We come this Lord's Day to continue in our study of the God of all comforts. God comforts us by the oath He made to Christ, appointing Him our High Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. But there remain false priests and blasphemous sacrifices that Christ has done away with, there are still many who defy Christ when He has told us that all of the other sacrifices for the forgiveness of sin have been done away with. The only sacrifice is Christ upon the cross, and the only priest is Christ before the throne of heaven for us. If anybody goes back to the animal sacrifices, there's still no more offering for sin. Christ made the last such offering, and animal sacrifices have been abolished for all time. Turning back from Christ means walking away from the only sacrifice. Those who abandon the Savior face horrible wrath for treading Christ underfoot, counting the blood of the new covenant as an unholy thing. There is a final contrast provided in Hebrews 12 between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant portended wrath and judgment. The confrontation of the people by God on the mountain produced horrible fear in everyone. The law could not save but only condemn the people. Who could not keep it? Who should want to go back to that with no peace and no salvation available in it at all? But the reality of the new covenant received now by faith in Christ is the heavenly Jerusalem, the spiritual Zion. We are come to that glorious place even now, Hebrews tells us, with Christ as our high priest there. We are even now in the congregation of the firstborn. We are written down in heaven now. We have come with boldness before God the judge now by the blood of Jesus. We are joined now with the spirits of just men made perfect by Christ's sacrifice. Most glorious of all, we have come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkling of his own blood, which has taken away our sins and made us perfect. Christ's blood speaks better things than the blood of Abel's animal sacrifice. The blood of Abel's sacrifice could never take away his sin. It only pointed to the blood of the new covenant, Christ's blood of sprinkling, that obtained a final redemption, a complete forgiveness, and the perfection of everybody who trusts in Jesus. Hebrews exhorts believers not to walk away from Christ, but to have faith in the promises and understand the privileged place we occupy now in spiritual Zion. Even as Cain was angry that his sacrifice was not accepted by God, so too the Jews grew angry that their animal sacrifices were no longer delightful to God. But the sacrifice of Jesus is a sweet-smelling savor to God and speaks better things for us than the sacrifice of Abel ever could. There is a final warning given in Hebrews 12. There is wrath to all those who do not heed the voice of Christ, who speaks now from heaven itself. It is by Christ that God has spoken to us, and he has promised from olden times to overthrow all that which displeases him. He has declared that God does not delight in any sacrifice other than Christ's alone, which is the only forgiveness of sin. Those who trust in Christ alone will enter into his kingdom, which cannot be moved. We must lay hold of Jesus only. Only his blood of sprinkling washes us clean and justifies all who believe in him. All the terrors of the law and God's wrath fell on Jesus as our great high priest, There is no wrath left for those who trust in Him. He is our resurrection and our life, and in Christ, in the end, we shall never die. Now, we come this Lord's Day to consider a specific danger, and that is the false doctrine of priesthoods and sacrifices and offerings that are interposed by certain false religions to seek to draw men away from the one-time sacrifice of Christ and His perpetual priesthood, making intercession for us. That is false doctrine of Roman Catholicism about their so-called mass and their so-called priests, which they have set up. You know, the devil specializes in twisting and perverting Christ's gospel. And these perversions run from the monstrous to the subtle. But oftentimes the subtle are monstrous. They just appear to be innocent little differences that can be swept under the rug. You know, you have the monstrous false gospel of Mormonism in which there are an infinite number of gods, infinite number of gods, and all of the Lord's people will someday themselves be gods and beget children and create new worlds. And there is a heavy work salvation there. Of course, there's a heavy work salvation in many other so-called churches where works are added to or even completely displaced. the offering of Christ, where justification comes not by the imputation of Christ's obedience. It comes not from the taking away of our sins by the sacrifice, but rather it comes from within ourselves, by our good deeds, justified by our works. People have told me just recently, and they believe it. But in the case of the Roman Catholic system, There is a corruption of the priesthood of Christ, a usurpation of the priesthood of Christ, and a corruption of the sacrifice of Christ, a reduplication of it, if you will, at every time they celebrate their so-called mass. And so these people have taken God's word and twisted it and misinterpreted it. And why is that? Well, in order to divert our gaze off of Jesus, and corrupt our faith in His promises and His sacrifice." That's the devil's purpose in all of these confusions and false teachings and blasphemous ideas. That sacrifice can be corrupted by adding works for salvation, and certainly the Roman Catholic system does that. They really believe, in essence, that one is saved by one's works. and that when one sins, one has to go get rejustified by taking the mass and saying a confession and that you can be baptized and trust in the mass and trust in the Roman Catholic system and love your Roman Catholic priest and go to all the services and do everything you're told to do and you can still wake up in hell, not purgatory, hell forever because there was some little sin that you forgot to apply the church's teaching to. Some little sin that slipped in at the last minute that wasn't forgiven by your so-called priest, all of which is a blasphemous shoving aside of the priesthood of Christ and of His intercession for us and of His sacrifice that perfects us forever according to the Scripture. There is an adding of works for salvation to the sacrifice of Christ. There is a stripping the sacrifice of Christ bearing our sin by adding rituals that reinterpret what Jesus actually did on the cross. And none is more destructive and demonic than this Roman Catholic false teaching about their so-called priests and their so-called mass where they take the Lord's table and turn it into a blasphemous mockery of the Lord Jesus' death on the cross. Note well, all religions that create a priesthood to offer a sacrifice for forgiveness of sin are going down that very same road. That is one of the original sins, if you will, of false and blasphemous religious teaching, is to create a class of priests that offer up the sacrifice of Christ or offer up a sacrifice for sin or mediate between God and the penitent sinner in the form of a priest. And we see this in Anglicanism, we see it in Episcopalians, but more clearly in the Roman Catholic system. When all of this is tied in with their false doctrine of transubstantiation, the bread and the wine, they claim, are transformed by their so-called priest into the very body and blood of Christ, literal body and blood of Christ. I had a Catholic friend once who he thought that there was a scientific paper that showed that if you took the consecrated host of the bread and put it under a microscope, you would see human cells and structures and that it had been literally converted. Now, the Roman Catholics, the sophisticated ones, they deprecate that sort of thought, but they still believe that it's the literal body and blood of Christ, and that we eat Christ's literal body and blood. And none of them notice the fact, do they, that when the Lord Jesus instituted the Lord's table, He was sitting there right in front of them, His body and His blood intact. Under no circumstance could they have confused or believed that they were eating Him and chewing on Him and drinking His blood. They understood it was a metaphor that Christ was using. And then when He ascended into glory, that's where His body is now, by the throne of heaven. It's not down here. It's not in the communion service in physical flesh and blood, is it? No, those are metaphors. It is seen in John 6 as well, and we're not going to go over all that again. We've gone over it recently in detail. In John 6, Jesus is extending a metaphor for trusting and believing in Him alone for eternal life and for glory. He calls Himself in one place, the water of life. He was making a metaphor there. He's the spiritual water of life. Trust in him and believing in him satisfies the soul thirst of thirsty man. He's the bread of life. Not like manna in the wilderness, you eat that and you're dead. The bread is His body and blood that He gives for the saving of His people. And by eating that bread is signified, Christ repeats over and over again, believing on Him and trusting in Him and relying upon Him. Then He calls Himself the Door in John 10. He calls Himself a Shepherd. causes people sheep. All of these are metaphors. Christ loved to use metaphors. And in the Gospel of John, the people always misunderstood the metaphor and argued with Him about it. And it oftentimes led to violent responses. But Jesus wouldn't back down. All the while, He was using the metaphor. He was explaining the metaphor. And all the while, because they didn't like the explanation, which is trust in me, they would continue to press the metaphor as a literal thing. And he would offer up responses to indicate, no, that's not true. You remember, he says, what if you see the Son of Man ascending into the clouds from which He came? How are you going to eat my body and drink my blood then if it's a literal thing? No, it's a spiritual. partaking, and it's partaken of by faith, by trusting in the Lord Jesus and in the purpose that He lent His body and blood to, a sacrifice, an offering for the sin of His people. Life is in, by, and through trusting in me, my promises, my sacrifice. And the more they insist on not believing, the harder Jesus pushes the metaphor of eating flesh and drinking blood. But always, He explains, these are metaphors for trusting in Christ, trusting in His sacrifice. He is laying down His body and shedding His blood for the saving of His people. All of our hope and life and rescue from our sin is in the sacrificial offering of Jesus on our behalf and in our place. All other works, all other works in which we also trust, all other rituals in which we also trust, destroy. that faith in Christ alone. We shift by following after works for salvation, we shift our faith away from Christ and into our works, or into our ritual, or into our obedience to some religious requirements that some so-called church has imposed upon us in order that we might be saved. And this is the problem that we see in the institution of a false priesthood and in the perversion of the sacrifice of Christ. The Lord's table is a remembrance, a celebration of Christ's one offering for our sin. We read this morning Luke's gospel, the 22nd chapter at verse 19, and he took bread and gave thanks and break it and gave it unto them saying, this is my body, which is given for you, this do in remembrance of me. And then he says, likewise, also the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you. So Christ makes it clear that it's a memorial, it's a remembrance, it's a celebration of what the Lord Jesus was about to do. And then in 1 Corinthians 11, the apostle Paul tells us this, for I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you. In other words, Paul is saying that this is a direct revelation from Christ to the Apostle Paul, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he break it and said, Take it. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup when he had sucked, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye as often as ye drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he comes. We represent the Lord's death by the partaking of the bread and the wine. We represent, that is, we show it, display it as a picture to the whole world till the Lord Jesus comes. that Roman Catholics blasphemously teach, that the Eucharist, that is, the thanksgiving for Christ, their Mass, so-called, is the actual body and blood of Christ, the same as was on the cross at Calvary, and that the Mass is a re-presenting of Christ's body and blood. Not just that it represents the body and blood of Christ, but rather that it presents again the actual body and blood of Christ. And to have that, you see, they must have a priest to change the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ. They must have a priest to offer the body and blood of Christ to God for sinners to take away sin and justify the fallen amongst them. You see how they have usurped the priesthood of Christ and they have usurped the sacrifice of Christ. Here they are running around in this world in 2023 pretending that they are priests offering up the very body and blood of Christ before God, the same body and blood which the scriptures tell us Christ offered up before God and presented to God in glory. Now, they claim they're doing that, and that when they do that, it takes away sin. It justifies the fallen. And we have to all ask who studied Hebrews, how in the world can there be any sin left for these so-called priests with their so-called sacrifice? How is there any sin left to take away? Didn't Jesus say? Didn't the writer of Hebrews say? That He had forever perfected His people? That He has purged our sins by Himself? That He has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God? that by one sacrifice he has forever perfected them that are sanctified. And then where it says, where there is remission of sins, there is no more sacrifice for sin. All of these texts refute and overturn the false Roman Catholic teaching about their mass and about their so-called priests. So from perverting Christ's metaphor about the bread and wine, the Roman Catholic creates a monstrous sacrificial system that finds no place in Scripture, and that is repeated over and over again. Notice, they have it once a day, once a week, however often you may need to go. I knew a devout Roman Catholic who went to Mass every single day, and he had no assurance of salvation. And when you talk to him, he'd immediately start listing all of his good deeds that he was relying on to get to heaven. This defies Hebrews' clear teaching that the sacrifice is done and over with, and the veils rent entwined, and we're to go boldly before God because we have a priest sitting there, our Lord Jesus, who's already sprinkled the blood of his sacrifice and has obtained forgiveness for our sin, and that there is no more offering for sin, that Christ has forever perfected His people, that He has already obtained eternal redemption for us, that He has already obtained forgiveness for all of our sins by His one-time sacrifice. And if we rely upon any other sacrifice or ritual or priest to cleanse us from sin, then we have trampled Christ underfoot. We have sneered at the blood of Jesus, which He shed on Calvary's tree. Some of us, we know the history. In the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, the Roman Catholic's blasphemous teaching was challenged by the reformers, and the response by the papacy was demonic. What did they do? They put these people to death. They burned them at the stake. Brother J.C. Ryle wrote of this particular matter. The English reformers were certain of their faith, so much so that they were willing to die for it. The Roman Catholic system was willing to torture to compel agreement with false doctrine, and many were burned alive at the stake during the reign of Bloody Mary. In the 19th century, Bishop J.C. Ryle wrote about the reasons they were put to death. Why were our reformers burnt at the stake? And he says, in every case, it was primarily because they would not assent to the blasphemous doctrine of transubstantiation. That is, that the priest, so-called, transforms the bread and the wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. And Ryle has numerous quotes from the people who were put to death, the preachers who were put to death, the citizens who were put to death at the stake and the people who persecuted him and their responses back and forth to each other. The martyrs believed, as the scriptures teach, that God's human body was ascended to sit at the right hand of the majesty and glory and that therefore it did not appear at the beck and call of every Romanist so-called priest upon their blasphemous altar of the mass. And because they would not admit to this idolatrous foolishness, they were burnt alive by Rome. They would not compromise the true gospel by admitting Christ's sacrifice at Calvary was incomplete and needed representing by the priests for the forgiveness of sin. And so the Roman Catholic religion anathematized Bible Christianity at the Council of Trent soon after the Reformation got started. And listen to what they said in two paragraphs of the Council of Trent. On the sacrifice of the mass, you see they call the mass a sacrifice. If anyone saith that in the mass a true and proper sacrifice is not offered to God, or that to be offered is nothing else but that Christ has given us to eat, let him be anathema. If anyone saith that the sacrifice of the mass is only a sacrifice of praise and of thanksgiving, or that it is a bare commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross, but not a propitiatory sacrifice, or that it profits him only who receives, and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, pains, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be anathema." See here what is being said, that you have to agree with them that the mass is a true and proper sacrifice offered to God. You have to agree with them that the sacrifice of the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice. What do we mean by that? A sacrifice that appeases God's wrath for sin. That's what that means. Remember we read Romans 3. This morning it says that the Lord Jesus has been appointed by God to be the propitiation by His blood through faith. And here they're claiming that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice and that it ought to be offered for the living and for the dead for sins, pain, satisfactions, and other necessities. So this is an offering that they claim to make at the Mass for the people's sin, for their pain, for the satisfaction of their sin, that is, the forgiveness of it. and for other necessities. So they're very clear about their false doctrine. And rather than be corrected by the reformers, they doubled down and they anathematized, they accursed everybody who would dare to disagree with them. Now all of this is clearly laid out. in the New Catechism of the Roman Catholic Religion, published in the mid-1990s. And when I discovered this, I was very greatly delighted in it because it collects all the worst things that the Roman Catholic system teaches and puts them all in order and categorizes them and includes many, many quotes from the Council of Trent, from the Anathemas, and from all sorts of foolish teaching by Roman Catholic theologians going back many centuries. But I want to read you a section from the official catechism that you can get on the Vatican's website. And it's numbered in section, section 1363 and follow it. In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real. This is how Israel understood its liberation from Egypt. every time the Passover was celebrated. When the church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover and it is made present. The sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present. as often as the sacrifice of the cross by which Christ our Paschal Lamb has been sacrificed is celebrated on the altar of the church, the work of our redemption is carried out." So you see there that the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic system is that when they celebrate the sacrifice of the mass, the work of our redemption is carried out. But wait a minute, Hebrews said that Christ had already obtained a full redemption, an eternal redemption for His people. And that was written way back in AD 50 sometime. But now here these people are saying that the mass is carrying out the work of our redemption. Paragraph 1366, the Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it represents, makes present, the sacrifice of the cross because of its memorial and because it applies its fruit Christ our Lord and God was once and for all to offer Himself to God the Father by His death on the altar of the cross to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But you see, when they say all these things, they say good things, but then they mix it with evil and with error. But because His priesthood was not to end with His death, of course it wasn't. Hebrews tells us it's a perpetual priesthood. What do they mean by that? At the Last Supper on the night when He was betrayed, He wanted to leave to His beloved spouse, the church, a visible sacrifice as the nature of man demands, by which the bloody sacrifice which He was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be represented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit. What's implied in this is that Christ's priesthood doesn't continue. No, no. He instituted a priesthood in the so-called church that continues, that offers up a physical sacrifice. And that's because the nature of man demands that he see a physical sacrifice. You see, they're catering to the old pagan notions that we want to see a real sacrifice. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, that's not good enough for us. We have to have it executed as it were in our sight at the mass, because that's what the nature of man demands. That way, not only is its memory perpetuated, but its salutory power is applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit." 1367, the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice. The victim is one and the same. The same now offers through the ministry of priests who then offered Him on the cross Only the manner of offering is different, and since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner, this sacrifice, that is, the sacrifice of the Mass, is truly propitiatory." And then, of course, this leads to other blasphemous and false teachings. 1378, worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the mass, we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other things, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. The Catholic Church has always offered, and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist, the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful and carrying them about in procession." 1393. Holy Communion separates us from sin. The body of Christ we receive in Holy Communion is given up for us, and the blood we drink shed for the many for the forgiveness of sins. For this reason, the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins." So you see, not only do they believe the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, and that it is working our redemption, as it has said. But now you see it says that it cleanses people from their sin and preserves them from future sin. But the truth of all this is as follows. Eight times Hebrews stresses that Christ's sacrifice was offered only once and that it forever purged our sins and made the saints perfect. The argument is that since it was perfect and accomplished the everlasting redemption of Christ's people, there's no more need or even the possibility that it might be repeated. The examples of Korah and Uzziah show the danger of usurping the duties of God's ordained priests. This is the great evil of the Roman Catholic and Anglican priesthoods, that they either have no legitimate offering, or worse, that they claim to repeat Christ's offering for sin. Indeed, the Roman system claims that the offering of the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice for sin, which is utter blasphemy. Only Christ was authorized by God to present to him the unique offering for sin, God's Lamb slain at Calvary. The Bible does not preach any concept of a liturgical priesthood in the church. Nowhere is a priesthood ordained other than Christ by the oath of God. We'll speak about that more the next Lord's Day. But I wanted to point out to you things about this that are found in the passage in Romans 3 that we read this morning. The righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, there is no difference. And this righteousness is received by faith. And it's the righteousness of God in Christ. It's not our own righteousness. It's imputed to us. But you see, the Roman Catholic system doesn't believe in the imputation of the righteousness of Christ by faith. They believe in the infusion of righteousness, that God makes us truly righteous. And that's why we have to obey the law. And if we break the law, then we've lost our righteousness. It has to be restored again over and over and over. We get justified by being baptized as babies, but then when we commit sins, mortal or venal, why then our righteousness has been taken away and it has to be restored by penance and by confession and by the offering of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice. That the sacrifice of Christ is not one time good for all time for the people who trust in Him, but rather that we must repeat, repeat, repeat. We must go back and have our sins repeated against us, brought to mind again, and a sacrifice be offered by some human priest who pretends to change the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ. But then notice it says, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And this is something that's a one-time thing in the lives of believers. It's not on again, off again. Why? Because it doesn't depend on what we do. It depends on what Christ did. We lay hold of that by faith and we're redeemed. by the work of Christ, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. God made Christ our propitiation, our offering for our sin by his blood and received through faith to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, that he might be just and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus. And so the righteousness which we receive is by faith and not by works. It's not maintained by works. It's not obtained by works. obtained by faith in the propitiatory sacrifice of the blood of Christ, which is what God ordained, as Hebrews underlines, not something that men perform or picture or represent or replicate. And then we go to Romans 4, of course, where it says that Abraham was justified, not by works, but rather by faith. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. And notice it says the people that work, well, they don't have any righteousness. Because if they were made righteous by work, then it would be a matter of debt by God to them and not a matter of grace. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. None of this fits in at all with what the Roman Catholic system teaches about the Mass and about its so-called priesthood. God justifies the ungodly. God does not make us all godly and perfect us in our conduct and sanctify us and thereby we're justified. No. Those things flow from God justifying us. They aren't the cause of it or the support of it. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose sins are forgiven, whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. And this is the crux of the problem with the Roman Catholic system. God's still imputing sin to those people. That's why they have to confess. That's why they have to go to the mass. That's why they have to have a propitiatory sacrifice made by a human priest. Because God won't stop imputing their sins to them. This text reveals a major flaw in the Roman Catholic doctrine. Who is the blessed man? under the Roman Catholic system. Paul's teaching that all the people who trust in Jesus are the blessed man, that God does not impute our sins against us. Why is that? Because of the blood of Jesus sacrificed in our place on Calvary's tree. But to the poor Roman Catholics, there is no blessed man. There's no blessed man until someone's beatified and sent to glory and declared a saint. They're blessed. But for all the rest of us down here who follow after Roman Catholic doctrine, none of them are blessed because at any moment God might impute their sins to them. He will impute their sins to them. They teach that God must impute the sins of every soul to them, no matter whether they've trusted in Jesus or not, no matter whether they've been justified by faith in Christ's sacrifice or not. And there is, you see, the robbing, the evacuation of Christ's offering of all of its power and of all of its majesty and of all of its beauty. And you see, they have tried to transfer that glory of Christ's sacrifice. It takes away our sin. that justifies us, that makes us the blessed man to whom the Lord will not impute iniquity. They want to take all of that, evacuate it all, and put little bits and pieces of it into their system, their rituals, their church, their priests, their mass, and then parcel out little bitty morsels of it upon your bowing before their false doctrine. And they're so cheap, that they won't make it clear any means by which a poor soul can have peace with God and know that he's saved and know that his debt has been paid by Jesus on the cross, and know that his sins are forgiven, and know that God has declared him to be justified without fault before God, and know that God will not impute his sin against him. In other words, they've totally overthrown the promise of the new covenant. Their sins and their iniquities, while I remember against them no more, can never be said in this life by the Roman Catholic system. So you see that in coming to the Lord's table, we have a great comfort by God's oath to Christ. You see, God made Christ our high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. His priesthood never ends, and the virtue of His sacrifice is never exhausted. And the work that He did in taking away our sins at the cross never fails and is never retracted and He's a perfect intercessor for His people at the throne of God. And that's why Paul could write, who shall lay any charge against God's elect? It's God that justified. Who can condemn us? It's Christ that died, yea rather, that's risen and that's seated at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us. So we must say in our hearts and in our minds, away with false sacrifices of Christ. away with rituals that rob the power of Christ's sacrifice and seek to impart some of it to this, that, and the other ritual and whatnot that have been created and perverted by false religions, and away with any other priest but our high priest Jesus. And so we come to this Lord's table and we celebrate what Christ did. When He went to the cross and laid down His life and shed His blood and His body was pierced and torn for us, that's all we have and that's all we need to obtain a complete redemption for our souls, forgiveness of sin, and the promise of everlasting life. He'll not lose a single one of the people that come to him in faith. No matter what popes and priests and church fathers say to the contrary, they cannot overturn the promises of Christ and the comfort which God has given us in Christ. So let's partake of this Lord's table and remember what it points to. It's not a sacrifice for our sin. It doesn't forgive our sin. It points to and reminds us of the sacrifice for our sin and the sacrifice that forgives us our sin. It can't be repeated, but it can be celebrated. And that's what we do around this table. Let's give thanks for the bread that pictures the body of Christ broken for us. So God, our Father, we rejoice in the completeness and the finality of the work which you did through Jesus Christ when you made him your lamb to be slain in our place. And we thank you that There is no other man other than the man Christ Jesus, the very God of glory Himself incarnate in human flesh, no other one between us and you. No one to interfere, no one to mediate, no one to parcel out, no one to withhold. the goodness of Christ and the glory of his work, and that he left us this bread to picture his body, which was broken for us. We thank you that his body is intact and whole in glory now as our man in the glory. and that we are celebrating His body that was broken for us and in which all of our hope in life and future glory depend. Help us not to ever for one minute allow any false teachings about a mass or about a fallen, broken-down human priest to ever once distract us. from the final work that's done by our Savior at the cross, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. The scriptures tell us that on the night our Lord was betrayed, he took the bread and he blessed it and he broke it and he said, take and eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Well, let's give thanks for the cup. I'd like to ask Brother Whitten if he'd give thanks for the cup. that pictures the blood of the Lord Jesus shed to make atonement for us. And the scriptures tell us that after they had supped that he took the cup and he blessed it and he said, drink ye all of it, this cup is the new covenant in my blood for the remission of sin. Do it as often as you do it in remembrance of me. And the Scriptures tell us that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we do preach. We do preach the Lord's death until He comes. Let's stand and sing number 49 in the Black Book. Everlasting glory be God and Father unto Thee. Tis with joy Thy children raise hearts and voices in Thy praise. thine the light that showed our sin, showed how guilty we had been, thine the love that freely gave, thine own Son our souls to save. Call to share the rest of God in the Father's blessed abode, God of love and God of light, in thy praises we unite." Number 49.