we're opening the Word of God, and in a little bit, we're going to take the Lord's Supper as a reminder of the love of God. So welcome to church, y'all.

Just look at somebody around you. Say welcome to church. Welcome to church. And so we're going to get rolling. If you have a Bible handy, go ahead, pull it out. We're going to be in the New Testament.

Flip on over to the book of 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 11. If you're a kid, make sure you've got your kids' notes ready. If you don't have them, ask your parents. They can hop over to our website.

They can get your kids' notes for you real fast. All right, y'all ready? Listen, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the title of my message today is The Place of Grace. The Place of Grace. See, before we take it together, we're actually going to spend some time looking at the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and we're going to see how grace is what the Lord's Supper is all about. It's about the grace we have been given, the grace we continue to have access to, and the future grace that we will experience one day in eternity. The Place of Grace.

And here's how I'm going to break it down today. The Lord's Supper first. It displays grace from the past.

We're going to go through these, so if you don't get them this first time, that's fine. Displays grace from the past. It gives grace in the present, and it prepares us for grace in the future. So we're going to go through that quickly, and then we're going to take the Lord's Supper together.

And so hopefully you have a loaf of bread, maybe some juice in your pantry or something like that, that you can go ahead and grab those things in a bit. Before we hop in, let me give you some context for 1 Corinthians, since we haven't been studying that yet. In 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul, he's the one that writes it, he's writing to a church, the church at Corinth, that he planted back in Acts 18.

Now Paul's been gone from Corinth for some time, but he started hearing rumors that the church at Corinth is acting crazy, like the kind of crazy that only church folk can be like. You know what I'm saying? So he's hearing rumors like that, so he writes a letter to rebuke them and correct them. Listen, kids, you ever had to bring home a note from school, telling your parents something you did wrong, they need some correcting?

Like that's not fun, right? That's what's happening. Paul is the teacher here, he's writing a note home, and Corinth is the kid who's about to get in trouble, all right? So let's pick up in verse 17, 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17. Paul says this, he says, He's like the one good thing that does come out of this is that it shows who the true believers are. Verse 20, he says when you come together, it's not the Lord's supper that you eat. He says you think you know what you're doing and you think you're pleasing to God, but I assure you that's not even close to what Jesus had in mind when he instituted this. Verse 21, for in eating each one goes ahead with his own meal. So one goes hungry and another gets drunk. This is the church, y'all.

The church is getting DUIs on the way home from church. And then the beginning of verse 22 might possibly be my favorite response from Paul ever because he just says, what? Like this is insane.

Like what? This is really happening? He says, do you not have houses to eat and drink in if that's what you want to do? Do you despise the church of God to the point that you want to humiliate those who have nothing? What should I even say to you? Should I commend you in this?

He says, absolutely no, I will not. You know, I find it hilarious. We always say things like, hey, if we could just get back to being the New Testament church, everything would be fine. And like, I know what you mean by that. I understand what you're saying, but don't be fooled into thinking that the early church was perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

Let me be clear. There's no perfect church. There is no perfect people. There's only a perfect Savior named Jesus that imperfect churches and imperfect people can point other imperfect people because he's the only one that's ever been perfect in the entire universe. OK, and so Paul is writing to these church people, these divided church people, these church people who are divided by preferences on what they are allowed to do and eat, divided over whether or not you can drink or smoke or what you're allowed to watch or listen to, divided over interpretations of Jesus's teaching or proper applications of the Old Testament law.

They're divided over their understanding of race relations and politics and governmental structures and divided over levels of intelligence and education and income. And he's saying, hey, you're supposed to be coming together as the people of God, as the ultimate show of unity, because, listen, this wasn't just a quick bread and cup meal. This was an entire dinner that the rich and the poor were supposed to come together. The conservatives and the liberal, the tax collectors and the zealots were supposed to share this together.

And what what would happen is it would culminate in the bread and the cup as the ultimate show of unity under the banner of Jesus. But instead, what's happening is that the rich folks show up early. They eat all the good food. They drink all the good drink. They end up getting drunk.

And by the time the poor people show up, the only thing that's left are kind of these off brand white claws and a bunch of disgusting flavors and the gross store-bought dip that ain't nobody want in the first place. OK, so he's saying the very thing that's supposed to be the symbol of unity under Jesus, the Lord's Supper, church, it's actually become the occasion for which division is produced. Now, y'all can call me crazy. You can call me fundamental traditionalist.

I don't care what you call me. But it sure sounds like this 2000 year old book has some wisdom and practical application for us today, doesn't it? So what Paul's about to do is show us that there is a basis for a real, authentic, peaceful, loving community. But he's going to say the basis of that community is not the same, that we are all the same in and of ourselves. It's not that we're all the same race.

It's not that we all vote the same. It's not that we're all in the same tax bracket and make the same amount of money, but rather the basis is that the fact that we are in the same body of Christ, worshipping the same risen Savior, who have all received the same spirit. That's why one chapter earlier in chapter 10, when Paul's talking about the Lord's Supper, he says, there is one bread and we who are many are one body for we all partake of one bread.

Another way of saying this, we're all jacked up. We all need a Savior and communion is supposed to be our physical demonstration of unity that is altogether different than anything else this world can offer because it's the people of God united under the banner of the gospel declaring, we are all equally sinful, yet equally loved by Jesus. The Lord's Supper is the place we all come to find grace. And before we go on, let me say, grace is just simply getting something you do not deserve. What we don't deserve, church, is Jesus. But for God so loved the world that he sent his only son. That's grace.

That's giving us what we don't deserve. And so Paul's about to hit the off-ramp here for the first stop of our journey and show us the first way that the Lord's Supper becomes our place of grace is that it displays grace from the past. It displays grace from the past. We see that in verse 23. Look at verse 23. He takes us back in time to the time when Jesus is administering the Lord's Supper and he says, Paul says, And do this in remembrance of who? Of me, Jesus. In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So how is grace displayed in the past? Well, 2000 years ago, grace took the name of Jesus and died for our sins.

Grace was given at the cross and grace is received when you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus grace incarnate died for you. And instead of you, the physical taste in sight and smell and touch of the bread and the wine is a reminder of the grace displayed for us on the cross, that Jesus's body really was broken for you, that his blood really was shed for you. And so every time we take the Lord's Supper Church, we are proclaiming a reenactment of the gospel, the good news that Jesus died for us.

And we should remember Jesus when we take it. We should hear the words of Jesus saying, remember me, I'm forever with you. Remember me when you take the shedding my blood for you so that you might live because I died. Remember me, Jesus says, suffering to obtain for you all the blessings of the new covenant. Remember me when you break the bread, just as I willingly gave my one body, my own body to be broken for you.

See, when we remember, we're not simply just recalling historical facts. We're participating in spiritual realities. For in eating the bread and drinking the cup, we are taking Jesus's death and subsequent resurrection into our own body saying, I am one with my Savior whom not even death could defeat. Have you ever thought about this? You ever thought about why Jesus instituted this with bread and wine?

A grape juice for us good Southern Baptists, right? Why bread and wine, seriously? Well, if you think about it, it's kind of perfect because bread must be broken in order to be received.

See, what better symbol of suffering can you have than that? Bread from the beginning of its life until consumption appears just to be this massive suffering. See, as a seed, bread is first thrown into the ground. It's cut up, it's buried in cold clay.

When it sprouts, it has to endure scorching heat and freezing cold. Once it ripens, then it's cut down, it's gathered, it's thrown onto the barn floor, and then the grain is threshed out by severe beating. The grain is then taken and crushed between large stones until it's been bruised into fine flour. Then that flour is kneaded into dough, baked in a fiery oven, and then just when you think the suffering for the bread is over, it's laid out on a table only to be broken into individual pieces to eat, and then put into somebody's mouth and broken again by teeth.

And then wine, not much different wine is pruned and cut and labored over and gathered and thrown into a wine press and crushed beneath trampling feet because it's only then that then the wine juices flow freely. You see, it's all a picture of Christ's body and blood as He is being beaten and squeezed and pressed and broken as His precious blood would flow for your salvation. You see, bread and wine are the perfect emblems of this intense suffering Jesus would endure, and He sets them before you.

Yes, you. And He says, take, eat, this is my body broken for you. See, where the old covenant cursed us, the covenant of works, the covenant we could never live up to, Jesus came to establish a new covenant, the covenant of grace. And that covenant was signed and sealed and delivered by Jesus' blood Himself. And come on, what a display of grace, the Son of God willingly enduring all of this to save you and me. What wonderful grace, what a glorious grace, what incredible grace. You know where I'm going, what amazing grace. So when you take communion, you should always remember the display of grace in the past. Well, listen, grace wasn't just kind of this one-time event whereby you kind of get enough of it to last you the rest of your life, and so you better budget it well or else you're going to run out.

No, no, no, no, no. This is the beauty of the gospel. This is the good news. Because the next reason the Lord's Supper is the place of grace is because it gives grace in the present. It gives grace in the present. Look at verse 27. Paul says, That's why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. I mean, come on, just let that sink in.

We probably approach this a whole lot differently if we believe that. Verse 31. And then verse 33.

So that when you come together, it won't be for judgment and about the other things I'll give directions when I come. Oh, man, we could seriously unpack that whole section for the next four weeks because this might be one of the biggest indictments on the church today. And honestly, this has been incredibly convicting for me just to study through this week to think about the so often unworthy manner we partake of communion in. Now, to be clear, to be clear, Paul did not say that we had to be worthy to partake of the supper. There's no one who does good.

All have fallen short of the glory of God. He only said that we should partake in a worthy manner. See, unworthily is an adverb, not an adjective. We are always unworthy.

That's an adjective. But we can eat unworthily when our lives do not align with the Jesus that we claim to follow. Tim Keller says it this way. He says, obviously the Lord's Supper is not for perfect people, but for repentant people. But that's just the point, he says, because the Lord's Supper forces us to keep our inner experience linked with our outward behavior. It demands that we ask, am I truly living a life of gratitude and obeying God as I would be if I really believed he saved me at the infinite cost of his only son?

Am I loving others sacrificially as I really would be if I really truly believed I was saved by sacrificial love? You see, examining ourselves means we should truly ask the question, do what I say and the way I'm actually living line up? And if they don't, Paul says you should examine yourself and repent. That's why in verse 31, he says, if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. Because listen, if you judge yourself truly, you'll come to figure out pretty quickly you're a hypocritical sinner, which we all are. But because of Jesus, that assessment should lead us to a place of repentance whereby Jesus offers us grace when we repent, not condemnation.

In fact, write this down, wherever you are, write this down. Where sin is confessed fully, grace is received abundantly. Where sin is confessed fully, grace is received abundantly. See, to take the Lord's Supper in a worthy manner means that we examine our hearts, we judge ourselves accordingly, and we confess our sins to the Lord before taking it. Self-examination is not a door meant to shut you out from taking communion, but rather a door at which you pause to see whether you are in a right condition to enter.

And if you're not, then you stop, you get right, and then you enter. Think about it like this, you ever been to, probably most of you, you've dressed up for going out on some fancy dinner, fancy date, maybe high school, you get ready for prom, whatever it looks like. Now don't lie, you got to check yourself out before you leave the house, right? You got to make sure you're looking good, you're looking fly, and so you get your hair did. If you're a guy, maybe you iron your shirt, you take a look at your shoes, make sure there's no creases in the shoes. You kind of know, you do this little eyebrow thing, at least that's what Ricky Harris taught me. You kind of do this little eyebrow thing, and then once you know you look good, then you go downstairs, you head out on your date, right?

That's kind of what happens. And what Paul's saying, that's exactly what we should do before we take the Lord's Supper. And so right now, we're going to stop and do just that. I'm going to put some questions on the screen that I think might help you do this, and listen, all I'm asking you to do right now is judge yourself rightly. You're not hiding anything from God, you're not fooling God. But if your inner experience of faith is not linked with your outward behavior, then repent. And repent knowing that what awaits you on the other side of repentance is not condemnation, it's grace. And then we're going to come back, I've got one more point that I'll go through very quickly, and then we're going to take communion together. And then we're going to come back, and we're going to take communion together. Well, by now, I hope you're seeing that the Lord's Supper was never meant for nourishment of the body, but rather grace for the soul. See, the place of grace displays grace from the past, gives grace in the present. And again, this last one really quickly, the Lord's Supper prepares us for grace in the future.

Look back at verse 26. Jesus tells them, See, we are to observe the Lord's Supper, to approach this place of grace until He comes. Because the return of Jesus, it's the ultimate hope of every Christian.

It's the glorious anticipation that just as Jesus may have died, He did not stay dead. That one day, Jesus is coming back to fix everything that's broken. That one day, He will wipe every tear from every eye.

That one day, every sad thing will become untrue. That one day, justice will roll down like waters. One day, righteousness will flow like mighty streams.

And all the pain that you are experiencing will cease to exist, and it will be replaced with joy. See, the future grace the Lord's Supper prepares us for is the return of Jesus and the subsequent marriage supper of the Lamb, where He is going to clothe us, His church, His bride, in splendid white array without spot or blemish, and we are going to dine with Him in the presence of grace and love and mercy forever. And so the very easy question today is where do you need grace applied today? You in need of forgiveness? Come to the place of grace. This meal is for you, for it shows that Jesus died to forgive your sins. You in need of some type of deliverance? Come to the place of grace. This meal is for you because it's rooted in redemption. You in need of approval? Just say it, this meal is for me.

That's the one. This meal is for me. I'm coming to the place of grace because Jesus planned this meal Himself, and He personally invited me to the table.

Do you long for community to be truly known and fully loved? Then you can declare this meal is for me. Come to the place of grace that forms a new community under the identity of one name.

Maybe you just desire to know Jesus more. And this meal is for you because it points to the greatest moment in human history when God took on flesh and dwelt among us. What the Lord's Supper does, Church, is root us time and time again in this nitty-gritty, blood-spattered, wrath-absorbing, sin-saturated cross of Christ. Bread and cup, body and blood, execution and death, all in order to extend to you and me the unmerited, undeserved, unearned grace of God. And so in just a moment, we're going to take the Lord's Supper together. And if you've repented of your sins and placed your faith in Christ, then I want to invite you and welcome you to partake of this moment as we remember Jesus' sacrifice together. If you're not a believer, then I would just simply ask that you not take this because what you need is not the bread and the cup. What you need is what they represent.

Everything I've been talking about, they represent Jesus' body broken for you, His blood shed for you. And if that's you, we would love to talk with you about that. We're going to put a little website on the bottom here, summitchurch.com slash guest.

You can go there, fill out a form. It says I want to talk more about stepping forth in my relationship with Jesus. Please, please, please give us the opportunity to walk alongside you and answer any questions you may have. And then lastly, listen, if you're a kid or a student listening to this, if you've repented of your sins, maybe you've been through our Gospel and Baptism class, maybe you've talked to your mom and dad about Jesus becoming your Savior, I want to invite you to take this. But if you have not repented of your sin and placed your faith in Jesus yet, I just want you to wait and watch your parents do this. Dad, mom, after the service, this is your opportunity. It's your job to take over and talk through the Lord's Supper and what it means together. And what we're going to be praying is that salvation would come to your house.

If you need more help in this, again, you can reach out at our campuses. We've got kids and student directors who would love to walk alongside you in this. Now, in order to give you time just to kind of collect some bread and juice and whatever you have at your house, we're going to sing together.

And then I'm going to come back briefly and lead us in taking these together. Let's just sing this good news together. You are loved by God, and there's no greater love than His. There is no greater love. There is no greater love. The cross is the proof. The Savior lifted up.

There is no greater love. The Lamb of God in my place, your blood poured out. My sin erased, it was my death, you died. I am raised to life, hallelujah. The Lamb of God, oh, the Lamb of God in my place, your blood poured out. My sin erased, it was my death, you died. I am raised to life, hallelujah. The Lamb of God, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, on the night Jesus was betrayed, He met with His disciples in an upper room, and He took a loaf of bread, and He broke it. He passed it around, and He said, this is my body broken for you. Take and eat in remembrance of me. So let's eat together, church. Likewise, took a cup, and He said, this is my blood poured out for the new covenant for the forgiveness of sins. Take, drink in remembrance of me. Hallelujah, what a Savior. Grace and peace, Summit family.