The Lords Supper

The speaker talks about seeking the Lord, trusting in Him, and the importance of observing the Lord's Supper. They mention that Easter is often overlooked and emphasize the need to focus on Jesus Christ. They read a passage from 1 Corinthians 11 about the significance of the Lord's Supper and explain that it is a picture of Christ's death and a reminder of His return. The speaker encourages living in the present and resetting oneself to remember what Christ has done. They address the misconception of partaking unworthily and highlight the importance of unity and selflessness during the observance. I sought the Lord, and He heard, and He answered. I sought the Lord, and He heard, and He answered. I sought the Lord, and He heard, and He answered. That's why I trust Him. That's why I trust Him. I sought the Lord, and He heard, and He answered. I sought the Lord, and He heard, and He answered. I sought the Lord, and He heard, and He answered. That's why I trust Him. My Savior's the one who will never fail. He will never fail. I trust in God. If you have your Bibles tonight, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. I've kind of been going back and forth all month long. I usually, somewhere around Easter and somewhere around Thanksgiving, the two times of the year, I always try to observe the Lord's Supper just for an opportunity. The Bible says as often as we do it. It just seems like them two times are two really special times in my life that I need to take and focus. This was kind of a spur of the moment deal because I've been trying to figure out, and I wanted to do it next Sunday night being at Easter, but then we're having fellowship afterwards. I also like to take the Lord's Supper because it is also an opportunity of witness and an opportunity for you to visit with your family and for you to be able to talk about what has been observed here tonight. So for that reason, I just kind of kept coming back. When I preached this morning, beginning the week and Palm Sunday and Jesus Christ coming in, all of a sudden I was sitting back there and I said, you know what? Tonight will be the perfect time to kind of just focus for just a little bit on Jesus Christ. And I know in our society right now there's a lot of talk, there's a lot of discussion about a lot of things, different things, but it seems like almost this year Easter's kind of been forgotten. We're worried about the eclipse. We're worried about other things that are happening and the logistics of everything and all the stuff that's coming on. And it's kind of like all of a sudden this year Easter is just one of them things that has kind of snuck up on us. It's earlier than it ever usually is. And so it's just kind of one of them things for me personally. I just need to kind of reset myself and say, you know what? This is what's important. Christ is what matters. And so tonight that is kind of the reasoning behind us observing the Lord's Supper. But I want to read this passage of Scripture and then make a couple of comments before we observe. But Paul is writing to the church at Corinth and he tells them, he says in verse 23, For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed took bread. And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, Take eat. This is My body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of Me. After the same manner also He took the cup and when He had sucked, saying, This cup is the New Testament in My blood. This do you as oft as you drink it in remembrance of Me. For as oft as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till He come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, carry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home. And you come not together under condemnation, and the rest will I set in order when I come. You know, I've often thought about what is the rest? You know, what else is there that's going on and that's taking place? And I guess one of these days we will know. But as we look at the Lord's Supper, why do we do the Lord's Supper? The Lord's Supper is first of all, it's a picture. It's a picture. And He tells us there, He mentions it twice in this passage of Scripture. He mentions in remembrance of me. And then again, He mentions it with the wine. He says, remembrance of me. And then He mentions till I come. And so what that tells me and what that stands out to me is that we are to continue to focus on Jesus Christ, not necessarily we are to remember what He did, but we're to focus on that He's coming back. When you go back and you read in the Gospels and you look the night that He instituted that supper with His disciples there and those that were gathered in that upper room before His crucifixion, He made a promise to them. And He promised them there, He said, I will not observe this supper until I observe it with you. And He was giving them hope. He was telling them, you know what, I'm fixing to go die. I'm fixing to have my body broken. I'm fixing to spill my blood out for you. But no, I'm not going to stay dead. No, I'm not going to stay in the grave. But I will come and we will sit down with each other and dine again. And you know, that's kind of an encouragement, isn't it? And that's what this week's about. You know, when we think about the crucifixion, there is nothing that is pretty about the crucifixion. Once you get past the Palm Sunday and the hosannas and the praising and the worshiping God, from that moment until the resurrection, there is absolutely nothing good or fun or exciting in that story, except for the fact that Christ took our sins upon Him. And so when we do the Lord's Supper, as I mentioned, it is a picture. It is to show us, it is to remind us, to help us to look back in the past and remember what Christ did for us. None of us can save ourselves. But Christ did that for us. He was a Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. But not only do we look back, but that also causes us to look forward. Because He says there, you do show the Lord's death till He comes. See, Jesus Christ has died, but He didn't stay dead, did He? No, and He told His disciples in John 14, if I go, and He did, because we read in Acts chapter 1, right? That He's there with His disciples, and what happens? He begins to ascend, and all of them are looking and staring up with their mouth dropped, and the angel appears to them and says, why in the world are you staring, gazing at the sky? Right? I think I'm going to put that on the sign next week when everybody comes in to tell you. Why are you gazing at the sky, right? The same Jesus that has gone, that you just saw leave, guess what? He's coming again. He's coming again. And He says that where He is, there we may be also. So He's coming back for a purpose. His purpose is to get us. To take us to be with Him. And so we look forward, and that is our hope. That is our excitement as a Christian. And so as we observe the Lord's Supper, yes, we are picturing His death in the past, but we're also looking forward with the hope of the expectation that He's coming back. But we've got a problem because when we look back and we look forward, we have a tendency to either get stuck in the past or we get stuck in the future. And we also need to remember that we're living in the present. See, we are sitting in between the past and the future. And you can't get to the future without knowing your past, but we would have no future if we didn't have a past. And so that's where we come to the present. And that's what the Lord's Supper is all about. That's why we observe the Lord's Supper is because we are here and now. We need to be reminded of what Jesus Christ did for us. Sometimes we just have to do a reset. I was talking with a member who's called me this afternoon and said, Donnie, I won't be at the Lord's Supper tonight. He said, as I said, I'm kind of in a bad spot right now and I don't want to have to fake it. And I just made the comedy and said, well, I understand your reasoning, but I want you to understand that's what the Lord's Supper is all about. It's a time of reset. It's a time of hope. It's a time of remembering what Christ has done for us and the fact that He's coming back. And so because he mentions there, he says that when we get hung up on this phrase so awful much, he says in verse 27, Wherefore, whosoever shall eat of this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body of the blood of the Lord. And I know I've explained this before and we get caught up and I don't know why it is so ingrained in our history, especially as American Baptist Association. It's engraved in our history that we don't want to partake of the Lord's Supper unworthily. Like we have to be something special. We have to do something special before we can partake. We have to be without sin before we can partake of the Lord's Supper. That's not what he's talking about, about unworthy. In other words, when we take the Lord's Supper, what did he tell Zena? He said, Here's the problem, there's divisions amongst you. And that was the whole problem of writing to the church at Corinth. Here you are supposed to be one in Christ, but you're fighting and you're bickering amongst yourselves. They're having fellowship. They're having fellowships with each other, but given they have fellowships, guess what? They can't even get along in the fellowship because people are cutting line, they're pushing, they're wanting to be first, they're wanting to sit in the prominent places of the table. And he said, The Lord's Supper is not for when you come together for one of these feasts. It's supposed to be a time that you come together to enjoy. And he says that when you come together in verse 33, to eat, tarry one for another. In other words, when we observe the Lord's Supper, it's not about us, it's about everybody else. See, everything else that we tend to do around the church focuses around us. But the Lord's Supper is focused around others. And it's focused around Jesus Christ. And so to do it in an unworthy manner, just like none of us are worthy of salvation, right? But God loved us in that while we were yet a sinner. And none of us are worthy to partake of His death. I'm not worthy, you know. I'm more like Peter. I'm probably going to die. I'm probably going to run. I'm probably going to hide. I'm not going to be caught up in this situation, right? But none of us are worthy. And none of us are perfect to die. And so therefore, none of us are a perfect picture of His death either. But here's what we do do. It's an opportunity of reset. Paul says to them, he says, therefore examine yourself. That if you judge yourself, then there's no one else that can judge you. We noticed, if you remember, we talked about eternal judgment a while back. And guess what? Jesus Christ is the one that's going to judge. He's the one that's going to look at our life. And we don't know. We just look on the outward. Man looks on the outward things, but God looks where? At the heart. God knows our motives, our intentions. He knows everything about us. And so He's the one that's going to judge. And so what we do is we examine ourselves. Am I just looking toward that future? Have I accepted that past? Have I accepted the death of Jesus Christ as my Savior? And am I looking for His return? If I'm doing that, and I'm focused on His broken body and the blood that He shed for me, then guess what? You can't take the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. But if we come in here and we make it a big party, we make it a big feast, and we're worried about, well, I want to go first, or I want the biggest piece, or your cup's more full than my cup, and all of this nonsense that we typically get into when we're around a meal, right? Then guess what? We begin to take it unworthily. And so it's supposed to be a reverent thing because the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a reverent thing. And so if we begin to partake of the Lord's Supper tonight, and I know that we have visitors with us tonight, and I'm glad that you chose to come tonight, and we hope that you receive a blessing by being in our service, but we believe that the Lord's Supper was instituted for the local church. We believe that Paul was writing to the church at Corinth. We believe the Lord's Supper is to be observed in a local body where there is authority, where there is discipline, where there is Christ as the center and the judge of everything. And so with that being said, I want to ask every one of you that is a member of Kentucky Missionary Baptist Church, if you wish to participate in the Lord's Supper, if you would stand. I'm going to ask our deacons, Brother Phillip and Brother Eric, to come and join me up here at the front. Thank you. And as we have the bread and the wine and the juice before us, the fruit of the vine, I want us to begin even to focus now to take a moment before we pass out all of the ingredients and observe the Lord's Supper tonight. I want you to begin to think about nearly 2,000 years ago, our Savior, our King, our Lord, as He rode into Jerusalem on the back of an unbroken donkey and how the people just cried out, Hosanna! Hosanna! He's there to save us. But yet it was just a couple of days later that they yelled, Crucify Him! Crucify Him! You see, He had to die in order for Him to be our Savior. And so as we think about that tonight and think about all of the things that happened throughout His being examined as the Lamb of God, and yet He was perfect. And you think about the Passover. You go back to way back yonder in the days of the Exodus when they took the Lamb and they sacrificed that Lamb and they took and they applied that blood to the doorpost. And when they went to bed that night, can you imagine what some of the kids and what some of the people thought? You know, I can just imagine myself and it's the same questions that we ask about our salvation today. You know, did I apply enough blood to the door? You know, I hope the death angel has really good eyes. Did I do enough? You know, and all night long making sure, did I do it properly? Did I go through all of the steps? Did we really pick the right Lamb? You know, of all the lambs that we could have chosen, did we get the right one? And so all of these questions, but what do we do? We believe in Jesus Christ by faith. We believe that He is who He is and that He died for our sins. And so as we observe tonight, think about that crucifixion. Think about Him as He is being beaten, as His beard is being plucked, His crown of thorns as He has been mocked and ridiculed and spit upon. All of that He endured because that's what our sin looks like to God. He did that for us. He took sin upon Him and that's what the results of sin. Sin may be fun at the time, but it doesn't work out good. And sin leads to death. And so all of that He endured in order that you and I might have life. And He shed that blood in order that you and I, the author of Hebrews says, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. And because the wages of sin is death, guess what? Christ had to die. He had to shed His blood. And so I know there's a lot of people today that say, man, y'all have this bloody religion and y'all always talking about blood. But listen, if it's not for the blood, there is no salvation. There is no redemption. And so it's not that we like blood. It's not that we enjoy blood. But the blood is necessary for our salvation because it was untainted blood. It was pure blood. It was blood that had never been tainted with sin. And so think about that as we observe the Lord's Supper tonight. But not only think about the past, but think about the future. Christ is coming back. And I honestly believe that it's closer than it's ever been before. And I know we say that, but I think we're living in the day. I think we're living in the hour that any moment Christ could come back. Everything is set. Everything is done. Not to scare you or anything. And I was telling somebody this morning that I was talking to somewhere between now and Passover, which this year is a weird year for Passover and Easter, but Passover actually falls next month because the Jewish calendar every so often they add a month to their year to fix their days and everything else. But sometime between now and Passover, I read an article yesterday by the Temple Institute. The author, if you remember, preached a few months ago about the red heifers that they sent over to Israel. Well, they have now erected and constructed the brazen altar that's sitting right outside in front of the temple over by the Mount of Olives. And before Passover, they are expected to sacrifice that red heifer, which is an amazing fulfillment of prophecy because with the red heifer, they put the ashes with water and that's going to purify the temple mound that has been defiled and desecrated forever. That's going to be able to purify the priest to be able to serve. It could still be another thousand years before Christ comes back. It doesn't mean that the temple's fixing to be built, but the ramifications of it is, is guess what? They are going to be able to purify them for once, be able to worship again as a nation in a long time. And guess what? That's prophecy being fulfilled. And so everything is here. Everything, the stages is set. And so I felt like tonight, you know, this is the opportunity for us to focus on Jesus Christ. But He's coming back. He's coming back for us. And so that's our hope. That's our excitement. And so I'm going to ask our deacons, if they would, to begin to pass out. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. We're going to pass out the Tuesdays. We're all at one time. If you need to sit down, if you're standing too long, go ahead and sit down if you need to. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. 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