I Earnestly Desired To Eat This Passover With You

which is a meal that would be shared by all of God's people. And so in our text this morning, this is what Jesus does. He goes and he has the Passover with his disciples in an upper room. And as I was preparing or beginning to prepare this sermon, I was thinking, well, should we do one week on it or ten? Because there's so much that can be said about the Lord's Supper, about what the Passover became, what it represents, what it... what it is. And I went back and forth and I could make in my mind, I'm saying, well, if we spend all this time, we're really helpful and we need the instruction and the encouragement and the grace that comes from digging deep into what the Lord's Supper is. And yet that's not what we're going to do. We're going to spend one week on it, just this week. And so instead of going down into all of the details of what the Lord's Supper is and what it represents,

and how we ought to observe it, and when we ought to observe it, and what you ought to observe it with, and all the questions that surround this. I want to take our time this morning and focus on the purpose of the Last Supper. Why was this a big deal? Why do we do this? Is it just something we do because we're supposed to do it, or is there some reason for it? What is the primary reason that we're to celebrate the Lord's Supper? That's what we're going to be focusing on this morning. And so to that end, We're going to be seeing how Jesus celebrates the Lord's Supper. And I want to tell you from the beginning, so you're not sitting here wondering, like, okay, so what's the purpose? What's the purpose? What's the purpose? I just want to tell you from the beginning and then make my case for why that is the purpose throughout the sermon. I want to tell you the purpose of the Lord's Supper is to strengthen God's people. That's the purpose. Okay? It's meant to strengthen us and to grow us in our faith. All right? I want to read to you now.

From the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22, verses 7 through 20. Would you please stand for the reading of God's Word? This is the Word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Then came the first day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. And Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us, so that we may eat it. They said to him, Where do you want us to prepare it? And he said to them, When you have entered the city, a man will meet you, carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house that he enters.

And you shall say to the owner of the house, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large furnished upper room. Prepare it there. And they left and found everything just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. When the hour had come, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he said, Take this and share it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. And when he had taken some bread and given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way he took the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Do you ever wonder why we stand when we read Scripture? Kind of a weird thing. We stand a lot in our worship service, you know. We stand because of the authority of Scripture. And because we want to stand at attention as recipients of it, saying we're being told to do something, we're receiving instruction. And this is the posture of action. I'm not sitting, I'm not lounging, I'm not doing something else. I'm standing at attention, listening. In the military, when they have something to say, you stand up, you stand, you know. In a particular way, I was never in the military, so I don't know how they're supposed to stand exactly. But they're to stand at attention and listen and to receive their instructions. And that's why we stand for the reading of Scripture is so that we put our bodies into a position of reception for what we're hearing. So just a little aside. So we're going to be looking at the Lord's Supper or the Passover as it's described here. We're going to start at the beginning of the text looking at the purpose behind what Jesus does.

And so the first thing Jesus does in our text is he sends Peter and John to go prepare the meal. And since we know that all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching and instruction, we have to start by asking, why did Jesus send these men to prepare the meal? It's a private instruction, not a public instruction, which means that they're supposed to learn something from this instruction. Now, it's a strange instruction. He tells them, go into a city, and you're going to find a man with a... pitcher of water. Follow him, most likely a servant, having gone to the well to collect water. You're to follow him into the house he enters. And when you get into that house, you're supposed to say to the owner of the house, the teacher says, where can we have the Passover? Now, their culture was different than ours. In America, this would just, I mean, we don't even go to each other's houses without calling or texting first. Hey, can I come by? Is it okay? How about next Thursday at four?

We just don't show up unannounced. Many of us would think that would be rude if someone would just, a friend, someone we know, would just show up at our house. You what? You were told that? I remember when you and your wife got married, that was the warm cultures and cold cultures, I remember. Luis will show up at your house unannounced, so we won't let him see your connection card. Culturally, it would have been different. They wouldn't have had the anxiety about this sort of thing that we would have. And yet, there was still... something strange about a stranger showing up in the house and saying, where can we eat the Passover? And you have to bear in mind that this is a private instruction. This is an instruction that's given to them. It's not meant for the crowds to learn something about. It's meant for them to learn something about. They're being told to go do something very strange. And yet this instruction is not just for them. While it's not for the crowds because there aren't crowds around, it is for us because Luke's recorded it for us that we might learn the same lesson from this section of scripture.

that the disciples or the apostles were to learn. We do realize that Jesus could have simply told them, go into the city to this house and prepare a meal for me. But he actually makes them interact with people, with strangers. Follow this guy with the water pitcher and then say to the owner of the house. And you'll remember when he entered into Jerusalem, he didn't send them on this wild goose chase as it were. He said, go in there and there'll be a donkey tied up to a post and take it and bring it to me. And he did tell them how to negotiate the fact that they were going to be accused of stealing it. You know, say to the owner, the Lord has need of it. And so he's in the habit of sending his people, his disciples, into situations that require faith. If you were told to do something like this, would there not be inside of you something that's like, what exactly is it you want me to go do with these strangers?

Just show up, just walk into their house and then tell them that you have need of it? Jesus says, yes, exactly. And so one way of saying it is they need faith to do this work. And another way of saying it is Jesus is about to leave them. And he knows he's about to leave them. He's about to be arrested. He's about to be beaten. And he's about to be killed. And then after he's resurrected, he's going to go back to heaven. He's going to ascend. And so the short version of it is, He's not going to be around much longer. And his people are going to have to change their expectations because they're not going to have him leading them and bearing the brunt of all of the teaching, the instruction, the opposition. They're going to have to bear this. And if they're going to have to bear this sort of stuff, they're going to need to trust God in the midst of it that he hasn't abandoned them to this work. And so as he's preparing to leave, he does these...

things that require them to act by faith, to grow in faith, and to see that he, even when he's apart from them, go in and get that donkey. Follow that man into his house, that they're not alone in this work, but that he goes with them into the work. He goes before them and prepares their way, even though they're unaware of it. The Lord knows all things. There's nothing hidden from his sight. And so when they go into this man's house, What do we know about this owner of this home? We know that the Lord's been at work in him, preparing him to receive this instruction or this request and to meet it. You note that the room, this upper room, was furnished. It's prepared for this purpose, and lo and behold, no one else is using it for this purpose. The Lord was at work in this owner, this homeowner, preparing him to have his house ready for this time. So one of the things I want you to,

there's a difference between the way in which things worked at the apostles' time and the way that things work for us now, and it has to do with where God's word comes from and how does he speak to people and how does he work. Well, when Jesus was around, he spoke as God, and everything he said were the words of God. And Isaiah tells us that In chapter 55, the word which goes forth from his mouth will not return to him empty, but it will accomplish what he desires. And it will not return without succeeding in the matter for which he sent it. And so when Jesus would say things when he lived, this is what was going on. He never said anything that didn't happen or come to pass. And now we live in a time we don't walk around the countryside with Jesus. And yet we do still have his words. And we do still have...

The Lord sending his word out and it's still accomplishing the purpose for which he sent it. And so when you strip away everything that is going on with these disciples, Peter and John being sent out, what you have is the word of God going out. The teacher has need of this room and it being accomplished. It not being left a void or left hanging. And that's true for us still to this day, even though we don't have Jesus walking around with us. We do still have his word, and his word is still living and active, and it is still going out, and it is still accomplishing the purpose for which he sent it. And in the same way that it would have taken these disciples to have faith, it would have taken faith for them to go into this man's house and say, the teacher has need of this house. The teacher says, it will take faith for us to stand and to speak God's words.

They're not always popular. They're not always complimentary. You remember I said we all want to see Jesus in the scripture lesson. We all want to see the Lord. And we're all like, yeah, yeah. And then you read and it's like the Lord says, I'm not going to go with these people because they're an obstinate people. And if I go with them, I'll destroy them. And it's like, hmm. When I thought of the Lord and me wanting to meet the Lord, it wasn't that. He didn't act like that. But he was merciful to his people. And they ought to have feared him because they'd sinned against him greatly in making the golden calf.

And even still, Moses pleaded for them and said, be merciful to them. These are your people. How will they be distinguished from the people of all the other nations if you don't go with us? And so the Lord goes with them. And so the first thing I want you to see this morning is you have to trust God's word. We stand because it's authoritative. We stand because a holy God is speaking to us. And we're recipients or vessels that take. the word of God. We're not those who stand in judgment of it. You want to be like a sponge with the word of God, not like a duck. You know, if you pour water on a sponge, it soaks it all up. And if you pour water on a duck, it all just runs off and then the duck's still dry. We want to be sponges. We want to possess in ourselves the word of God in such a way that when the need arises, we're able to speak it and to see the Lord at work accomplishing his will.

And it requires faith for us to do that. It doesn't come easily. This is not a natural desire or aptitude or gift. It's something that we have to grow in. It's something we have to pursue. And so Jesus sends them into this stranger's house to grow in this very thing. So then after they go in and after they say, the teacher says, where's the guest room in which we may eat the Passover? And they're showed this room. It says they left and they found everything just as Jesus had told them. And then in verse 14, it says, when the hour had come, he reclined at the table. And so there's some passage of time. Most likely this instruction was given early in the morning, go prepare the Passover. And then Jesus would have gone on about his business during the day, probably going into the temple and teaching it. They were going to observe the Passover that evening. And so he gives us this instruction. They go and do their work. He goes and does his work. And then in the evening, after this time has passed, they come back together. When the hour had come, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him. Excuse me.

And so they're all together again. And you know, the interesting thing in this passage, and we could spend a lot of time talking about it, is that Judas is with them at the Lord's Supper. How long could we talk about the fact that Judas ate the Lord's Supper right before he went and betrayed Jesus and what the implications of that are? It's interesting stuff. I'm happy to talk about it after the sermon because I've got a lot of thoughts about it, but I'm not going to take our time right now on it. But they all gather together, Judas, Jesus, and the rest of the apostles, and they sit down at the table.

And what does Jesus say? Can you turn the slide? Thank you. He says, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. And it's not what I would have expected Jesus to say. Because I believe in this text, what you see is a very good picture of Jesus' humanity. He's not teaching some truth that is theoretical or out there. He reveals his inclination and his desire. And what he says is, I want to eat with you. I've wanted to eat with you. I've earnestly desired to eat with you. It's a very sweet, it's a very intimate thing that's going on here, this exchange between he and his disciples. I've earnestly desired to eat with you before I suffer. So what does it mean? What does it mean? Why does Jesus earnestly desire to eat with his disciples? I think it has quite a bit to do with his suffering. He says, I want to eat with you before I suffer.

This is the context. His suffering that's coming is the context in which he wants to eat with his people. He wants to dwell with them. He wants to be with them and be close to them. What will he benefit from eating with his people, with his disciples? Is there any benefit for Jesus to eating with them? Some encouragement, perhaps, yes. In this moment, I want you to think about yourself. When you're about to suffer, And something difficult is on the horizon. Do you want to do it alone? You don't want to do it alone. Some of you do, and it's a weird thing. It's an anomaly. Most people don't want to suffer alone. Because when they fall down, there's no one there to pick them up. And so they're especially vulnerable if they're alone. So they want to be with people before they suffer. And this is what you see in Jesus saying, I earnestly desire to eat with you.

I believe that him eating with his disciples would strengthen him for his suffering that he was going to endure. Not long after this meal, he goes out into the garden and he prays. And we'll come to this passage in the coming weeks. And what does he pray in the garden? He prays that this cup of suffering would be removed from him if it's at all possible. But if it's not possible, then the Lord's will be done. But you see his humanity. You see how he is like us. Scripture tells us he's like us in every way, tempted in every way such as we are yet without sin. And you see his humanity here in this passage. And so he wants to eat with his people, with his disciples. He wants to be encouraged and strengthened as he goes into this suffering. And so this meal was a preparation for Jesus. In the same way that Martha, was it Mary or Martha who anointed him? I always get confused. It was Mary, yes, thank you.

In the same way that he was prepared for his death through her anointing him with perfume, this meal is preparatory for him. It's preparing him for his death. It's preparing him for the work that he has to do. Matthew Henry on this point, a Bible commentator, says this. He says, Jesus was about to leave them, but he was very desirous to eat this Passover with them before he suffered, as if the comfort of that would carry him the more cheerfully through his sufferings and make them the easier to him. And so the comfort and the encouragement and the strength that Jesus derives from eating this supper is meant to teach us something. Something about ourselves first, which I've been talking about, our need not to suffer alone. We all like to cover our pain. We all like to keep it away. How are you? Oh, I'm fine. You don't look good. I'm just tired, sort of stuff. But this is not as it should be.

Because when Jesus is feeling weak, he wants to be with people. And he wants to be strengthened by them. And so that's the first thing we learn about this. The second thing that we learn about this has to do with the meal that they're eating. Because they are, after all, eating the Passover meal, which is what's represented in this table before us in the New Testament. This meal is meant to strengthen us. It's not simply something that we do because we were told to do. There are plenty of things that we do because we're told to do, and we do them without understanding. But this meal is actually meant to strengthen us. Now, how is it that the Passover meal would strengthen Jesus? Was there something magic in the lamb and the unleavened bread that was like some superfood? Just all of a sudden he was, you know, oh, it wasn't that. So what strengthened him about the meal? Well, what strengthened him about the meal was what the meal represented.

What did the Passover meal represent to the Jews? What it represented to them was their deliverance, God's deliverance, out of Egypt, out of slavery, out of bondage, and into the promised land. You remember when the people of Israel were in Egypt and they were suffering and Moses and Aaron were going to Pharaoh and Pharaoh was hardening his heart. He wouldn't listen. And he sent the plagues. And for a while, the Egyptian magicians could could replicate the signs. And then it came to where they couldn't. And the plagues got worse. And all the food got destroyed. The land got destroyed. The water got destroyed. And it got dark. And there were bugs of various kinds. And there were boils. And it gets increasingly difficult. God's hand on the Egyptians gets heavier and heavier. But Pharaoh won't repent. And finally, they're told, you're to go kill a lamb.

And you're to take his blood and you're to put it on your doorposts. And that's to be a sign to you. It's a marking of your house. And what that sign is going to do is it's going to communicate to this death angel that I'm going to send into the land to kill all of the firstborns throughout the whole land that he's to pass over your house. That he's not to enter into your house and kill the firstborns in your home. And that plague, that final plague, that final judgment against Egypt is finally what frees them from the bondage and from the slavery that they were in. Pharaoh sends them out. And then he changes his mind and he chases them. And then he's destroyed in the Red Sea. And they're ushered out by the power of God out of bondage. And not only out of bondage into the wilderness to just wander around, but the purpose of them coming out of bondage in Egypt was to go into the promised land. The land that we read of just this morning.

Exodus 33, a land flowing with milk and honey. They were to go into a fruitful and abundant land. And that land that they were to go into, into Canaan, is representative to us of heaven. It's a place of joy and abundance and satisfaction and wealth and provision. The opposite of what they're coming out of. And so when they would partake of this meal, they would remember God's faithfulness and his kindness to them. His power in rising up for them to protect them and deliver them from sin and from judgment and from slavery into glory and into peace. And it was meant to strengthen the people. They were to remember. This is the sort of thing you want to remember. And they're told when they do this, this shall be a perpetual statute among you. You'll do this every year. You need to remember this. Because this is the context in which you live. This is what made your life possible.

such as it is. And so Jesus rejoices in eating with his people and being encouraged that he's not alone as he's about to suffer, but he's also encouraged by what the meal represents, that his father is faithful and caring for his people, even through the most difficult trials that they would face, as he's about to go into. And so he earnestly desires to eat this meal, and we ought to as well. This is not something that we, we don't simply eat the Lord's Supper because we're supposed to eat the Lord's Supper. In the same way that the Passover lamb and its blood represented, there was a sacrifice made for the forgiveness of their sins that God would pass over. His judgment would not rest on them, but would pass over them. Jesus became that lamb. Those lambs in the Old Testament and all the offerings and sacrifices that were made, those sacrifices couldn't atone for, they couldn't pay for the sins of the people that they were sacrificed on behalf of. It didn't work.

Scripture tells us that the blood of bulls and goats cannot atone for sin. The atonement, the blood that has to be offered to settle the debt of sin has to be our blood, has to be human blood, has to be man's blood. And so the bulls and the goats, it could never be, it could never pass. And yet that was given in the Old Testament as a picture or a type, a placeholder of what was to come. Well, what was to come was Jesus. And so our text this morning is, is going on right as that transition is about to happen. Jesus is going to be betrayed later this night by Judas. And he's going to be put to death in a matter of hours. And all of the imagery of the Passover lamb is about to be fulfilled in Jesus being offered up as a sacrifice for his people. And so Jesus begins to teach that during the meal. After he says, I've earnestly desired to eat this meal with you.

He then goes into an explanation of it. He takes the cup, and he gives a blessing. I want to read to you what he says. He says, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And he also says, this cup, which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in my blood. And it's a simple thing to read. It seems like he's just teaching. Here's what this represents, and here's what this represents. But I want you to key in on the fact that he says in both of these instances that his body, was given for who? Just the people, just whoever. He speaks to them in a room very intimately, and he says, my body was broken, was given for you. And those who heard it would have understood that he was talking about them, not some other people. My body was broken, was given for you. This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. He's very personal.

He's very intimate. He's very close with them in the way that he speaks, in the way that he interacts with them, in the way that he teaches them. It's as if he's saying, this meal and the strength that I derive from it and the hope that I gain from it is for you. This whole thing and everything I'm about to go through that you're about to witness is for you personally, for you. He could have said, it's for all my people or it's for as many as the Lord our God shall call or it's for all of the elect or the chosen. And that would be true, absolutely true for him to say it in that way. And yet in this room and in this context, he says, my body is given for you and my blood is spilt for you. Which means that they're not supposed to simply and only understand themselves as a whole, as a part of the whole. But they're to understand that Jesus came and he lived and he bled and he died for them.

personally, for them, as they are a part of the body of Christ. Now, why do I go into this and say for you, for you, for you? Well, I go into it and say it because when you're caught in sin or when you're looking in the mirror and seeing who you are, are you not tempted to think that this meal is not for you, that this body and this blood wasn't for you? It was for those good people, those ones who don't sin like I do or don't sin repeatedly like I do or who repent better than I do or who are more holy than I am.

All of this amounts to saying, this body and this blood is not actually for me. And Jesus says, no, this body and this blood is for you. Each one of you. And this ought to be an encouragement and a grace to us. That God who sent his son into this world sent him to die for us. For each one of us. And he knows us. He didn't do it in ignorance. He didn't do it not knowing what you did or who you are. He did it with full knowledge, knowing what kind of sinner you are. He sent his son into this world to save you, to die for you. And so this meal, the Lord's Supper, represents the same thing to us that the Passover represented to the Jews. It represents deliverance from slavery. It represents freedom. It gives us hope. It's meant to remind us of our failures and our sins. It's not meant to ignore them. It's meant to deal with them.

And so when we look on this meal, we remember why his body had to be broken, why his blood had to be shed, why he had to die. It wasn't because we're good people. It wasn't because we were pretty good people. And if we were, then we're not like all of God's other people. How are the Israelites described in Exodus that we read this morning? An obstinate, stubborn people. Is that you? Are you an obstinate, stubborn person? And my wife might tell you I am. Jesus didn't come to save the healthy. He came to save the sick. He came to save sinners. And that's what we remember and what we proclaim and what we embrace when we partake of this meal. This meal is meant to strengthen sinners, to remind them of God's mercy and his kindness to them. Matthew Henry, on what the supper is supposed to remind us of, he says this. He says, it, the meal, commemorates the purchase of the covenant by the blood of Christ and confirms the promises of the covenant, which are yes and amen in him. This, this partaking of the meal, will be a reviving and refreshing to our souls as wine that makes glad the heart. In all our commemorations of the shedding of Christ's blood, we must have an eye to it as it is shed for us. We needed it. We take hold of it. We hope to have benefit by it.

who loved me and gave himself up for me. The Lord's Supper is a paradox because in it, we celebrate death. We celebrate the death of Jesus, the death of our Savior, the death of the only perfect man who's ever walked the face of the earth. We celebrate his death. And the only reason we celebrate it is because of the benefit that we receive from it, that God has chosen for us to receive from it. We could have been left in our sins. God could have, when Adam, you know, sinned and ate the fruit, God could have said, that's it. There's no Noah. There's no ark. There's no saving of a people. It's just destruction. But God has always been in the habit of saving sinners, wicked, awful sinners, from that time on down to now. And that's what this meal represents, salvation of sinners who've committed real, actual sins, who've given themselves to things that they have no business giving themselves to, who know better.

And so when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we participate as Jesus and his disciples did in the upper room, being strengthened for the path that we have ahead of us, knowing that it's going to be difficult. Difficult because we live in a fallen world. Difficult because we're fallen. The world isn't the only thing that makes our life harder. We make our life harder because of the choices that we make. We bring difficulty into our laps because of the things we do. And this meal is meant to call us away from that. and to faith and to joy. Because we haven't been left in this state. We haven't been left in this position where we're to deal with all of our problems on our own. All of our sin problems, everything that's tangled us all up is dealt with in this meal. And it's finished. And God is satisfied completely with it. And so this meal calls us to remember God's mercy and his kindness to sinners. It's meant to strengthen us. It's meant to give us hope.

It's meant to kindle a fire in us against our wicked desires. It's meant to be a reminder to us that you've been purchased with his body and with his blood. And your life's not your own. You're not free to do what you want with your life anymore. That's what it means to be a Christian. You don't get to be the Lord of your life and do what you want anymore. You're set free from that hell, which is what it is to serve God in newness of life. knowing that your sins have been forgiven. That's what this meal represents to us. Freedom from our own stupidity. When I became a Christian, that's really how I came to faith. I looked at the decisions that I made and I saw the trajectory of them. And it was like this, bad to worse, pretty quickly. And I had this thought in my head.

And the quote that went through my head was, when you make your own decisions and you do what you want, you're miserable. And you're destroying your own life and the lives of the people around you. This was my thought. And at that time, I cried out to God and said, have mercy on me and forgive me for this. And I won't, I will not do it anymore. The sin that I've been giving myself to. And what I was confessing at that point as I'm coming to faith was, I need someone to tell me what to do because when I tell myself what to do, I make a mess of it. And so do you. And Jesus came to save those who've made messes of it. Thanks be to God that we're not left to clean up our own messes. That our messes are dealt with in their entirety in this meal. It's meant to give us strength and it's meant to encourage us to press on and to grow more in our fight against sin in our own lives. It's easy to point out sin in other people's lives, but this meal is meant to call to mind our own failures and God's satisfaction in this sacrifice for those sins and for those failures. And so it's meant to give us joy. It's meant to strengthen us. That's the purpose of the meal. And so as we partake of it here in just a minute, I want you to eat of it.

remembering who you are and what you've done and how you're not in yourself worthy of it, but God has made you worthy of it if you love his son and if you submit to his will. He's made you worthy partakers of it. He's given his son to save people just like you. If you're not a Christian and you say, well, that all sounds well and good, but I've got this stuff I want to do instead. And I say, well, then when Jesus said, my body, which is given for you, isn't given for you if you love your sin instead of him. That's the paradox of Judas eating the Lord's Supper because Jesus, his sins weren't forgiven. Judas didn't go to heaven. And so when we eat this meal, we see a blessing and an invitation and a reminder of God's kindness and his mercy, but we also see a warning. Because when we see that Judas sat there and heard these words and yet they weren't true of him because he didn't love God.

And he didn't submit to God. He did what was right in his own eyes. And he betrayed his Lord. He ate and drank condemnation to himself because he sat there in this room and heard Jesus say these very things and then got up and left and went to the Pharisees and says, I know where he's at. He's in the garden praying, let's go. And so there's a warning in this meal. And the warning is that it's only for Christians. It's not for those who haven't had their sins forgiven. Those who haven't had their sins forgiven and they eat this meal, they're doing their souls harm.

Because they're telling a lie. They're saying, Jesus' body was broken and his blood was shed for me, but I'm not going to bear it. I don't bear any of the fruit of it in my life. I have no desire to. And so this meal is only for Christians. But Christians are sinners. And so if you find yourself saying, I'm a Christian and I've done some terrible things, then what I say to you is, confess your sins, seek God's mercy, and be strengthened by this meal. There's no sin so great that Jesus looks at you and goes, oh, no, that's too much. The only sins that aren't forgiven are the ones that aren't confessed, that aren't repented of. Those are the sins that aren't covered by this blood. And so if you have sin that you say, yeah, I like my sin. I mean, who says I like my sin? But if you live like that, I like my sin. I want my sin. I'm going to do what I want to do. Then you have a problem. And this meal is not for you. But if you see your sin and you go,

I hate that I did that. I wish I wouldn't do that. Lord, help me not to do that. Then this meal is for you. When we take the Lord's Supper, I'll end with saying this. When we eat the Lord's Supper, we ought to receive strength from the meal and what it reminds us of. And we ought also to be strengthened by looking around at the other people who are here. You know, we changed our communion practice a few, maybe it's been a year ago now, where we actually come up front. to take the Lord's Supper. And part of the reason we did that was to help get at some of the intimacy that goes on in this passage. Instead of passing the cups and the bread down the rows, we're all just like by ourselves in our own little bubble. We thought, you know what would be better? This was a meal. It was intimate. The people were interacting. What we're going to do is we're all going to get up. And what happens when we come up is there's talking in the aisles. People talk. Then you come up and you get to look one of the elders in the eye and he gets to say this.

The body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ given for the forgiveness of all of your sins. You get to have an interaction with some other person. And the response has been, that's more intimate. That's closer. To some of us, we go, that's more uncomfortable. I'd much rather just do my own little thing in the corner. And I say, you don't really want to live your life that way, do you? You don't really want to bear your own sins and deal with your own problems all by yourself, do you? Are you sure you're not just making cover to keep them? going on in them? Do you want to live life with other Christians? Come up and look the elders in the eye. Look the pastor in the eye and hear him say to you what Jesus said to his disciples. This is my body and this is my blood given for the forgiveness of all of your sins. Take and eat. And you'll find that it's intimate and you'll find that it might be uncomfortable and then you'll find that you appreciate it and that it does give you strength. That it's an improvement.