THE LORD'S SUPPER: OUR SPIRITUAL FEAST

Sermon by Rev. Steven R. Key

Scripture: I Corinthians 10:1-17; Matthew 26:26-28; John 6:53-56

Two weeks ago we began our consideration of the Catechism's treatment of the Lord's Supper. And we saw that in that holy sacrament God is pleased to sit at the feast table with us. The table of our Lord is the table of the covenant! The great and holy God takes sinners into His fellowship — not as sinners, but as those cleansed with the blood of His dear Son. We saw how that redemption instills in us a desire to join our Lord in the fellowship of His love, to confess His name, and to partake of Christ and all His benefits. And while we have yet to consider in depth what is required of us, in order properly to approach that table of the covenant, today we must consider more carefully the nature of that feast which God has provided for us.

The two questions before us today concern the sacramental operation of the Lord's Supper. What makes this feast so special? Is it only because we remember something when we partake of the Lord's Supper? Is it because the bread and the wine change into the physical body and blood of Christ? Is it something else? What makes this feast so special? The answer to this question is important. The Lord's Supper must not be a ceremony of superstition to us. All the exercises of our Christian religion must be exercises of the mind, spiritual exercises of the mind. We must understand these things. They belong, after all, to our worship of the Lord our God.

All the more important are these questions in the light of the historical circumstances from which they arose. The Heidelberg Catechism is a Reformation document. It was written to set forth the biblical foundations of the Reformed churches. And because the Church of the Protestant Reformation came out of the Roman Catholic Church, it was important for the people of God to evaluate and investigate in the light of Scripture the things that they had been taught by the Roman Catholic Church. We recognize that the Holy Spirit leads the Church into all truth. He does so by His Word, the Word of the Scriptures. Where a church departs from that Word, the effects will be devastating. Error and false doctrine shall abound. But even though such was exactly the case in Roman Catholicism, the Reformers were careful not just willy-nilly to toss out all the doctrines of the Church. Rather, they were careful to put the Church's teachings to the test — also with the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. That is how the question is asked: "Do then the bread and wine become the very body and blood of Christ?" That is what Rome teaches. And although the Catechism points out that Rome's teaching cannot stand in the light of Scripture, nevertheless, there is something that takes place in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper that is of great significance. And so we consider today:

THE LORD'S SUPPER: OUR SPIRITUAL FEAST

I. ITS SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT

II. ITS SPIRITUAL OPERATION

AS WE CONSIDER THE SPIRITUAL FEAST WHICH GOD GIVES US IN THE LORD'S SUPPER, WE BEGIN BY CONSIDERING ITS SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT.

CHRIST INSTITUTED THIS SACRAMENT FOR OUR SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT.

And so we must approach the table in that understanding, too. We must not only understand this truth, but we must experience it. Otherwise there is no spiritual feast for us. Otherwise that bread and wine do not affect us at all. But when we eat and drink spiritually, we enjoy spiritual nourishment by that means. The question today is how. How are we nourished at the Lord's table? What does it mean when I say that the Lord's Supper is our spiritual feast? Fundamentally it is a question that concerns the grace of God. How is the Lord's Supper a means of grace? That is essentially the question. And it is certainly our desire, it must be our desire, that we receive grace in this spiritual feast.

Scripture makes plain that the spiritual nourishment that must be ours is very similar to what happens in our physical life. In our physical life we eat and drink. We must. We can't live without food and drink. And because God has given us a physical body, that which we eat is physical food. In that food and drink are all the nutrients necessary for the sustenance of our earthly life. So we have physical bodies. And God places on our tables food and drink. But you realize there must be more. If all we do is look at that food, it does us no good. There must also be the physical activity in which we eat and drink. Still more, our body must be functioning properly so that when we eat and drink with our mouth, that food is also assimilated into our bodies. And when I speak of our bodies assimilating that food, I refer to the fact that not only must that food go down and be digested, but the body must also transform that food by the complex process of metabolism, so that the nutrients are put to good use by the body, either energizing vital functions or in fact changing into our very body and into our very blood. That is what I refer to when I speak of the necessity of our bodies assimilating that which we eat and drink.

What happens in our physical life is simply a mirror of what must happen in the spiritual sense of the word. Spiritually too it is necessary that we receive nourishment in order to live. We need that. We cannot live without it! I speak now to you who have spiritual life. By the wonder of regeneration the Spirit of Christ has given us life. Regeneration is not physical. It is not even psychological. It is spiritual. God by His Holy Spirit changes our natural life of spiritual death into a living spiritual existence! We are born again! You must be born again, Jesus said in John 3:3, if you are to see the kingdom of God. But because of that regeneration, we, as newborn babes, must have spiritual nourishment. Our spiritual life can no more be sustained without spiritual food, than we can live without food in the physical sense. We must have nourishment, spiritual nourishment. What is that spiritual food that we must have for life everlasting?

THE SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT NECESSARY FOR OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE IS CHRIST.

That, in one word, is the spiritual food necessary for our spiritual life. We must eat and drink Christ. You heard it in John 6, as I read that section from verses 53-56 again this morning and as we considered it in connection with Lord's Day 28. "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" (John 6:53-55). That is also what Paul wrote in I Corinthians 10, the opening verses of that passage which we also read. "Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea (now notice); And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink." Notice that. He speaks of Israel, the people of God, eating spiritual meat and drinking spiritual drink. And so he explains: "for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ." Even in the Old Testament, God's people ate and drank of Christ. He is, in one word, the spiritual food necessary for our spiritual life.

What does that mean? Well, think of what the Bible teaches as it reveals Christ to us. What does Scripture say concerning Christ? It says, Christ is righteousness. And you and I must have righteousness. We can only have it in Him. Christ is holiness. And that holiness we must also have. Christ is that. We must, therefore, partake of Him. All knowledge of God in the spiritual sense of the Word is to be found in Christ. He, after all, is the revelation of the God of our salvation. So He said in Luke 10:22: "All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him." The same idea is expressed by the inspired John in his gospel account, John 1:18: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Christ is true knowledge. In Him alone is the knowledge of God as the God of our salvation. And, as we read in John 17:3, that is life eternal. We must be partakers of that knowledge. Still more, Christ is wisdom. And we must have wisdom, true, spiritual wisdom. That is essential for our spiritual life. All the blessings of salvation are in Christ. We can sum it up as Christ says of Himself, "I am life." He is life. And you and I have no spiritual life apart from Him. That is exactly what He said in John 6. "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."

The deeper question involved here in Lord's Day 29 is the question of how Christ is present in the Lord's Supper? When we eat of the bread and drink of the wine of the Lord's table, how is that eating and drinking Christ? Rome says that the bread and wine change. The signs change. So that when the bread and wine are consecrated by the priest, those natural elements change physically into the body and blood of Christ. It still looks like bread. It still tastes like bread. But it is no longer bread; but the body of Christ's human nature. And what is in the cup still looks and smells like wine. It still tastes like wine. But it is now the physical blood of Jesus. And so all who partake of those elements in the Eucharist eat and drink grace. That is what Rome teaches. And when our Reformers broke from Rome, over issues far more essential and significant, they were compelled also to look at this. Is grace given to all who eat and drink those elements? And do the bread and the wine become the very body and blood of Christ? And as they returned to the Scriptures to study this matter, the only answer possible was this: "Not at all; but as the water in baptism is not changed into the blood of Christ, neither is the washing away of sin itself, being only the sign and confirmation thereof appointed of God; so the bread in the Lord's Supper is not changed into the very body of Christ, though agreeably to the nature and properties of sacraments, it is called the body of Christ Jesus."

Notice now, the Catechism speaks of the elements being properly called the body of Christ, according to the nature and properties of sacraments. As we learned back in Lord's Day 25, sacraments are spiritual institutions or ordinances of God. They are spiritual, not natural. That is, they are natural signs that signify and seal spiritual realities. And therefore the water of baptism itself doesn't wash away our sins, as if sin is something that only clings to our skin. Baptism is a natural sign of a spiritual reality, a tremendous wonder of God's grace which leads us spiritually to Christ, Who alone cleanses all our sins. So it is also with the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is not merely a feast of remembrance. That is not correct either. We partake of the body and blood of the Lord. We must. But we partake of His body and blood not with the natural mouth, but with the mouth of faith.

The Westminster Larger Catechism, which arose out of the English and Scottish branch of the Calvinistic Reformation, has this to say about this matter in Q & A 170: "How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord's Supper feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein? As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord's supper, and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord's supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not yet after a corporal and carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death."

And so, at the table of the Lord, in the Lord's Supper, God has given us a spiritual feast, the spiritual food of which is His own Son. You and I eat and drink Christ in the spiritual sense of the Word. We partake of His righteousness. We eat and drink His holiness, assimilating it into our own spiritual life. We eat and drink knowledge, the true knowledge of God. We eat and drink Him in Whom alone is the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. We are partakers of all the blessings of salvation when we eat and drink with mouths of faith at the spiritual feast of the Lord's Supper.

1.NOW AS WE CONTINUE OUR CONSIDERATION OF THE SPIRITUAL FEAST THAT IS OURS IN THE LORD' S SUPPER, WE MUST ALSO UNDERSTAND THAT WE RECEIVE THAT SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT ONLY BY A SPIRITUAL OPERATION, A SPIRITUAL WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

THAT SPIRITUAL OPERATION OCCURS THROUGH FAITH.

And when we speak of faith as essential to this spiritual operation, we speak of the activity of faith. Faith is also a bond by which we are united with Christ. God establishes that bond. He makes us one with Christ, one with Christ's life. That is the essence of faith. But faith is also an activity. And when we talk about eating and drinking, we are talking about activity. It is important that we understand that in connection with the Lord's Supper. We are nourished unto everlasting life by tasting the wonder of the grace of God in Christ Jesus.

When we talk about physical nourishment, it is possible in our day, as you realize, for a man to be nourished without any activity on his part. Hospitals and nursing homes have people who are so ill, that they cannot eat or drink. In such cases a patient is fed by the injection of an intravenous line into which fluids are dripped into the veins. Or, in some cases, a surgical procedure is done by which a feeding tube is inserted into the patient. In such cases, those who are very ill are nourished without any physical action on their part. They cannot even taste their food. But that is not how Christ nourishes us in the Lord's Supper. To partake of the Lord's Supper requires activity. It requires the activity of faith. That belongs to that which cannot be entirely explained. For faith is a very mysterious spiritual power by which we lay hold of Christ and draw out of Him all the blessings of grace that are in Him. That activity of faith is such that the sinner draws out of Christ His own life and all the blessings of salvation. So the believer eats Christ's flesh and drinks His blood. So we draw from Him the forgiveness of sins and live everlasting. Again, there must be life there, if the sinner is to draw nourishment from Christ. Bring the unbelieving, dead sinner into contact with Christ as He is revealed in the gospel, and there will be no saving activity. But when the believer is led to Christ through the preaching of the Word, he will lay hold of Christ and, as a plant sinking its roots deep into the soil, draw out of Him all the nourishment necessary unto life.

AND SINCE CHRIST IS REVEALED TO US IN THE SCRIPTURES, TRUE FAITH ALWAYS LAYS HOLD OF THE WORD.

It delights in the Word, hungers and thirsts for Christ as revealed in the gospel, is called into activity through that Word preached, and grows as it lays hold of that Word. That is an element in the Lord's Supper also that we must not forget. That reflects back on the institution of the Supper, as we considered it last time. But that stands intimately connected with the ministration of grace in the Lord's Supper. I refer to the fact that we not only have the bread and wine in that feast. But we have the Word of Christ. That is absolutely necessary for the administration of this holy ordinance. Without the Word of Christ, there is no sacramental operation in the Lord's Supper. Without the Word of Christ there is no grace in the Lord's Supper. What did Christ say? He said this, pointing to the signs: "This is my body, which is broken for you; this is my blood of the new testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Why is that so important? Because, as we have pointed out from Scripture before, that Word of Christ is spoken in power. It is a Word that works.

Now without question we are revealed something here that is incomprehensible. The operation which Christ performs by His Spirit upon the elements of the Lord's Supper and particularly upon us as we partake, is mysterious. Just as Scripture reveals throughout that in the preaching of the gospel there is a mysterious work of the Spirit, so that Christ speaks to His people by that Word, even though what we hear with our ears is the speech of a man; even so with the administration of the sacraments, while we eat bread and drink a little wine, those very elements become a means of grace to us, as Christ speaks His powerful, efficacious Word. He says, by His Spirit, "This is my body; take eat. This is my blood; drink ye all of it." And when we hear with our spiritual ears those words, we eat. And we eat and drink with the mouth of faith the very body and blood of Christ. We assimilate Him into ourselves, so that as Paul wrote in I Corinthians 10, in a way beyond our comprehension, "we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread." We are one with Christ!

Let me ask you now: Do you know Christ in this way, as the fulness of life? I don't ask whether you know about Him. But do you know Him, also in the Lord's Supper, as the fullness of your own emptiness, as the righteousness to replace your unrighteousness? Do you know Him as the Bread of Life for which you hunger and the Water of Life for which you thirst? Is your longing, your love, your delight, found in Him? I will say this, beloved: If in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, you hear with spiritual ears the Word of Christ, you cannot help finding in Him your spiritual delight. And you will partake with rich spiritual benefits.

Christ is first. We must have spiritual nourishment. But Christ must impart to us that spiritual food. He must give us in the Lord's Supper not only a little bread and wine, but the reality of those signs, i.e., the reality of His own body and blood. Then we eat and drink unto life eternal.

Oh yes, we must be spiritually fit. We can only eat and drink when we are well. I say not "perfect." But we can only eat and drink when we are well, and when we hunger and thirst for the body and blood of the Lord. That is why we must also examine ourselves and come prepared spiritually for that spiritual feast. That is why we have preparatory services too, the Sunday before the Lord's Supper is administered, and give ourselves to a week of spiritual self-examination. The importance of coming properly to the Lord's table will be examined more fully in Lord's Day 30. But when we come hungering and thirsting for Christ and His righteousness, not clinging to our own righteousness, but in the spirit of repentance and humble submission to God's Word, Christ Himself feeds us by His Spirit. We sit at the feast table of our Lord, eating and drinking with the mouth of faith Him Who is our life. And we are assured that "we are as really partakers of His true body and blood (by the operation of the Holy Spirit) as we receive by the mouths of our bodies these holy signs in remembrance of Him." Amen.

Preached: Randolph PRC 5/25/97 (am)
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