January 5, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Tonight, as I promised you, we’re going to talk about communion and the meaning of communion. And I want to do it with a disclaimer. The disclaimer is, if you look at kind of Christian theology, evangelical, charismatic, Pentecostal theology, there are a lot of differences. Not everybody agrees about everything.
There are a variety of issues. I could probably name 30 off the top of my head that people have honest disagreements on eschatology. You know, post millennial, amillennial, pre millennial, pre trib, post trib, mid trib, no trib. People got opinions. And women in ministry.
All right, we all believe that women are in ministry. But should women be preaching? Should women be on boards, on leadership teams, and on. Should there be women elders? That would be one. The age of the earth. All Christians would agree that God created the universe, created everything in it.
But did he do it billions of years ago through a big bang, or did he do it 10,000 years ago? What’s the age of the earth?
And as I talk about that, I want to say two things about those differences. Number one, I want to talk about the value of talking about those differences, and I want to talk about the danger of talking about those differences.
The value is simply this. We want to know the truth. And the closer to the truth we get, the more effective we will be.
Let me use the example of women in ministry. All right? If the Scripture clearly teaches that women are not to preach or teach, then if we allow that to happen, that doesn’t mean you’ll lose your salvation. But it means that that is going to lessen the effectiveness of the Church. The Church is going to be operating with a limp because you’re not operating in accordance with the will of God.
However, if we believe that women are called to preach and teach and be in leadership, and you deny that, you’re also going to walk with a limp, because then what you’re saying is those people who have gifts to do certain things, we’re not letting them do them. You know, half our team’s on the bench when we’re playing the game. And so there are consequences to these things, on what side you take.
If you don’t believe that the gifts of the Spirit are in operation today in the way that they were in the early centuries of the Church, if you believe gifts like healing and prophecy and apostleship ceased in the first century, that’s called cessationism.
They ceased in the first century. Then you’re going to operate in a certain way. you’re not going to certainly be calling the church and asking people to give prophetic words. you’re probably not going to be very active about laying your hands on the sick for healing.
However, if you believe those gifts didn’t cease, you’re probably going to pursue those things. And again, if the cessationists are right, then you’re wasting time pursuing those things and probably opening up the Church to various levels of deception.
If the cessationists are wrong, then you are quenching the Holy Spirit of God. Real consequences. So these things have value in the sense that we want to get hermeneutics. We want to get at the truth of what God is saying and what we believe so that we can be most effective.
However, I also want to say that a majority of these issues are not salvific. your salvation doesn’t depend on it, nor does the salvation of others depend on it. And they’re not the center of Christian Orthodoxy.
They’re not the center of what C.S. Lewis would call mere Christianity, the center of what all Christians in all times, throughout all ages, have believed.
Okay, why do we believe a certain group, even though we might disagree with them on several issues, is still within the realm of orthodox Christianity, and another group is outside of the realm?
It’s not because we differ on eschatology, but we differ maybe on the nature of Christ. Who is Jesus? What is the Trinity? Did he historically rise from the dead?
In other words, there is a core group of beliefs that have traveled down Christendom for 2000 years. And if you’re an Anglican, you believe it. If you’re in Assemblies of God, you believe it.
You know, there’s, you know, is Jesus Christ the Son of God? Is he King of kings and Lords? Yep, he sure is. Well, what do you think about spiritual gifts?
Well, now we’re going to argue, but Jesus Christ. No. Did Jesus Christ literally, historically rise from the dead? You bet. Okay. There’s a core. We have fellowship as brothers and sisters in Christ around that core.
And the danger of arguing these beliefs or expressing these opinions is that we can believe that some of these opinions are the core and therefore break off fellowship with one another because you’re not really a believer. All right? When the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement broke out, there were good Christian people who said.
G. Campbell Morgan, who was a leading evangelical at the time, said this is the final spew of Satan at the Pentecostal breakout. All right? That kind of rhetoric, where you’re taking something that’s not at the core and saying those people aren’t us. And Pentecostals did the same thing. Pentecostals didn’t just say. I mean, most of them stopped here. Most of them said that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is evidenced by the speaking in tongues.
Okay, that’s a distinctly Pentecostal belief and doctrine. And we can disagree on that or whatever. But it’s another thing to say, if you don’t speak in tongues, you’re not a Christian. And some went to that place. All right? And so that’s the danger of this.
I have a book called Across the Spectrum. I like to read it. It covers about 30 or 30 of these issues and talks about the different views. At one point I thought, well, I’m going to preach through that book. And I thought, no, what a great way to kill a church. Let’s take on every controversial issue, and I’ll tell everybody where I stand.
Pretty soon, nobody’s going to agree. You know, none of you are going to agree with me on all 30. But here’s the deal. We need to have the conviction that we allow other people to be wrong, that we allow other people to have different opinions. And when I say wrong, I say it a little facetiously. But, dear ones, the reason you hold your opinions is because you believe them to be true. So you do think when somebody holds another opinion that they’re wrong.
Now we should have the humility to admit I could be wrong, too. But the evidence that I have, you know, says this is this is where I’ve landed on this. Of all the people I know, I know very few people who are more opinionated than me on most of these issues, but they’re not central.
Alright, so tonight we’re going to talk about one of those, and that is the meaning of communion. I want to say that Augustine said in essentials, unity, in non essentials, charity, and all things love.
And when it came to communion, as C.S. Lewis was talking about the debates that Christians have over what communion means, I like what he said also. He said the command, after all, was take, eat, not take, and understand.
Having said that, we’re going to try to understand. All right, I’m going to read some pertinent passages. I already read one to you, but I’m going to read it again. Psalm 103:1-5. And we’ll see at the end what this passage has to do with communion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name, my soul. Bless the Lord, and do not forget all his benefits.
He forgives all your iniquity, heals all your diseases, redeems your life from the pit, crowns you with faithful love and compassion, satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like the eagles.
1Let all that I am praise the Lord; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. 2 Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. 3 He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. 4 He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies. 5He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle’s! (Psalms 103:5, NLT)
And then I’m going to read Matthew 26, and I want to say that in Luke’s Gospel and Mark’s Gospel, though not identical, something very, very similar is said. And here’s what Matthew 26:30 says.
As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to the disciples and said, take and eat, this is my body. Then he took a cup and after giving thanks, he gave it to them and said, drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. But I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom. After singing a hymn, they went on to the Mount of Olives.
26 As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take this and eat it, for this is my body.”27 And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them and said, “Each of you drink from it,28 for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many. 29 Mark my words I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom.”30 Then they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives. (Matthew 26:26-30, NLT)
Then a very pertinent passage is John 6, starting at verse 47, though actually you could read preceding before this even. But here’s what Jesus says. Truly I tell you, anyone who believes has eternal life. I’m the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness and they died.
47 “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes has eternal life. 48 Yes, I am the bread of life! 49 Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, but they all died. (John 6:47-49, NLT)
And this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat of this and not die. I’m the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh. At that, the Jews argued among themselves, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?
50Anyone who eats the bread from heaven, however, will never die.51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and this bread, which I will offer so the world may live, is my flesh.” 52Then the people began arguing with each other about what he meant. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they asked.(John 6:50-52, NLT)
So Jesus said to them, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day. Because my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.
53So Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. 54 But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. (John 6:52-56, NLT)
Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. It’s not like the manna your ancestors ate, and they died. The one who eats this bread will live forever. He said these things while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
57 I live because of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 I am the true bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will not die as your ancestors did (even though they ate the manna) but will live forever.”59He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. (John 6:57-59, NLT)
And then, 1 Corinthians 10:16. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?
Because there is one bread. We who are many are one body, since all of us share in the one bread. Consider the people of Israel. Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? What am I saying then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything?
16 When we bless the cup at the Lord’s Table, aren’t we sharing in the blood of Christ? And when we break the bread, aren’t we sharing in the body of Christ? 17 And though we are many, we all eat from one loaf of bread, showing that we are one body. 18 Think about the people of Israel. Weren’t they united by eating the sacrifices at the altar? 19 What am I trying to say? Am I saying that food offered to idols has some significance, or that idols are real gods? (1 Corinthians 10:16-19, ESV)
No, but I do say that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot share in the Lord’s table and the table of demons.
20 No, not at all. I am saying that these sacrifices are offered to demons, not to God. And I don’t want you to participate with demons. 21 You cannot drink from the cup of the Lord and from the cup of demons, too. You cannot eat at the Lord’s Table and at the table of demons, too. (1 Corinthians 10:20-21, NLT)
Are we provoking the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? And then finally, in First Corinthians, chapter 11, for I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
22What? Do we dare to rouse the Lord’s jealousy? Do you think we are stronger than he is?23For I pass on to you what I received from the Lord himself. On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread 24 and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:22-24, NLT)
In the same way also, he took the cup after the supper and said, this cup is the New Covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
25So you may eat any meat that is sold in the marketplace without raising questions of conscience. 26For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord’s death until he comes again. (1 Corinthians 11:25-26, NLT)
God, may the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight.
So on your mark get set go. Here are the three traditional views that the body of Christ, pretty much there’s Some nuances to some of these, but pretty much these are the three biggies that the body of Christ around the world holds to and believes anybody besides me. Raised Catholic, grew up Roman Catholic.
Okay. Usually in a room there’s more. All right, I’m it. I’m it. Well, I’m the only one who had true communion. None of you ever had the real thing. Sorry about that. Because you never had the priest offering the words of consecration.
And when the priest offered those words of consecration, that host and that wine, literally, not spiritually, not figuratively, not metaphorically, literally became the body and blood of Christ.
And therefore, when you took communion, you did exactly what John said. You ate the flesh of the Son of God and you drank his blood, and therefore you have life in you.
And that doctrine is called transubstantiation. You might ask, well, how come when I did that, if it was flesh and blood, did it taste like bread and wine?
That’s because God is merciful, and he allowed the accidents, what they call the accidents, that the appearance and the taste would remain the same. So you would be able to take it without being basically grossed out. That’s the doctrine of transubstantiation, that it is literally the body and blood of Christ.
Now, you might think if you’ve been raised in Protestantism, you might think that’s ridiculous. But man, when you read John 6, that kind of sounds like what he’s saying, right? Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.
And so Catholics will say, well, you Protestants, you’re the ones always harping on us. We ought to believe our Bibles, believe that that’s in the Bible, believe that. And so that’s the point, that’s the argument.
And we as Protestants are depriving ourselves of the flesh of Jesus. And maybe if you’re extreme enough in the Catholic view, therefore depriving yourself of salvation, you don’t have Christ in you. How could you have Christ in you? You haven’t eaten Christ. It’s like somebody coming to me and saying, do you have lima beans in you? Well, of course not.
Who would eat those foul things? After all, we even say it biologically, right? You are what you eat. You are. That’s what your cells of your body are made up. You are beholding right now a lifetime of bacon, cheeseburgers, French fries, pepperoni pizza and donuts. You are not beholding salad. Alright? When I see somebody eating salad, my initial thought is, they’re eating the food that my food eats. You are what you eat, eat Christ. Eat Christ.
And we need the priest to consecrate it so that it will transubstantiate, so that it will miraculously change, so we feed on Christ.
The Protestant reformers took a step away from that. By the way, that doctrine is not essentially that clear in the teaching of the Catholic Church in the earliest centuries. It is hammered out more in the Middle Ages and the medieval times. And it was. And it was brought.
And it was really brought forward during the Protestant Reformation as Protestants and Catholics were trying to distinguish themselves from one another, where one was wrong and where one was right.
And that’s where a lot of these doctrines got sharpened. However, the idea of the real presence of Christ in communion, whether physical, literal, as in transubstantiation, or spiritual.
The next view that I’m going to take was, in fact, the real presence of Christ in communion was, in fact, the belief of the early church and held unanimously by Christians until the 16th century.
I will say that Christ is, if not literally physically present in communion, He is mystically, spiritually present in communion. That’s what most of the Protestant reformers, and that’s what most of the mainline churches will still teach to this day: the Spiritual presence in Christ.
In communion, He is there. This is His body, this is His blood. Not physically, but spiritually. And something is happening more than you’re just going through a ritual to jog your memory that Jesus died on the cross. There is something mysterious, there is something mystical, there is something powerful.
There is an impartation of God’s grace. When you take this and you are. If you’re not literally eating physical flesh and blood, you are literally still feeding on the life of Christ. you’re taking his life into you. But it’s spiritual, not physical.
And so he is really present. Not just like he’s present in the room. He’s present in the room, and we believe he’s present in us, but he’s also present. These are symbols, but they’re more than symbols. It’s like my wedding ring is a symbol, but my wife doesn’t mystically live inside this wedding ring.
In communion, it’s like a wedding ring. It’s a symbol. It represents Christ. But, oh, it does more than represent Christ. He’s there. And when we take this meal spiritually, we feed ourselves on Christ.
And that’s what John Calvin believed, and that’s what John Wesley believed. That’s what Martin Luther believed. All right, that’s what the Protestant reformers believed, but not one of them. One of them, named Zwingli, a Swedish reformer, one of Martin Luther’s close friends, said no, the Catholic view is idolatrous. And your view is idolatrous.
It’s bread and it’s wine, and it represents Christ, but it’s not Christ. He’s not in it. It’s a memorial. He said, do this in remembrance of me.
It’s meant to jog our memory, to say, oh, yeah, I go to church and I remember when I take this meal, his sacrifice for me, just like the Passover. Why did Jews celebrate the Passover? Remember. Remember what God did.
And it’s no mistake that this meal is the meal that replaces the Passover for Christians. All right? You got all these Christians. We have all our Seder meals.
Oh, have a Seder meal. It’s great teaching. Whoa, easy, boy. Don’t worry, I wasn’t drinking. It’s a great memory thing. It’s a great thing to draw, and it’s a great teaching thing. But there’s nothing particularly salvific. There’s nothing prescribed in the Bible that Christians need to continue having Seder meals and having Passovers.
You can if you want. I have no problem with it, and I have no problem with using it as a, what? An object lesson to teach about God’s deliverance of Israel from the Egyptians and all that sort of stuff. But this.
But this is ours. This is our meal. Because Jesus said what that Passover lamb was pointing to was my death on the cross, my bloodshed. All right?
And so this is a memorial. It’s metaphorical, it’s symbolic, but there’s nothing more to it. All right, I am not going to clear enough. Summary, helpful.
All right, I’m not going to now talk more about all three views, talk about their strengths and weaknesses. I’m just going to tell you where I land. And this is why we have communion every week.
Because you’ll notice those churches that tend to hold the memorial view, it’s not that important to them to have communion every week, right? Once a month, once every three months. You know, just depends.
We’ve got an older congregation; they tend to forget more often. We have it more often. Got a younger congregation? They’re not as forgetful. Oh, yeah, they’ll remember Christ died for them. We don’t need to remind them every week. So we have it, you know, we have it less often.
I have through my life, growing up Catholic, becoming an Evangelical Protestant, diving into the mainline Protestant world and the charismatic revival renewal world. As I’ve said to you before, when it comes to the Christian landscape in America. I relate to that Johnny Cass song, I’ve been everywhere, man. I’ve been everywhere, and it’s been helpful to me.
I’ve learned something everywhere, something valuable everywhere. But I have landed on the Spiritual presence view. I believe that communion is more than a memorial, more than simply. I don’t believe it’s. I believe it is an ordinance.
I believe it is a command. I believe it is a memorial. But I believe it’s more than that. I believe it is mystical. I believe it is powerful. I believe it is, as John Wesley would have called it, a means of grace, a way that we actually encounter the Spirit of God. He does something that we can’t do ourselves when we obediently come to the communion table. I do not believe in the literal presence view, even though I grew up with that view.
I believe it is not necessary, and it is inconsistent with our understanding of God elsewhere revealed in the Scriptures. God is spirit. Yes, he was incarnate in Jesus. Yes, he became a man. But why do we have to say Christ is literally physically in communion to say that he’s there? We don’t say that about Christ’s presence in this room.
All right, I bet every one of you who’s a believer in Jesus would say Jesus is with us in this room. You would say, probably a good evangelical statement. He lives in my heart.
I asked Jesus into my heart. All right? If they did an open heart surgery on you and they, or you died and they cut open your heart, they would not find a little Jesus in there going, don’t cut. It hurts. Help me. You know, he would not be in there. There wouldn’t be a, you know, a five foot. I mean, that. That would be little.
I actually, I don’t know that this has ever been done, but I actually think if a good Catholic received communion and then died of a heart attack right there and they did an autopsy and cut open their stomach, they would not find flesh. They would find bread.
That’s what I believe. I don’t know if that’s ever been scientifically done, but I’m thinking that’s what would be the case.
All right, it is not necessary to say Jesus does speak in language that is metaphorical, that there’s something true there, but it’s not necessarily.
I mean, there are seven I am statements in the Gospel of John. I am the bread of life. It’s just one of them. He says, I am the door. That doesn’t mean he’s made of wood. I am the Vine. That doesn’t mean he’s a plant.
Why is it that we take the others non-literally and we have to take that one literally? Just because something is spiritually true and not physically true, we as Christians of all people, affirm that. That doesn’t make it untrue. We believe in an invisible kingdom. We believe in another reality.
We believe there are angels in this room that we can’t see. There might even be demons in this room that we can’t see. You might have brought them in. Don’t want to freak out or anything.
It’s possible there’s an unseen reality that is not physical and it’s not necessary for something to be true and yet it not be physical. Dear ones, God is omnipresent. He’s spiritually here, but not physically. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. That is spiritually true, but not physically.
We don’t need someone to say, Christ be in you, so that the Spirit, the Holy Spirit who is in us, becomes the literal flesh of Jesus in us. Does that make sense?
Eat my flesh. Well, there it is. Well, Paul talks about the flesh all the time. And he’s not talking about your skin, he says the works of the flesh. He’s talking about your nature.
Unless you eat my nature and drink in of my sacrifice, my body and my blood, you have no life in you.
And so, as much as I grew up with this view, I have moved off of it, and I’ve moved off the memorial view. Pastored a church in California. We had communion once a month, and somehow it bothered me, and these words bothered me.
As often as you get together, do this like, well, we’re not doing this as often as we get together. Well, what’s our excuse? Oh, man, talk about a Western American excuse. Oh, well, you know, too much time takes up time. We want to get people out of church quicker.
Oh, so let’s not do something Jesus said to do so we can get out of church quicker. In fact, of all the things we do in church, he never said, listen to some guy ramble on for 40 minutes. That’s not in the Bible. He never said sing a bunch of songs. That’s not in the Bible. He did say, do this.
So when we started church up here, I just thought. We started meeting in our home in 2008 and we had communion. And I just thought, man, I’m going to do that every week.
And I’ve talked to our leadership team about it. I said, should we keep doing this every week? And they say, yeah, we should keep doing this every week and maybe simply out of obedience to Jesus.
The memorial view does not take seriously enough, in my eyes, the language that Jesus uses in every single communion passage. Paul, Jesus, every single communion passage. This is my body, this is my blood. You see, this is a strange way to memorialize the cross of Jesus unless there’s something more happening.
What do I mean by this? Well, if I was going to remind people that Jesus died on the cross, I wouldn’t have bread and wine. I’d have a crucifix. Hey, look at that. Remember that seems like better. Or if you know you’re a Protestant and offended by Jesus hanging on the crucifix, at least a cross, right? Look at that.
The cross is a memorial. It reminds us of what he did. Why food? I think there’s a clue there. I think the clue is food tells us something more is happening. And I’ll also say this.
It is not a lock and shut case to say that because something wasn’t historically present in the Christian church in the early years, therefore it’s a false doctrine. I won’t go so far. I believe that the church can grow through the ages and come to further and deeper understandings about Scriptural truth.
So the fact that something doesn’t appear in the thought process of Christians until the 16th century doesn’t necessarily disqualify it. If you’re a premillennial, pre-trib, dispensational rapture eschatology person, you just need to know the best I can understand that didn’t appear until the 19th century in Christian history.
It doesn’t mean it’s not true. Most of Evangelical Protestant, Charismatic, Pentecostal Christianity asserts that it’s true. Hey, I’ve got two arguments there. One pro, one against. The against is, well, you know, this is a pretty new doctrine and you’re arguing against the whole history of the Christian Church. The other is there’s a whole bunch of people that believe it now.
So what I’m saying is just because it appears late in Christian history, it could be that the Church finally got its eye, its mind around some subject.
Because that’s what we do in church history. There are pressing needs and those get hammered out.
The Protestant Reformation, they didn’t hammer out all theology. They hammered out a very specific part of theology. How is it you get to heaven? How are you saved? Is it by faith or by works? What’s our authority? Is it the Magisterium of the Church or the Holy Scriptures? Very particular things.
They were hammering out the Early Church and the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed. What is the nature of Christ? What is the nature of God? What is the nature of the Trinity? They’re hammering that up.
So I’ve made my point. Probably too much. Doesn’t mean it’s not true. However. Here’s the however. If you’re arguing against 1600 years of Christian thought, your case better be pretty convincing.
All right, Tradition, when it becomes traditionalism and idolatry, can become evil. But there’s a reason for traditions.
There’s a reason that people have held on to these things for so many years. And so I think it weakens the argument that it is brand new in the history of the church in the 16th century.
And again, I think it is a Western kind of pre-enlightenment rationalistic view that is uncomfortable with the Spiritual world of mystery and miracles. All we see is bread and juice. Come on, people, don’t be ridiculous. You know, you’re all not old enough to remember Dragnet with Jack Webb as Joe Friday.
But he’s the pure Western, rational, logical man, non-emotional. He’d go into a police investigation, he’d begin to interview a person. What happened? And the person would start waxing on and on and go, just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts, man.
What you see is what. And. And really scientific materialism, which has been a curse to Christianity for the last 300 years. The worldview that all we know comes to us through our five senses is kind of what Zwingli taught. All we know is what comes to us through our five senses.
This is bread and juice. And it simply is there to remind us. All that talk about my body and my blood is. All of it is symbolic. All of it is metaphorical. None of it has any meaning beyond that. And so I want to talk about sacrament and ordinance, all right?
If we’re not. This is. I know. Hang with me. All right? Is this a little too theological for y’all? Okay, you’re nice. you’re not gonna go, man. Yes, you are boring me to tears, man. Wrap it up, all right, so we can have communion.
I got done with your sermon at C.S. Lewis. The command was taken. Eat, not take. And understand. You had me at that.
A sacrament is what I talked about before, a means of grace. In other words, a sacrament is where God imparts something to us through the act. We do the act, but when we do the act, God does something for us that we could not do. It’s a grace.
An ordinance is we do the act and the benefit of the act is in what the natural benefit of that act is. Here’s what I mean. First week in January, New Year’s resolutions, all right?
If you’re a shop owner, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is your time to make money. If you own a gym, these are your glory days. All right? These are. Everybody who owns a gym will tell you first, January is great.
We make our money in January because people just stuff themselves over the holidays. They make the New Year’s resolution, I’m going to get in shape. I’m going to join the gym.
I just want to tell you, joining the gym will not get you in shape. You actually have to use it. That’s the bummer of it, really. If I could join a gym and just pay $50 a month without going and get in shape, I’d pay the 50 bucks a month. That’d be no brainer. Like, that’d be great.
All right, that’s an ordinance. The benefit is what you get out of it by doing it. This is a memorial, the benefit. God doesn’t do anything. He did something in the past.
But the benefit of you coming to communion is it jogs your memory to devotion to Christ for what he did for you. But the Holy Spirit does nothing in your receiving it. That’s an ordinance.
When I was a kid, or when my kids were kids, I swore I would not do this. But my mom, you know, I would argue with her because I love to argue, and I would argue with her. Close your drawers when you put your clothes back in them. Why? I just have to open them again to get my clothes back out.
Make your bed. Why? I just have to unmake it to get back in. It’s inefficient. I, to this day, my wife put stuff away. Well, that’s your definition, away. We never use it in the cupboard. We use it on the counter. Why not leave it on the counter? That’s where I use it. Just leave it there. Right. Makes sense.
Now, with my wife, she doesn’t get to say, do it because I told you. She has other means of making me do it. But that’s not one of them. But my parents used to say that.
Finally, my parents would get sick of me arguing, and they just say, I told you so. That’s an ordinance. That’s an order. I told you so.
Now, obeying the order, you might gain some benefit out of it. If communion is an ordinance and baptism is an ordinance, the benefit we derive out of it is that when we do it, our obedience does something to encourage us. I got baptized. It’s a sign. It’s a remembrance. So whenever I forget I’m a Christian, I can remember my baptism.
But God didn’t do anything supernatural during that baptism or communion. A sacrament says that when you obey the ordinance and you do the ordinance, not only do you derive the benefit of doing the ordinance, but God. It’d be like this.
It would be like going to the gym. And you got the benefit of going to the gym. You got in shape. But what you didn’t know is you had a benefactor out there who put a thousand dollars into an account for you every time you went to the gym. Wow. Get in shape and get rich.
Now we’re talking. A sacrament means there’s something more that happens. And I think that’s what the Spiritual presence view offers us. Now, be careful. Don’t become a sacramentalist, because that becomes magic.
I can come and take this without faith, without believing on Christ, without confessing my sin, without reflecting, without being in relationship with him. And in and of itself, it’s magic. And that’s kind of the theology I grew up with, right, in the Catholic Church. Take the magic bath, right? When you’re born and eat the magic bread and you’re good.
You can go out drinking, carousing, whatever, but if you take the magic bath and eat the magic bread, you’re good. That’s sacrament without ordinance. Ordinance without sacrament is you get what you see is what you get.
But when we bring sacrament and ordinance together, we do this out of obedience to Christ. We do it because of our relationship with Christ. And it does serve to stir our hearts to love for him, for the sacrifice that he made. It is clearly a symbol. It is clearly a beautiful picture, the Last Supper. And it just moves us.
But you know what? If he’s in it, there’s more. And I believe that’s where Psalm 103 comes in. What does God do for us that we cannot do for ourselves at Communion? You see, that’s why it’s food and not a picture of the cross. Baptism, right? Water makes sense. Cleanse from sin, go down in death, rise to new life. The symbolism is clear.
Food, a memorial of Jesus. Death doesn’t make sense. Oh, wait. What if there’s more to it? What does food do? Keeps us alive.
Strengthens us, rejuvenates us, Gives us the ability to continue the journey. Christ feeds us at communion, but not with bread and juice, but with his life.
Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, O my soul and all my Inmost being. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul. And forget not what his benefits.
1 Let all that I am praise the Lord; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. 2 Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. (Psalm 103:1-2, ESV)
This is what his salvation brings to us. He forgives all your sins. You want your sins forgiven? Confess your sins and come to this table. What does he say? This is my blood. For what? Forgiveness of sins.
I say it often, and, you know, one of my Kevin Isms, you hang around long enough, you get to know these things. In the Name of Jesus, shame off you. Right? you’ve all heard, shame on you. In the Name of Jesus, shame off you.
Your sins are forgiven. He heals your disease. I just. God heals. I should have. This is one of my regrets. I should have started listing the times, the testimonies of healing. I was. And it’s one of the great things about social media.
I got a Facebook memory just the other day, and it was about a church that I visited in 2014. I was preaching on healing, and the pastor sent me a message a week after that meeting. She said a congregant had something go wrong in their eye.
It’s like something blew up behind their eye. I don’t know. I’m not an ophthalmologist. I don’t know what that is. But it was a serious problem and nearly blinded them. We prayed for them, and they went back, and the doctor used the M word.
The doctor said, I don’t know what happened, but it’s a miracle. All right. And I just wrote back, hey, cool. That’s great.
I completely forgot about it until this week. I got the memory on Facebook. I prayed for this person. They had something dramatic, dramatically happened to their eye. We prayed, and their eye was dramatically healed.
Jesus heals. And I’ve known people who, what, come to this table and are healed. They’re healed. I think one evangelist. What’s his name? Perry Stone. I think it is. I don’t know. But he calls it the meal that heals.
All right. You know, you got your TV evangelist catchphrase. It’s the meal that heals. That’s true. He heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit. All right? you’re dead and you come alive.
John Wesley believed communion to be a converting ordinance because of the sacramental nature of it. He would invite people to come and receive Christ, not at an altar call where he’d pray for them to ask Jesus in their life. He said, if you want to repent of your sins and follow Jesus, come where? To the table.
Believe upon Jesus, eat Jesus, Take Jesus in. Let him Live in you and your life is redeemed from the pit. A pit of depression, the pit of despair. Listen, here’s the nature of a pit. It’s a hole that you’re in that you can’t get out of. You need to be rescued.
I was watching something because this big blizzard was hitting the northwest. I was watching the weather channel and they were talking about these people who go out on ice in their cars to do ice fishing and stuff.
And I’m thinking, nah, I’m not driving a multi-thousand-pound vehicle out on ice that I don’t know how thick it is. Just not going to do that. Yeah, I’m not going to do it.
But she talked about, you know, what, how do you, if you fall through, how do you get out? Or no, she said, what do you do if you fall through the ice? And I thought, pray, get ready to meet your maker.
But they’re actually, you know, you can get your hands up on the ice, and if you kick, that’ll level your body out, and then you can maybe scooch you out. So good information to have. I am overwhelmingly confident I will never need that information.
All right, you can’t get out. It’s a pit. Jesus comes into the pit. If you’re in a pit of unbelief. If you’re in a pit, pit where you’re locked into your sin.
If you are in a pit where you are captive to the devil, sin, Satan and death, Jesus has redemption for you. You can be delivered at communion from demonic strongholds and you can be converted to Christ. He redeems your life from the pit. He renews your youth like the eagles.
What do youth have? Two things. Amazing, rejuvenative, strong bodies and hope. I was watching my kid play my grandkid play basketball and the kid went down with a bad knee and he was holding his knee and he limped off.
And if that kid would have been 20, I’d have thought meniscus, ACL. If he’d have been 60, I’d have thought it’s the last basketball he ever played. Because at 60, you tear your ACL or you tear your meniscus, that recovery. But you’re an 11-year-old kid playing basketball.
You didn’t tear your meniscus; you missed a shot, you fell. You wanted to make it look like it was your knee’s fault, so you limped off. So your dad didn’t think you missed a shot, and you’re better in seven minutes.
I never got injured as a kid, you know, you just Boom. You get that wind knocked out, you’re fine. Now, I. Now this is. I hurt myself sleeping. It’s like I go to bed to rejuvenate, and I get up the next morning and go, well, that didn’t work. I got to work this stuff out.
Food is strength. It rejuvenates your body. Jesus gives you strength, and in this meal, he gives you hope. What does he say? I’m going to have this meal again with you in my Father’s kingdom. This is an appetizer, right?
You ever go to a restaurant, get an appetizer? Appetizers are great. I love appetizers. But appetizers basically say, you think this is good? Just wait. Just wait.
You know, you think this. You think this calamari is good, you just wait until. Yeah, I don’t either. I was trying to be inclusive. I was going to go with potato skins, but it’s just too obvious for me. But let’s, let’s, let’s. I’ll be authentic. You think these potato skins are good? Just wait. The steak is coming. You with me now, Glo? Yeah. All right, my sister. All right. He satisfies you with good things.
Listen, it’s hard to be alive. Life is painful. Life is struggle. It’s hard to be a Christian. Jesus never sugarcoats this. Says, if you follow me, you’re gonna have to give up your life. If you follow me, there’ll be persecutions. If you follow me, there’ll be obstacles. If you follow me, pick up your cross and follow me.
You think, oh, man, it’s hard to be a Christian. It is. But you know what’s harder? Not being one. Because when you’re a Christian, you give up those things.
But this whole other world opens up to you, and he continually satisfies you with good things, pointing to the future, where at his right hand are pleasures evermore. Psalm 16. you’ve shown me the path of life. In your presence is the fullness of joy, not partial joy, not a little joy, not just Christmas morning joy.
In your presence is the fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures evermore. He satisfies me. Oh, my goodness. I mean, I am the richest man on the planet. I am the richest man on the planet.
I have three children who love Jesus, married to people who love Jesus. I have seven grandchildren who are cuter than yours, and they love their paca, and I love them. I wake up to a woman that I’ve woken up to now next to for 43, almost 44 years, and I still love her, and she hasn’t killed me.
My material needs are met. My emotional needs are met. I get to hang out with you all. One of the benefits of having a small church is the odds of having a truly annoying person go down. And you.
None of you are truly annoying. None of you are what we call egrs. Extra grace required. you’re just fun to be with. You all make me happy. When I see you, even when you stick your tongue out at me, Sydney makes me happy.
I know you’re precious. All right, dear ones, Psalm 103. I believe when you come to communion, you are doing it as an ordinance. And you benefit from that ordinance in that it stirs you to remember Christ’s sacrifice. It stirs you to devotion. But I think the memorial view just doesn’t take seriously enough.
He just says it every single time. This is my body. This is my blood, man. I just think it’s. It’s a symbol, but it’s more than a symbol. It’s like this ring. But the Spirit of Jill is in this ring. It’s not just a remembrance. It’s like I can almost hear her say, you know, you can put the. You can put the griddle back under the. Under the counter if you want. Why just use it on the counter? Why would I put it underneath? No, I could just hear her say, I still love you.
I’m still with you. And so what better thing to do, right? On the night that he was betrayed. And you don’t have, by the way, you don’t have to agree with me on this. It’s not a requirement to be a part of the firehouse church.
If you’re Catholic and you think, well, now, I’m not going to say the words of institution, right? So you probably have to go to mass to get the. To get the real deal. So this is just a memorial for you if you’re Catholic. It’s not the real thing. And if it.
And if you. If you hold the memorial view and you think I’m too sacramental and too, too high church, then let the ordinance do for you what it does for you. But I believe this is the. As I say it all the time, this is the food of God, for the people of God.
I believe the Holy Spirit is in this. Just like coming to church, just like reading your Bible, just like saying your prayers. He does something in those things to impart grace that we might become more like him.
So on the night that he was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. He gave it to his disciples. And he said, this is my body which is given for you.
In the same way, after supper he took the cup, gave thanks to his Father in heaven. He said, this is my blood which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. The blood of the New Covenant.
When you gather together, do this. Yeah. Remember, but be fed the food of God. For the people of God, come and eat.
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