THE TABLE OF THE COVENANT

Sermon by Rev. Steven R. Key

Lord's Day 28

Scripture: John 6:35-59; Mark 14:12-25

In Lord's Day 28 through 30, the Heidelberg Catechism treats the biblical doctrine of the Lord's Supper. In light of the historical controversies faced in the years immediately following the Reformation, the consideration given this sacrament is extensive. These three Lord's Day are the longest in the Catechism. They follow the rather extensive treatment that the Catechism give the sacrament of baptism. We have seen that baptism is the sacrament by which we are received into the fellowship of the covenant life of God. When we are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, God gives us a sign and seal that He takes us through Christ's cleansing blood, into His own covenant life and fellowship. Baptism signifies that all who are baptized with the Spirit of Christ are received by faith into the fellowship of the body of Christ. It is not the mere sign of baptism that achieves that. But by the reality of Christ's cleansing blood, we and our children are received into the covenant and Church of God.

Baptism is only the beginning of that life which God gives us in Christ. That life must also come to expression and fruition within the fellowship of Christ's body. If there is no faith, you understand, that is impossible. A person may have received the sign of baptism, and come under all the benefits of those spiritual blessings seen in the Church of God; but without faith that person is incapable of participating in the life of the Church. But where there is faith, where there is newness of life in Christ, the person who was once baptized comes to experience the fellowship of Christ, and in firm conviction desires to express his or her gratitude to God also in fellowship with Christ's body. And accordingly, God has also given to us a second sacrament, one which serves to establish us as consciously partaking of Christ's benefits within His covenant. That is the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The sacrament of baptism necessarily is first. That is the sign and seal of our being taken into God's covenant and the fellowship of the Church. The Lord's Supper follows as the sign of being fed and nourished within that covenant and as an expression of our unity with Christ's body.

As far as the outline of the Heidelberg Catechism is concerned, we begin in L.D. 28 with a general explanation of the institution and meaning of the Lord's Supper. That must be our focus today. Then, in L.D. 29 we are called to distinguish between the sign and the thing signified. There we must consider more carefully what actually takes place in the sacrament. How does the Spirit work, and what do we eat and drink in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper? And then in L.D. 30 the Catechism exposes the corruption of Roman Catholicism and her mass, before concluding by calling our attention to the proper partakers of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. So today, we focus our attention on:

THE TABLE OF THE COVENANT

I ask you to notice:

I. THE MEAL SERVED THERE

II. THE HUNGRY GUESTS PRESENT

III. THE NOURISHMENT RECEIVED

IN THE LORD'S SUPPER WE APPROACH BY FAITH THE TABLE OF THE COVENANT AND PARTAKE OF THE MEAL WHICH CHRIST SERVES TO HIS PEOPLE.

THE WHOLE OF THIS SACRAMENT, WITH ALL ITS VARIOUS ELEMENTS AND SYMBOLISM, SPEAKS IN THOSE TERMS.

It is evident that there is a connection between the Old Testament Passover celebration and the Lord's Supper. That is clear from what we read in Mark 14. And for that reason we must review for a few minutes that Old Testament ordinance.

In the first place, the Passover was a commemoration of a significant historical event. You children will remember how Israel was held in bondage in Egypt, and God sent Moses to lead them out of that land of oppression. Pharaoh, the wicked ruler of Egypt, would not let God's people go. And even though God gave Pharaoh signs, and sent plagues upon Egypt, Pharaoh's heart was hard. He refused to release the children of Israel from their bondage and continued to persecute the people of God. So Jehovah came to Moses and said (as we read in Exodus 11), "Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether." And so He explained that He was going to walk through the land of Egypt and kill all the firstborn of man and beast. Their iniquity would bring death upon them, the expression of God's fierce wrath. But Israel must understand that they are no better than the Egyptians. God could not spare them either, except for one thing. They must be distinguished from the Egyptians. They must be marked out as different. And that mark of distinction would be sovereignly determined by God.

So He continues in Exodus 12 to instruct Moses that on the evening of that night when God will walk through the land to execute His judgment, those who are His must take a lamb, a lamb without blemish, and kill it and take of the blood and spread it upon the two side posts and the upper door post of the houses where they would also eat. And they were to eat of that lamb, with unleavened bread, not leaving any left over, eating with haste, with loins girded, shoes on their feet, and with their staffs in their hands. That lamb of which they would eat, and more particularly the blood of that lamb sprinkled upon the door posts, would be the sign, the mark of distinction, that separated them from the ungodly and prevented them from being themselves the objects of God's fierce execution of judgment. The distinction between Israel and Egypt lay only in the blood. That was the distinction, God's sovereign distinction. "And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12:13). By the blood, Jehovah God delivers His people. And so He also calls them to observe this wonderful deliverance by a feast of commemoration. "And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever" (Exodus 12:14). And when the young children would ask, "What does this mean," then the father would recount the story of Israel's deliverance out of the bondage of Egypt by the wonder work of God's sovereign grace. It was a feast of commemoration.

But the Passover feast was also a type. It not only looked back, but it looked ahead. The blood that was spread upon the door posts was a sign of the blood of God's Lamb, Jesus Christ. As we are told in the opening verses of Exodus 20, Egypt was the house of bondage, a type of the bondage of sin. That deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt was a picture of our own deliverance out of the bondage of sin and death and our entrance into God's heavenly tabernacle. That deliverance and that salvation is ours only through the blood of the Lamb of God. For the faithful children of God in the Old Testament, therefore, every time they observed the Passover, they looked back to that wondrous night of their deliverance; but they also looked ahead to the day when their typical deliverance would enter upon its spiritual fulfillment. Also this ordinance of God belonged to that schoolmaster which pointed Israel to Christ.

Now we have the Lord's Supper, an ordinance of God for His Church, by which we partake of that salvation that is ours in Christ, the salvation which fulfilled that to which the Passover pointed. Christ instituted the Lord's Supper on the evening when He partook of the last Passover with His disciples. There in the upper room, after taking of that Old Testament ordinance, Jesus took from that feast two elements that were on the table before Him, the bread and the wine, and constituted them a new ordinance, a holy sacrament. So we read in Mark 14:22-24: "And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many." He did this, you understand, after telling His disciples that the time had come that He would be betrayed. He did this, setting vividly before them the truth that His blood would now be shed for the washing away of their sins. "This is my blood...which is shed for many." So Jesus pointed to Himself as the fulfillment of the Passover lamb.

And so we are given the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, called to the table of the covenant, where Christ Himself is the fulfillment of that relationship which God has established with His Church out of His own good pleasure. We have no lamb any longer, at the feast table of the Lord. Christ observed with His disciples the last passover. With His eyes fixed on Calvary, and that work which He came to perform, He instituted this sacrament as a sign and seal of the fulfillment which is in Him. Now Christ has shed His blood. We don't have a mere symbol any longer, a lamb. We have the Lamb. We have His body, His blood, as signified in the elements of the bread and the wine.

AT THAT TABLE OF THE LORD THERE IS RICH SYMBOLISM, ALL POINTING TO THE COVENANT FELLOWSHIP THAT WE ENJOY WITH GOD IN CHRIST.

I speak this morning of the table of the covenant. At the Lord's table we enter into fellowship with Jehovah our Redeemer. We do that not only in the Lord's Supper. We do that in every worship service. Whenever we enter God's house truly to worship in spirit and truth, we enter into fellowship with God. Worship is fellowship with the Holy One. And especially in the preaching of the Word, as we have considered many times before and as is our own experience, we enjoy God's fellowship with us as He speaks, conversing with us and taking us into His own life of fellowship and love. We do that in the communion of saints, expressing our oneness in the faith with every member of Christ's body. If we don't do that, God will not receive us. But that is what we do when we worship. And that fellowship is confirmed richly in the Lord's Supper. In communion with one another, in the bond of love, as sinners alike redeemed by Christ, we are taken into the fellowship of God. We confess our enjoyment of that when we partake in faith of this Supper of our Lord. And we confess that the only way we have such a blessed place in the Church of God is by the broken body and shed blood of our Savior.

And so we have bread and wine. As we read in John 6, Jesus said, "I am the Bread of life." He explains. "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" (John 6:51). "Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him" (John 6:53-56). Then there is the wine. Wine is the symbol of joy, of that which is extra. Notice, I don't say "of that which is excess." To consume excess wine is to abuse the very symbol given by God in that drink. It is to sin against God. But wine is the symbol of that which is extra. When Jesus delivers us from sin, He doesn't simply lead us back to what we had in Adam. But He leads us into the everlasting life of heavenly perfection and joy, covenant fellowship with Jehovah in Jesus Christ.

But there are also other elements of symbolism in this communion of the Lord's table.

There is the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine. That is important symbolism. Christ's body was broken and His blood shed for us. They drove those spikes through His hands and His feet, you know, and pierced His side with the spear. His body was broken, His blood shed, for you and for me. That is why we observe, even while the table is being prepared during the communion service, the bread being broken and the wine poured into the cup. That is proper. So we are reminded, too, that Christ gave His life. He shed His blood on the altar of God's righteousness and justice, that we might have life.

In addition, there is symbolism in the eating and drinking that takes place at the table of the covenant. We don't simply look on. Jesus said, "Take eat; drink ye all of it. This do in remembrance of me." We eat and we drink. By faith we eat and drink, in the fellowship of believers. And that eating and drinking demonstrates the truth that we take Christ to ourselves. By faith we appropriate Him and all His benefits by the spiritual activity of a true faith.

Still more, the words of the institution of this Supper are spoken by the minister. That also belongs to the symbolism of the Lord's Supper. Those words that we hear, the words of Scripture, are not simply the words of a command that we must obey. It is that, to be sure. "This do in remembrance of me." That is a command to the Church. And failure to obey is a grievous act of disobedience to God. But it is more than a command. The words of institution given by our Lord also signify that Christ speaks His own efficacious Word to His people even in the elements of this table of communion. Else we would not have a sacrament. Without the presence of Christ and the power of His Word, we would have nothing but empty form. But as Christ Himself speaks through His Word and by His Spirit, the Lord's Supper becomes to the Church a means of grace, nourishing and strengthening all who partake in faith.

Then there is one more element of symbolism. That is the table. It is indeed the table of the covenant where we partake of the Lord's Supper. We have here a sign of fellowship and love. When we partake of the Lord's Supper, we do so as an expression of love. We have been taken into the very covenant fellowship of God. We have been taken into that fellowship together with all His people. Lord's Day 28 expresses that in several ways. It does so, in the first place, by pointing out that "Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat...and to drink." It emphasizes this communion of saints, secondly, by its repeated reference to "we." We become one with Christ, "flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bone," so that together "we live, and are governed forever by one spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul." And in Q & A 77, we are pointed to the very institution of the Lord's Supper, where the conclusion recorded in I Corinthians 10:17 is this: "For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread." And so when we partake of His Supper, we express our love—our love for our Redeemer. But as Scripture makes clear, we can't love Him, except we also love one another. So that also must be our confession, lest we eat and drink damnation to ourselves, not discerning the Lord's body.

IN MY SECOND POINT, I CALL YOUR ATTENTION BRIEFLY TO THE FACT THAT AT THE TABLE OF THE COVENANT THERE ARE HUNGRY GUESTS PRESENT.

THE GUESTS THAT HAVE BEEN CALLED TO THIS TABLE OF THE COVENANT ARE THE MEMBERS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH.

So Q & A 75 opens: "How art thou admonished and assured in the Lord's Supper that thou art a partaker of that one sacrifice of Christ, accomplished on the cross, and of all His benefits? Thus: That Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat of this broken bread and to drink of this cup in remembrance of Him." The Lord's Supper has been instituted by Christ for His Church. We shall have opportunity, the Lord willing, in connection with L.D. 30, to discuss the question of who are proper partakers of that Supper. But immediately the emphasis is that all who confess faith in Christ are commanded to partake of this sacrament that is to be administered in the Church.

This is an obligation, make no mistake. Christ says, "This do." There is no option there. We must partake properly. We must partake in faith. But partake we must. The law of the Old Testament with respect to the observance of the Passover holds true now with reference to the table of the covenant. God said to Israel in Numbers 9:12,13, that all were obligated to keep the Passover. "But the man that is clean, and is not in a journey"—in other words, this man is healthy, he is not away on a journey— "and forbeareth to keep the passover," that is, he doesn't observe that ordinance of God, "even the same soul shall be cut off from among his people: because he brought not the offering of the LORD in his appointed season, that man shall bear his sin." I don't have to add words of emphasis there. You heard it correctly. And what applied to Israel in connection with the observance of the Passover is just as applicable today to our partaking of the Lord's Supper. So we read in John 6:53: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you."

To claim to be members of Christ's Church, and not to partake of the Lord's Supper, is a monstrosity, a malformity in the Church. It is a misrepresentation of all truth concerning what it is to belong to Christ. One cannot belong to Christ and ignore His fellowship at the table of the covenant. Oh, don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that our young people must make confession of faith just for the sake of taking communion at a certain age. Indeed not. To say in that confession that you love Christ in the truth as taught in this Christian Church, when you don't, is to speak a lie of profound proportions. Confession of faith must be made spiritually, as a matter of one's experience and spiritual desire. But we must understand that to belong to Christ compels us to make that confession. If we as God's people are faithful in Church, homes and schools, then under normal circumstances a person will reveal himself or herself before the ages of 18, 19 or 20. They will understand the spiritual necessity of taking a stand. There are those who will not. There is always that seed that does not have spiritual life. And there are those in whom that spiritual development is very slow, for whatever reason. But under normal circumstances, a man or woman in their youth will confess faith and partake freely of the fellowship of Christ's body. And that we must. To neglect that is to walk in disobedience against the Lord Christ—not against the Church, but against the Lord Christ. "This do in remembrance of me."

BUT THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN CALLED TO THE TABLE OF THE COVENANT ALSO COME AS THOSE WHO STAND IN FELLOWSHIP WITH THEIR REDEEMER, AND WHO ARE HUNGRY THEREFORE FOR THE BLESSINGS OF THAT TABLE.

The Church and we as parents cannot instill hunger in our youth. Nor is our own spiritual hunger something that is naturally motivated. It is a work of God's grace in us. And it comes in consequence of seeing our own sinfulness. You remember that the Catechism is divided into three sections, according to the three things that are necessary for us to know in order that we may live and die happily, that we may enjoy our only comfort in life and death. The first section, therefore, treats our misery, exposing how great is our sin. In the second section, in which L.D. 28 falls, we are considering the deliverance that is ours in Christ. We are doing that from many different perspectives, as you understand. In the sacrament we indeed are led to Christ and to the deliverance that He alone gives us. But even though we have not yet crossed into the third section of the Catechism, there is an element here that brings us into that section. I refer to the fact that the consequence of our deliverance is that we express our gratitude to God by the whole of our life. When we live in the consciousness of how great our sins and miseries are, and when God reveals His Son to us as our Savior, the result is that we hunger and thirst after Him with our whole being. That spiritual hunger is the work of the Holy Spirit.

But those who come to the table of the covenant do so as hungry Christians. We know that there is only one joy in life. There is only one comfort. That is that we belong to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ, Who shed His precious blood to satisfy for all our sins. We want Him. We desire His fellowship. We long to hear Him and to enjoy communion with Him. In the fellowship of our redeemed brothers and sisters, that is how we come to Him. We long for the nourishment which He alone can provide.

AND AT THE TABLE OF THE COVENANT WE INDEED RECEIVE RICH NOURISHMENT.

WHAT A FEAST IS OURS IN THAT LITTLE PIECE OF BREAD AND THAT LITTLE WINE!

It is a feast that fills our soul with the promises of our Redeemer. God gave Him to us! God is the Host at the table of the covenant. The whole feast, in all its detail, was given us of Him. And so it is with all our salvation. Christ went to the cross for us, beloved. We didn't plan that. It was all of God. We didn't desire that, being dead in trespasses and sins. But God, Who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, having chosen us from eternity unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself, has redeemed us in Christ His Son. He sent His Son to the cross for us, as Paul writes in Ephesians 1, "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace."

And so at the feast table of the covenant, in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, God speaks to us in Christ Jesus, commanding us to eat and drink. He speaks to us, "adding these promises: first, that His body was offered and broken on the cross for me, and His blood shed for me, as certainly as I see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken for me and the cup communicated to me." But even that, as wonderful as it is, is not all. For He also adds, "and further, that He feeds and nourishes my soul to everlasting life, with His crucified body and shed blood, as assuredly as I receive from the hands of the minister, and taste with my mouth the bread and cup of the Lord, as certain signs of the body and blood of Christ."

AND SO IN THIS BLESSED FEAST, WE ARE STRENGTHENED IN CHRIST'S LIFE.

Not only do we find in Him the complete forgiveness of all our sins, and life eternal, but we see that as we are continually nurtured by Christ through His Spirit and Word, we become more and more united to His sacred body. We live more and more in the consciousness of fellowship with our Redeemer. Though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, we are yet "flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bone." The Spirit of Christ dwells in us and with us. We are partakers of the covenant life of our God. And so we long to live unto Him. That is our life.

Amen.

 Preached: Randolph PRC 5/11/97 (am)

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