Thanks. It's great to be with you guys again on the Lord's Day. We're going to continue our mini-series on the sacraments. So last week we looked at the sacrament of baptism. This week, that means there's only one left. We're looking at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. So we're going to look this morning in the book of 1 Corinthians, specifically in chapters 10 and 11. Before we jump to the text, just kind of lay what we're going to do this morning. Part of what I want to do with this, we talked last week about the fact that sometimes we can be sacramentally challenged as believers. So we don't always know exactly why we're practicing baptism and the Lord's Supper, or maybe we're overly casual and cavalier in our attitudes towards them. And we don't want to be that way. And so one of the things I'm going to do this morning more than I do other times, I'm going to use quotes from church history to kind of ground us and help to give us a sense of where we are and why we approach the Lord's table in the way that we do. So I use quotes oftentimes on Sunday mornings. There's going to be a few more this morning. I love church history. I always try and sprinkle it in where we can. There's going to be a lot of church history this morning because I think it's helpful for us to get a sense, just kind of get our bearings in why we practice the Lord's Supper the way we do.
It's a special thing. I remember at 13, the first time I participated in communion. I remember just being excited. I had never done it before. In the church that I grew up, you had to go and meet with the elders and explain the Gospel to them and profess your faith before they would invite you to take communion with the church. So it was a little intimidating to go through that. But there's also this sense of just the mysteriousness of it. I knew this was a special solemn thing we did as a church and I was excited to get to partake. And if I'm honest, it was just exciting to kind of get to grab— there was like this bread that would always pass by and you get like little whiffs of it. Never got to taste it. So that first time I was like, what does the communion bread taste like? Is this grape juice, like extra special? You know, there was an excitement even in those terms. But it seemed significant and it seemed weighty. And it should have. The Lord's Supper is beautiful. The Lord's Supper is powerful and it is mysterious. It's a sacred sacrament. My hope is today that when we're done, we'll understand it better. But even more, that we'll love it. And that we'll cherish it. That we'll have a greater degree of reverence and understand the way that it brings us into fellowship with Christ and His church. So with that being our intention, look now in 1 Corinthians.
We're going to look at verses 16 and 17 out of chapter 10 and then jump forward to verses 23 to 34. The reason we're doing that is Paul starts the subject of the Lord's Supper, then kind of does a little aside on a different topic and then comes back to the subject. So, hear God's holy and authoritative Word. 1 Corinthians 10:16. 'The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.' For we all partake of the one bread. Then flipping over to verse 23 of chapter 11: For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and He said, 'This is My body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.' 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. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. When we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come. The word of the Lord, may He write its truth upon our hearts.
Jesus, we want to come before You and we want to worship You in truth. We want to worship You according to the way that Your scriptures instruct us. We want to be reverent in Your presence. We want to be filled with joy and worshipful hearts. We want praise to spill over. And we want to be intentional to celebrate your life and death and resurrection, to celebrate the coming of your kingdom in the ways you have called us to, to give testimony to ourselves, assurance to our hearts, and proclamation to a watching world that you are the true and living God, that you are real and alive and risen and seated at the Father's right hand. Help us to do that now in the preaching of your word. Illuminate this to us, Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen.
What I want us to see this morning, if I had to kind of make it one statement, is that the Lord's Supper is a proclamation of the gospel. It's a proclamation of the gospel partaken by those who've publicly embraced the gospel and by those whose identity is still shaped by the gospel. That's what our goal is to kind of unpack this morning. So first, the Lord's Supper is meant to be a proclamation of the gospel. Just like the sacrament of baptism, communion, the Lord's Supper celebrates but also proclaims and declares the gospel. 1 Corinthians 11:26 in our passage says, 'For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes,' until He returns. It was designed to be a proclamation. Augustine, he famously commented when discussing these topics, he said, 'In the preaching of the Word, the preaching of the Word brings grace.' the grace of the Gospel to our ears. And while the preaching of the Word brings the grace of the Gospel to our ears, the sacraments bring it to our eyes. Does that make sense? That's what the sacraments are meant to do. Building on this idea, the reformer Robert Bruce said, 'There is nothing in this world or out of this world more to be wished by every one of you than to be conjoined with Jesus Christ.' United with Christ. And once for all made one with Him, the God of glory. This heavenly and celestial conjunction is procured and brought about by two special means. It's brought about by the means of the Word and preaching of the Gospel. Grace to our ears. And it's brought about by means of the sacraments and their ministration. The Word leads us to Christ by the ear. The sacraments lead us to Christ by the eye.
Baptism and the Lord's Supper are a visible display of what the Gospel is all about. We can forget how central the doctrine of the Lord's Supper was to the Reformers. In the 16th century, in the 1500s, there's all this theological debate and upheaval going on. Did you know that more time was spent debating, more ink was spilled on the topic of the Lord's Supper and communion than was spilled on justification by faith alone or the authority of God's Word? Probably not what you first would have guessed if I'd asked you to rank what was most debated during that period. Now, I'm not trying to set those three doctrines against each other. That's not what I'm trying to do at all. In reality, what one believes about justification and ultimately about the authority of Scripture greatly affects what you will believe about the Lord's Supper. The three hold together. One thing we see clearly in Scripture that was argued for by the Reformers is that the Lord's Supper is meant to be a memorial. A memorial to what Christ had already accomplished at Calvary. Good Kansas City folks can think of the Liberty Memorial, right? It's meant to be a memorial to the sacrifices made in World War I. It's a reminder, a visual reminder of what happened before. That's the idea bound up in the Lord's Supper. 1 Corinthians 5:7, 'For Christ our Passover Lamb,' Paul says, 'has been sacrificed.' Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. Paul's point in that is that there's a clear connection between the Passover Lamb sacrifice and the atonement that Christ makes. Remember the story of the Passover Lamb? Israel is in Egypt. They're in bondage to the Pharaoh and all the Egyptians. The final plague, Moses says, the angel of the Lord is going to come through all the land of Egypt and he's going to strike down the firstborn in every single household with the exception of those households that are covered by the blood of a Passover lamb. Where those houses are, where they're covered by the blood of the Passover lamb, God's judgment passes over. That's the imagery we're getting. That's, that's what Christ is to us. Paul says Christ is our Passover Lamb. He's the sacrifice that covers us from God's judgment. But the connection is not primarily to the Lord's Supper. That's not the direct place Paul is applying the analogy. The connection is to the cross. Communion points back to the cross. Does that make sense? The point of communion isn't to point us back to the Passover. The point of communion is to memorialize the cross. It's a memorial meal.
6 · Oswald elevates the stakes by naming communion a 'gospel issue' and contrasting the Protestant memorial view with Roman Catholic transubstantiation
Now, this might seem like a minor issue, but in reality, it's a gospel issue. And I use that word very intentionally. The topic and issue of communion, of the Lord's Supper, is a gospel issue. The Roman Catholic Church's idea of transubstantiation, that the bread and the wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, that minimizes the significance of the once-for-all sacrifice of atonement that Jesus makes at the cross. The Lord's Supper is not a new sacrifice. The bread and wine aren't physically Christ's body and blood. He's not re-sacrificed every time communion is practiced. It's significant. I knew a believer Godly guy. He told me after the fact he was just giddy about the fact that his friend had invited him to a Roman Catholic Mass. And he was super excited because he asked his friend and his friend said, 'It'll just be just fine. Just take the Eucharist when it comes.' And he was telling me this with all sorts of excitement that he had gotten to do it and it was so interesting and cool. It was sad. First of all, because the priest wouldn't have wanted him to take the Mass, not unless he was embracing the fact that this was Christ's physical body and Christ's physical blood. But it was sad because he had no sense of the significance of what had been fought for in regards to this sacrament. In the English Reformation, countless saints were put to death. If you were a commoner, you were burned at the stake or drawn and quartered. If you were of noble birth, maybe a kind beheading. If you held to the wrong ideas about this doctrine. One of the people that comes to mind most frequently is the Lady Jane Grey. Are you familiar with her from church history? The Lady Jane Grey, she's installed as Queen over England and she has the long term of 9 days. Before she's expelled from her rule. Now she's installed because she's a Protestant. It's a political maneuver. There's tension. Henry VIII had brought England into the Protestant Reformation, but one of his children now to come to the throne, they were worried, would be Mary, Queen of Scots, and she was a Catholic. They were worried that she would lead the country back into Catholicism, so they installed Jane Grey even though her claim to the throne wasn't as strong because she was a Protestant. So it's a political move. Well, it doesn't work. 9 days later, Mary does come to the throne, and what happens is Jane gets arrested. It ushers in a period of persecution for those who hold to our view of the Lord's Supper. Mary, Queen of Scots, is better known as Bloody Mary because of the way she put people to death for their understanding of the Lord's Supper. Now, Jane Grey, she's only 18 at the time, keep that in mind, she's a young woman. She's thrown in the Tower of London and Mary assigns one of her spiritual advisors, the Benedictine monk John de Feckenham, and he tried to convert her to Roman Catholicism. She's in the Tower of London and she knows you're in the Tower of London for treason because you're a Protestant and we've kicked you off the throne and you're going to be put to death. A royal person with royal blood, so we're just going to chop your head off. We're not going to burn you to death. We're all so kind. But in the days building up to it, Mary sends Feckenham to try and convert Jane to Protestantism. The implication is serious. She's 18 years old. She's going to die in front of the country. It'll be a public death. And they're going to try and get her to recant beforehand. The implication being no one really wants to put to death this woman in front of everyone. And the underlying theme here is, if you'll convert, we'll commute your sentence. We won't kill you. Well, they debate, and specifically they debate the issue of communion. Feckenham challenged Jane Grey that communion was literally the body and blood of Christ, and listen to how this 18-year-old responds. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper offered unto me is a sure seal and testimony that I am by the blood of Christ, which He shed for me on the cross, made partaker of the everlasting kingdom. But no, surely I do not so believe in transubstantiation. I think that at the supper I neither receive flesh nor blood, but bread and wine, which bread when it is broken and which wine when it is drunken puts me in remembrance, a memorial, how that for my sins the body of Christ was broken and His blood shed on the cross. And with that bread and wine, I receive the benefits that come by the breaking of His body and the shedding of His blood for our sins on the cross. She's facing death. Young lady, just admit that it is the body and blood of Christ. And it will just be imprisonment. And this is what she responds with. The point of the debate is as this guy comes to kind of get her turned to Catholicism, this 18-year-old girl tries to get the monk to convert to Protestantism. It's too good to pass up one more Jane Grey quote. In a letter to her 14-year-old sister Catherine, a day or so before she was put to death, she wrote this: Catherine, live to die, that by death you may enter into eternal life and then enjoy the life that Christ has gained for you by his death. Don't think that just because you are now young and your life will be long, because young and old as God lives. There's this sweet sense of her understanding, her conviction. She's not a Protestant by birth. She's a Protestant by belief.
7 · Oswald synthesizes the memorial function with last week's teaching on sacraments as signs and seals
The Lord's Supper wasn't a new sacrifice. It was a memorial, a proclamation. We said last week that the sacraments are signs and seals. It's a sign of what Christ has accomplished. It's a seal. That's an old way of saying it's a pledge of assurance that just as we see the bread broken and the cup shared, we know that Christ was truly offered for our redemption on the cross. In the Lord's Supper, we remember these things so that our faith is strengthened through the Spirit's power. It's a means of grace.
8 · Oswald announces a concrete liturgical change: Providence will begin using wine in communion
This is another part of why we practice communion the way that we do. Before the time of the Reformation, communion was only practiced once a year. And only the bread was given to the congregation. The priest was the only one allowed to partake of the wine. Part of the reason why we all partake of it is because first of all, it's clear in 1 Corinthians, Paul is saying we all come together as one body and we all take the bread, we all take the wine. And so we want to practice it that way. The way that we come to the table should recognize the richness of Christ's sacrifice. So here's something we're going to start doing in the future. At Providence, we're going to start practicing communion with bread and wine. We're going to start using wine with communion. We're going to do this because for 800 years the church has always used wine with communion. It wasn't until the temperance movement in the U.S. in the middle of the 19th century that it became common to substitute wine with Welch's. Wine is a richly textured symbol in Scripture. There are absolutely warnings and prohibitions against drunkenness, overconsumption of wine, which is why we're still going to give you the really small glasses. But it's a beautiful thing in Scripture. Wine is a symbol of God's blessing. It's a symbol of God's provision. It's a symbol of celebration and of worship. Talking with someone about this subject. She was adamant. I said, what do you do with Jesus' first miracle being turning water into wine at the wedding of Canaan and the recognition that this is the really good stuff? In other words, it was more potent than the other wine they served. Usually you serve the good stuff first and the really bad stuff later because people can't tell the difference. Then Jesus serves, turns water into really good wine. And this person was adamant, no, it was unfermented grape juice. No, it was wine. It was a blessing. So we're going to implement wine in communion. Now, I recognize for some people there might be a history of struggle. Maybe you have a conviction about this. We're going to have colored glasses, little plastic dealies, what do you officially call them, I don't know, communion dispensers, in the middle of the plate. So if you have a conviction you don't want to take wine or you have a history with alcohol and you'd prefer to take grape juice, there'll be an option in the middle of the plate for you to do that. But I want to make us able to enjoy the richness of communion together. We are commemorating the blood of Christ. It shouldn't be thin, unfermented Welch's. It should be rich textured beautiful wine. And so we're going to start doing that together as a church.
9 · Oswald signals the structural shift from the first major point (proclamation) to the second (participation)
The Lord's Supper, the next thing we see, not just a proclamation of the gospel, the Lord's Supper is a participation in the gospel.
10 · Oswald names the error his second point corrects: reducing the Lord's Supper to 'just a memorial
The Lord's Supper is a participation in the gospel. Now remember I said sometimes today people can be sacramentally challenged. So sometimes we're going to be too casual about the way we approach things. Sometimes we're uninformed. Well, in that latter category, we could be uninformed when we think of the Lord's Supper as just a memorial. So remember the last point was saying we do it to proclaim the gospel, we do it to remember, that text, 'In remembrance of Me.' But we're uninformed in the way we practice the sacrament if we think that it's only a memorial and that's all that's going on.
11 · Oswald introduces the critique that a strictly memorial view argues for 'the real absence' of Christ, then turns to 1 Corinthians 10:16 to establish the participatory language of the text
One commentator I read on this said where the Roman Catholic Church argues for the real presence, He's physically present in the substances, those who argue for a strictly memorial view actually argue for the real absence. Jesus is not here in what we do. There's a motivation here that I appreciate. It's to safeguard the view that Jesus' body and blood is actually being consumed. But something is lost when that's all the table is, is a memorial meal. 1 Corinthians 10:16, 'The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?' It's not just in remembrance, it's participation because there is one bread, we who are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. This is why the Lord's Supper is often called communion. Because we participate. We commune. We don't just recall what Jesus has done when we eat and drink. Through the Spirit's presence and by faith, the body of Christ is brought into participation and communion with Christ in His death and resurrection at the Lord's Table.
12 · Oswald enlists Calvin to argue that the table does not merely display our union with Christ but actively nourishes and deepens it
Through the Spirit's presence, it's a spiritual thing, and by faith, when the person participating has faith in what Christ has done, there's a real participation. Calvin rightly argues in the Reformation that our union with Christ isn't just displayed at the table. So when you see the bread and the wine, it's not just displaying the fact that we're in union with Christ. No, Calvin said, in the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine by faith, the Spirit nourishes and deepens our spiritual union with Christ. This is why we should never be casual about the Lord's Supper. He is spiritually present in what we're practicing. It's a means of grace. The Spirit is galvanizing your faith. The Spirit is increasing your assurance. The Spirit is substantiating the foundation of the truthfulness of Christ's promises. He's bringing you into Christ.
13 · Oswald draws the theological boundary: Christ is not physically present (rejecting transubstantiation) but is spiritually present
We reject that Christ is physically present, but He is spiritually there. And this is the only way. If you don't have an idea of Christ's spiritual presence, I don't think there's any way to make sense of John 6.
14 · Oswald expounds John 6 at length, emphasizing the priority of faith in Jesus' bread-of-life discourse and the typological connection to manna in the wilderness
What's John 6? Remember John 6? Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.' Verse 40, 'For this is the will of My Father that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life. I will raise him up on the last day. Verse 50: This— Jesus referring to Himself— is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh. Verse 52 is crucial: Then the Jews disputed among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' Two things to notice. First, you see the priority of faith in Jesus' whole argument? He's the bread of life to those who believe. If you believe in him, he becomes the bread of life. He's sustaining towards eternal life. He nourishes you and feeds you. It's a whole imagery of the wilderness and the manna that comes from heaven. Jesus says, 'I'm the true manna. The whole story points to Me. And when Israel was in the wilderness and starving and crying out for food, God gave them manna. The whole point of that was that He could have Me come and I could say, 'I'm the true manna.'' Faith is necessary. It's not enough just to eat the elements and to assume no matter what state your heart is in that you'll be saved. That's part of the error of transubstantiation. Ex opera operato, little Latin phrase. In other words, doesn't matter what state your heart is in as long as you're taking these elements because they're literally Christ's body and blood, you're getting grace. You can come in not believing and get the elements and you're getting grace. That's built into the theology of it. In John 6, Jesus says, 'No, you have to believe. Your faith matters.' And then 52, the Jews are understandably struggling with this. It's like, 'You're saying we're supposed to eat you? You're a little crazy.' There's a sense here of this is cannibalistic. And just so you're clear, the early church gets accused of the same thing. Their love feasts when they come to partake of the Lord's table with brothers and sisters, the world looking on at them says these people are cannibals and they practice incest. They refer to other believers as brothers and sisters and they talk about eating a guy's flesh. So you kind of expect here, they're accusing Him of cannibalism. How is Jesus going to respond? Is He going to say, 'Whoa, you misunderstand. I'm just kind of being symbolic. It's just a story. You're not really going to eat Me.' No, he intensifies the prior comment. He knows it's a hard saying, and then he makes the hard saying harder. So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 'Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.' Point being, if you don't do this, you don't abide. 'As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he will also live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread,' Jesus, 'will live forever.'
15 · Oswald names the mystery of the sacrament, citing Calvin's willingness to acknowledge what exceeds human reason
When we come to the table, it's not just a memorial. Now, this is heady, mysterious stuff. That's what Calvin says in his commentaries on it. There's a point where we just have to recognize in humility human reason can't figure all of this out. In fact, He kind of throws his hands up and says the beauty of the Lord's Supper is that it is mysterious, that it is beyond us. But while Christ isn't physically present, he is spiritually present. And so believing and eating all go together. They're all indispensable. Christ is the bread of life in the Lord's Supper through faith, not a magical transformation of substances. Through faith and the presence of the Spirit, we eat Christ's flesh and drink His blood in the Lord's Supper, and so we're nourished, we receive grace, our hearts are strengthened. Christ indwells us and we abide and remain in Him.
16 · Oswald introduces the provocative claim (via Calvin) that union with Christ grows—countering the static view many believers hold
Calvin says in the Lord's Supper, our union with Christ grows. You ever think of your union with Christ like that? I think we tend to think of it as this static thing, right? You come to faith and you're united with Christ and there it is, once and for all thing. No, he says our union with Christ grows. The sense of union with Christ is the sense of all of salvation. So yes, regeneration and yes, justification, but also sanctification. Your union with Christ grows through sanctification and sanctification is is given extra help and extra grace through coming to the Lord's table.
17 · Oswald quotes the Heidelberg Catechism at length to show how a pastoral confessional document articulates the participatory view
I love— give you a little church history now. We've been doing it before. I love how the Heidelberg Catechism deals with these. The Heidelberg Catechism, it's a really pastoral catechism. It's very comforting. It's not overly academic. It's question and answer format. It says, first, what does it mean to eat the crucified body of Christ and to drink his poured out blood? Answer: It means to accept with a believing heart the entire suffering and death of Christ, and thereby to receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life. But it means more. Through the Holy Spirit who lives both in Christ and in us, we are united more and more to Christ's blessed body. And so, although he is in heaven and we are on earth, we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, and we forever live on and are governed by one Spirit, as the members of our body are one soul. Why then, next question, does Christ call the bread His body and the cup His blood, or the new covenant in His blood? And Paul used the words, a participation in Christ's body and blood. Answer: because Christ has good reason for these words. He wants to teach us that just as bread and wine nourish the temporal life, so too His crucified body and poured out blood are the true food and drink of our souls for eternal life. But more important, he wants to assure us. He wants to drive the promises home to your heart. He wants you to know that you're his, that you're a son and daughter of the living God. More important, he wants to assure us by this visible sign and pledge that we, through the Spirit's work, share in His true body and blood as surely as our mouths receive these holy signs of His remembrance, and that all of His suffering and obedience are definitely ours, as if we personally had suffered and made satisfaction for our own sins.
18 · Oswald steps out of exposition into direct pastoral address, inviting the congregation to imagine taking communion with conscious faith in the parallel between physical nourishment and spiritual satisfaction
Have you ever taken the Lord's Supper and thought that? As surely as I'm chewing this bread. Jesus, your body was broken for me. As surely as I'm tasting this wine, your blood was shed. And as surely as I swallow these elements and they nourish my body, your sacrifice made perfect satisfaction. That's what happens. That's what we celebrate.
19 · Oswald signals the third major point, transitioning from participation to the qualifications for participation
Now, the centrality of faith also implies that the Lord's Supper isn't for everyone. It's our final point. The Lord's Supper is practiced by those whose identity continues to be shaped by the Gospel. They participate in the Gospel, but also they continue to be shaped by it.
20 · Oswald contrasts communion with a false gospel of 'summer camp Christianity' that divorces profession from ongoing obedience
This isn't the summer camp experience. I've been living in flagrant sin for 40 years, but when I was 12 years old, I gave my heart to Jesus, and so it doesn't matter what I do with the rest of my life. No, that's not the point of the Lord's Supper. That's not how you're meant to approach it. Baptism, we saw last week, it's a sacrament— what did we say? It's a sacrament of initiation. Right? Baptism is a sacrament of initiation. It initiates an individual visibly into the body of Christ. Those who are baptized are now officially a member of the body of Christ. And the body of Christ officially in witnessing their baptism says, 'We concur. We agree. You are saved and you are one of us.' Communion, the Lord's Supper, is a sacrament of ongoing unity, ongoing membership, ongoing fellowship and participation with Christ and His church. That's Paul's point. These two work together. One initiates entrance into the body of Christ. The other conveys ongoing membership. Verse 17, he says, because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we partake of the one bread. Other places he says because there is one baptism, we're part of one body, right? Now here he says because there's one bread, it's the same reminder. In other words, communion is partaken only by believers who've publicly embraced the gospel.
21 · Oswald establishes the historical priority of baptism before communion and unpacks the logic: baptism is the public declaration of intent to be identified with the body, and communion is the ongoing practice of that identity
Now think about this and process this. Communion is partaken only by believers who've publicly embraced the gospel. Historically, you look back at church history, there's always been a priority of baptism before communion. That was the order that was always practiced. Before someone can join the church, the one body, before they can join the church in taking the bread, they had to publicly declare their intent to be identified with the one body. We said last week, right? Paul has no notion of an unchurched Christian. And so he has no notion of an unbaptized Christian. Because if you were baptized, you're a part of the church and nobody wasn't a part of the church. Well, we can take it further. Historically, the church has never been in the habit of inviting unbaptized Christians to take the Lord's Supper. Historically, the church has never been in the practice of inviting unbaptized Christians to partake of the Lord's Supper. The reason is that together baptism and the Lord's Supper are a means of grace when they're administered, but also a means of convicting discipline when they're withheld. So when a person's put under church discipline, it's meant to be a statement. What do you say? What's that person— what's it called, the process, the technical term? Excommunicated, right? Excommunicated is just drawing attention to the fact that they're being removed from participation in the Lord's Supper. They're being excommunicated, removed from communion. That's happening because the genuineness of their faith is in question by the way they're living their life. So too, the church is saying, if we question the genuineness of your faith, we're also questioning the genuineness of your baptism. That's what church discipline is about. That's why it's practiced.
22 · Oswald traces the cultural-historical roots of the cavalier approach to communion to the revival movements of the 18th and 19th centuries
If we want to trace this whole notion of sort of a cavalier approach to communion, we can go back and look at the revivals of the 18th and 19th century. Not making comment on the fruitfulness of those events, especially the First Great Awakening with Edwards and Whitefield and Wesley, There's much to commend it. There is much fruit that was born from it. But one unintended consequence of these revival events was a growth and prominence of individualistic Christianity where a personal experience reigned supreme. So to be a genuine believer got reduced to a person's ability to lay claim to a personal conversion experience. Hence the old phrase, Have you made Jesus your personal Lord and Savior? Now, in part, this recognizes a truthful thing. You absolutely have to individually come to Christ and receive salvation. You can't be born into a believing family. You can't just generically show up at church a bunch of times and that means you're saved. No. Individually, the Holy Spirit has to save you, has to cause you to be born again. You have to respond in faith individually. You have to individually commit yourself to Christ. All absolutely true. However, the unintended consequence was that individual experience of salvation now took center stage, and the thing it pushed off to the side was the role of the church and the importance of the sacraments. Corporate communal activities took a back seat to individual personal experiences. The Lord's Supper became a 'me and Jesus' event rather than Jesus, me, and the body of Christ. You see the difference?
23 · Oswald uses his college experience to illustrate the problem of indiscriminate communion divorced from church membership and baptism
An illustration of this: in college, I went to a Baptist Christian university loved the school, but they had several times during the year where they would practice communion for everyone in the community. And they had this big Benson Great Hall, they called it, this beautiful 2,500-seat auditorium, just like immaculate acoustics. Professional artists would come in and record their albums in there because the acoustics are so perfect. And so it was this amazing place to worship, but they would come and invite the whole community to practice communion. At the time I thought nothing of it, but in looking back It wasn't right. Just to carelessly, indiscriminately invite anybody to come forward. We were a school, not a church. There was no one ensuring that this was a practice rightly held of the practice of baptism, that these people were truly saved, that they had walked through baptism. Instead, I saw it with my friends, it was part of a means of false grace. These people who really weren't saved, and I saw this later in life, but were part of this community that was giving them all sorts of affirmations of their salvation. Come and take communion with 2,000 other people! Look how much you must love Jesus! But there wasn't a rightly administered sense the way they belonged to the church and needed the church and needed the body and needed to proclaim their identity with Christ first. No instructions, just come participate.
24 · Oswald applies the corporate nature of communion to specific pastoral scenarios: weddings and care groups
It's why it's not appropriate at a wedding ceremony. I love the impulse of a bride and groom. We want to have communion. Bride and groom say that to me. That's great! How are we going to serve the whole church? Well, we just want to have communion. No, no, we can't do that. It's communion. We're celebrating together as the body. That's what it means. You can't just have communion if there's the two of you. Communion, as the name suggests, is not just an act observed. It's an act partaken. The whole congregation is involved. The whole congregation is involved and so to take communion means the body needs to be present and the word needs to be preached. That's why I would discourage communion in a care group setting. The whole body's not present. It's not accompanied by the preaching of the Gospel.
25 · Oswald expounds 1 Corinthians 11:27-29, naming it 'the hard section' and unpacking the warning that unworthy participation brings judgment
We read this in verse 27. This is part of the hard section of the passage. 'Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.' guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. The Lord's Supper is a beautiful thing, but what Paul is saying is that the means of grace become a means of judgment. For those who take it improperly. We don't tend to think of communion that way, do we? I think this is why we can say we're too casual in the way we approach it. It's a hard thing to swallow. But what Paul is saying is it's a serious thing to come to the table and partake of the Lord. It's a serious thing to come and commemorate his death and to act as if by faith you have joined your life and your identity to that death and that resurrection. It's a serious thing to come to this table and take these elements and to eat them and by faith spiritually be united to the risen Christ. It's a serious thing.
26 · Oswald names the first of two final applications: the priority of baptism before communion
So I want to conclude with two points of application. The first just points back to last week. The priority of baptism. Fundamentally, it's meant to help people discern if they should partake in the table. That's part of what baptism is about. It's to protect you against verses 27-32. Baptism is part of the way the church operates and says, we want to make sure you're not putting yourself in a position of judgment by carelessly coming to the table. As the body of Christ, we want to come alongside you and help you discern the genuineness of your faith, proclaim witness to the genuineness of that faith so that you can come full of faith when you come to the table.
27 · Oswald addresses parents directly, calling them to ensure their children are baptized before taking communion
Parents, this is important. If your child is taking communion without being baptized, you need to address it. Now, that is not any sort of statement in any way, shape, or form that should be construed as an indictment against you or your parenting. I think a lot of people just aren't aware. I think part of it falls on us as pastors. We haven't done a good enough job of educating you on the priority of baptism before communion. But it doesn't alleviate the reality. To come to the table means you've stood before the body, you've been baptized, you've proclaimed your faith, they've recognized that faith. It's a totally modern phenomenon for unbaptized individuals to join in the Lord's Supper. Now, what should you do if you've been doing that? Well, I would say look at your child and say, boy, I look at my 15-year-old and this is a believer. Well, on September 14th there's a baptism class and September 28th there's a baptism. If that's a believer, have them be baptized in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you look at it and you say, boy, I think he was just like little Matthew Wasing and thought the bread looked really cool and he was 8 years old and kind of wanted to and we didn't have a good reason why he shouldn't. Thought it may be nice if he did. And so for the last 3 years, our 6-year-old has been partaking and now they're 9. And now that I think about it, I'm not sure. Here's what I would say. Look at your child and say, if they haven't been baptized, why not? Are they ready for baptism? And if they are, then have them be baptized. If you're looking at your child and you're saying, I don't think they're ready for baptism— if they're not ready for baptism, I guarantee you they're not ready for the Lord's table. There's all sorts of things kids want to do before they're ready. My 5-year-old, a month away from 6, really would like to drive my car, but he ain't ready. He has his little Lightning McQueen car, the little battery-operated thing he drives around our driveway. And I see the way he runs into my car and the tree and his siblings. He's not ready to be behind the wheel. Now I'm giving him the little Lightning McQueen car. He's driving it around. I'm teaching him. One day I'm going to train him for it. But part of being a good parent is withholding some things that are good things and beneficial things, even blessings, until they're mature enough to partake of them. With that said, if you don't feel like your child is ready, that should be a convicting thing. If your child's not ready for baptism, they're not ready for the table.
28 · Oswald explains Providence's 'open-ish' table practice, positioning it between the closed table of high church tradition and the indiscriminately open table of some Baptist churches
The other thing I want to say is we practice an open-ish table at Providence. Historically, there's different ways of approaching the table. Very high church places tend to practice a closed table. You can't come participate in communion unless you've been approved by the elders. That was the church I grew up in. I had to go before the pastor, remember, at 13 and explain the gospel and sit down with him and quake in my boots before I could come partake of the table. If you were a guest that Sunday, unless you had a letter of recommendation from another eldership that they affirmed, you didn't get to participate in the table. You get a sense of the gravity people take in coming to the Lord's Supper. We don't go that far here. On the other end of the spectrum is a totally open table that just says anyone who loves Jesus and has said, 'I'm saved,' you can come. We invite you all. What we would practice— one more caveat with that. A lot of Baptist churches will practice that with the caveat of saying anyone who's baptized by immersion as a believer So anyone who practices a Baptist understanding of baptism can come to the table. I understand where that conviction comes from. I say we're open-ish in this sense. We invite anyone to eat with us who's been baptized and who's made a public confession of their faith. If you've been baptized by immersion, believer's baptism, and profess before the church, we invite you to take communion with us. Wherever that church was. At the same time, if you were just sprinkled, we invite you to come. If you grew up in a Presbyterian or Lutheran home and you were baptized as an infant and then as a teenager you made profession or confession of faith before the church, we invite you to come. We're open-ish in the sense we want the table to be a point of unity. We want it to display the unity of the body of Christ. We believe in believers' baptism by immersion. If you haven't been, I would strongly encourage you to be so. I was baptized as a baby, conviction of the Spirit and scriptures. I was baptized as an adult. I made the mistake in my Baptist class at Bethlehem Baptist Church of saying I wanted to be rebaptized. Pastor David Livingston said, no, no, my friend, You're going to be baptized for the first time. Okay. We believe in believer's baptism, but we want the table to represent the unity of the body of Christ. So we've embraced that. If you embrace the gospel, you identify with Christ in his death and resurrection, you've exhibited public faith, come to the table. Join with us in the table. But don't do it at the exclusion of baptism. Some way, shape, or form.
29 · Oswald names the second application: self-examination before taking communion
Second point of application, final one: there should be examination of your heart. So Paul is calling for in this passage that each person would examine themselves before they partake. It's given to believers. That's who receives the Lord's Supper. It's given to those who are joined to the church through the Spirit's work by faith. So the first question to ask before you take the Lord's Supper is really simple: Am I a believer? But even for believers, we should ask ourselves each time, am I ready to receive the Lord's Supper? I want to encourage reverence before the Lord's table. Reverence that recognizes God's holiness and the place of repentance and confession and assurance during worship. High church Reformed liturgies build that into their service. They start out their liturgy with either a public reading or a song or a scripture declaring God's holiness. And then there's a public confession of faith on the part of the congregation. And then they don't just leave it there. They come back with a declaration of assurance and forgiveness and then worship and praise. We try to build those into our service and the songs that we sing, but when we come to the Lord's table, you should be approaching it in that way, recognizing God's holiness, repenting of known sin, confessing that sin, and then rejoicing in the assurance that the table celebrates.
30 · Oswald specifies when a believer should abstain from communion: when they lack repentance over known sin
When shouldn't you take communion? It's another question. When you lack repentance over sin, if you just know in your heart there is something you have done that is wrong and you need to repent of it, but you also in the stubbornness of your heart do not want to repent, you bring judgment upon yourself to come to the Lord's table with your heart in that way. So come humbling yourself before for the cross. I'm not expecting that when I see someone take communion on Sunday morning, it means they didn't sin all week long. They were perfect this week. That's why they got to eat the bread. Shake their hand after the service. Maybe it'll rub off. No, we're broken people. So come repenting and swearing renewed allegiance.
31 · Oswald names a second condition for abstaining: lack of reconciliation with someone in the church
Communion is not just an expression of our union with Christ, but our corporate solidarity with the entire body. So another time when you shouldn't come and take is if you know you lack reconciliation with someone in the church. There is someone right now that you harbor anger and bitterness towards. You couldn't shake their hand, you couldn't sit at the table with them, you couldn't invite them over to your home. We're partaking of one bread. You're not in a place— now, I'm not suggesting you necessarily can't partake. What I would say is repent before the elements come. Let God break your heart through His Spirit and then commit yourself. I'm taking of this one bread. And so after this, I'm going to go to that person and reconcile in the name of the gospel and display again that we are part of one body because we are part of one head, Jesus Christ.
32 · Oswald names the danger of unexamined participation: hypocrisy and a hardened heart
To take communion in an unexamined and penitent or rebellious state is nothing less than hypocrisy before the risen Christ. Paul warns us sternly because he loves us. That's why verse 27 and following is there. Not because Paul is a grumpy old dude. He's writing to the church of Corinth and they are messing this up. You want to talk about sacramentally challenged? Corinth is challenged in a lot of ways. They're spiritually gift challenged. They're understanding of apostles challenged. They got all sorts of issues. And now they're coming in and it's apparent, like, evidently the people who are really hungry kind of come to the table and eat all the bread before everybody else gets there. Not quite exactly what Paul had in mind. There's a sense where people are kind of hoarding good stuff or coming to these love feasts where they practice the Lord's Supper and then continue to eat together and it's like, man, I wish I could sit at the cool kids' table where they have the good food and all the wealthy people sit. I'm kind of sitting over here with the scraps. Paul instructs us this way because he loves us. He wants to see the church flourish. And he doesn't want our hearts to be hardened by sin. That's what's at risk you come to the table and you don't examine yourself and you're cavalier about it. You just keep taking the means of grace. I just keep taking the elements because it's all good. Living in flagrant sin, but it's all good. That's— your heart is getting hard. You're deceiving yourself. Sleeping with my girlfriend, but it's okay. Your heart is getting hard. Stealing money from my boss, but it's okay. Your heart is getting hard. Paul doesn't want that.
33 · Oswald guards against the opposite error: hyper-introspection that keeps believers from the table
If you feel conviction, here's what I want to say. As much as we want to have examination, the flip side of this, and I want to end here, is not that we would have hyper-introspection when people come to the table. My goal is not next week when we practice the Lord's Supper, 4 people partake. Man, we had way too much bread. That's not the goal. It's not that you would be crazy introspective, just obsessed with yourself all week. Man, I gotta get right with God so I can come to communion. I don't want anyone to look at me and wonder, why didn't they take communion? What's wrong with that person? That's not what I'm going for. Communion shouldn't be the most depressing thing in your week. It's a beautiful thing. It's a celebration. The point of the table isn't to obsess over your sin. If you do that, you've completely lost sight of the gospel it's meant to proclaim. In other words, the way Christ's righteousness in spite of your sin offers you the only hope of forgiveness. No one has ever taken communion in a sinless, perfect state. Every person, every week, every Sunday throughout the world who takes the Lord's Supper does it in need of grace. And if they do it right, they do it in need of grace, but even more so rejoicing in the assurance that at this table and at the cross it points to, God has provided grace. If you feel conviction, During communion, the correct response isn't to not partake. It's to repent and believe the gospel. Don't think I'm too unclean to come. Think I'm too unclean to come. Praise God, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ, his blood and righteousness. It's the good news of the gospel. You're never good enough. You're never perfect enough. You're never righteous enough. You can never take communion on your own merits. You always come by faith alone.
34 · Oswald unpacks the phrase 'the Lord's Supper' to emphasize Christ's presidency over the meal
Communion is the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper. Have you ever thought about this? It means Christ presides over the event. He's spiritually present. It's His supper. The enthroned Christ stands over and says, 'Come to My table.' It's an invitation for saved yet broken sinners in need of further redemption. That's the point.
35 · Oswald names the eschatological dimension of communion: it points forward to the marriage feast of the Lamb
The other point of it, concluding thought, is that communion, the Lord's Supper, is meant to point forward. It points back to the cross, right? And it points forward to the marriage feast of the Lamb. It's the whole point that's going on in Revelation. The Lamb says, 'Come to my table. Come to my feast for eternity. Enjoy my presence and my bounty.' When we come to the communion table, we recognize the cross. We recognize what Christ has done. We recognize and pray for ongoing unity to be more indwelt by the Spirit. More filled, more abiding Christ. And we rejoice with assurance that as we take this table, there's coming a day when we will know all these things in their fullness. When the Lamb will return. And you won't have to examine yourself anymore because sin will be gone.
36 · Oswald closes with a corporate prayer of eschatological longing, asking that the church would practice the sacraments rightly and be stirred to live for the day of Christ's return
Father, we want that day. We want the day when sin is eradicated from our hearts. We want the day when your kingdom arrives in all of its fullness, not just the foretaste we know now. We want the day when Jesus comes back and every knee bows and every tongue confesses. And so we want to rejoice and practice rightly baptism and the Lord's Supper. We want to come to your table so that our hearts would be stirred up to live for that day and to live in light of that day, to the glory of the Lamb Jesus. Amen.