Let me ask you to turn with me this evening to 1 Corinthians 11. I want to read the last half of this chapter, which you'll recall pertains particularly to this ordinance within the church. Paul has praised the Corinthians remarkably in the opening of the book. He praises them. He remarks on the gifts that God has given to them. We know them as a congregation that had some problems, some sins. There were different sins within the ranks. Some individual, some corporate. And has been praised them. and then begin dealing with some of those particular problems, there are two areas corporately that he seeks to set right in this chapter, the second of which is concerning this sacrament. So I want to read beginning in verse 17, 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it. For there must also be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. When you come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating, everyone taketh before other his own supper, and one is hungry and another is drunken. What, have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. 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 when He had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in My blood. This do ye as oft as you 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 come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For 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, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home. that ye come not together unto condemnation, and the rest will I set in order when I come." Amen. We trust again that the Lord will add His blessing to the public reading of His inspired Word. I'll just ask you again, if we can all bow our heads and our hearts once again together. Our Heavenly Father, tonight as we come aside, we return to this place, to this remembrance of our Savior's death. And so we pray for the grace and help of Your Spirit. Again, that You would thrust from us every idle thought, every empty heart we might bring as we repeat a familiar ritual. And let us set it aside. Let us prepare our hearts. Let us be mindful of that which we're called upon to remember. And we ask for grace even in meditating upon Your Word before we come to partake. And we pray these things in Jesus' worthy name. Amen. I want tonight to use the words of verse 26 as our text. We read that again. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come. We're in the midst of a survey. I'm not going to flatter myself or flatter us in saying that we're in the midst of a study of the doctrines of the prophetic Scriptures. Hopefully, we'll study a little bit some of those portions. We're just trying to survey some of the orthodox interpretations of some of the secondary details of these things. But we come tonight to our Communion Sabbath. Well, I confess that this text is one that comes to my mind often at this time. It's a text I don't know that I've ever just selected this verse to preach upon. But obviously, the Advent figures very prominently in this passage. We'll come to that in a few moments. We're to engage, to participate, to come to this table until the day of the Lord's return. The significance to that. So it's for that reason, our thoughts in eschatology, I want to come to this particular passage tonight. I don't want to go through the particular problem that was present at Corinth. We've looked at that in the past more than once. I don't want to dwell upon it, but to set ourselves in the context, I'm not choosing the passage because I think we're guilty of that here. But what was evidently happening in Corinth is there were those that were gathering, There were factions in the church. That's one of the first things Paul deals with at the opening. Those were factions that focused upon the different apostolic leaders. But it seems that one of the factions, whether it coordinated with the Paul or Apollos or Peter factions, we don't know, but it seems commentators are relatively united. The problem that was taking place at this juncture was that the wealthy among the Corinthians, and there were many, were gathering, they were feasting, they were not tarrying for others that were not able to arrive when they arrived. Some even suggest the difficulties of slaves in always being punctual at the services because of the demands or the whims or the suddenly changed minds of their masters and thus their changed schedules. And we find that Paul is confronted with a church at Corinth where even at this table, some were feasting, some were even drunk, and others were hungry. What type of fellowship and communion were they exemplifying there? He goes so far as to say when you come together like this, that's not the Lord's table. and He seeks to correct their abuses here. But I want to come, as I said, to the words of verse 26 and just draw from them this evening our thoughts. Reading again, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death until He come. These are words that follow the words of institution. I don't usually quote this text. We usually end with the last phrase of verse 25, this due in remembrance of me. But these words are words put before God's people, not just in Corinth, but for us here tonight. When we come to this table, this New Testament ordinance, we speak of the words we read in the preceding verses as the words of institution. This is one of those things when you're in seminary that kind of hits you between the eyes. But most likely, these words that Paul penned to the Corinthians are the first written record of the Lord's Supper. The Gospels were written later than Corinthians. So we have the record, and the record's following the life of Christ, and so we think of them, Here's where the church is first given its instructions scripturally. Obviously, they've been given oral instruction by the apostles. But scripturally, the instructions with regard to this institution. And so we call them the words of institution. We're to come regularly to this table. We gather at this place to remember the death of the Lord Jesus. And the first thought I'd suggest to you from these words as we come together, that opening phrase, we eat this bread and drink this cup, is that of participation. We participate in this service. We participate, we can say, with Christ. If you go back to chapter 10 and verse 16, Paul uses the word that we often use with regard to the service. 10.16 Paul says, "...the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" The bread and the cup are the communion we have with Christ. We fellowship with Him. We commune with Him here. We participate with Him here. And all that surrounds this ordinance brings us to understand something I don't even think mystery is the right word. Theologians, denominations, have struggled over the centuries since the Reformation about the nature of the Lord's presence at the table. Obviously, Rome's teaching is wrong. that at the Mass at this table, I hesitate even to say it in that way, this is not the Mass, but that there's actually a sacrifice of Christ that the pronunciation that the priest makes over the elements changes them literally into the body and blood of Jesus that are offered afresh for the sins of His people. It's not in that way that Christ is present here. There's no bodily presence of Christ. And you look at the institution of the ordinance in the upper room, where Christ bodily stood before them and yet held a piece of bread and said, this is My body. Clearly, He's speaking of it representing His body. And we've studied through various other illustrations of how clearly that is the case and true. Others wrestle the Lutherans have a ubiquitous view of Christ's human nature and think His presence is thus here and that way. It's an error as well. Reformed preachers and theologians have held His spiritual presence. And of course we believe this to be accurate. Because as we come to this table, there is a sense in which He is present, and there is a sense in which He's absent. He's present in that we participate with Him. The communicants, we as communicants, appropriate Christ. We spiritually feed upon Him. We receive of Him. But we do this by faith. There's no mumbo-jumbo going on. These are symbols. Flour, juice. Bread, wine. But we're to pause and through the picture know something of a special presence as we remember Him. But the fact that we appropriate Him sensing His presence, and yet the means of appropriation is clearly and only by faith, it shows His absence. Of course, as He spoke to the disciples, as He would leave them and go unto the Father. And so here, we have again a mindfulness of both His His presence and His absence. But we do this, we participate by remembering Him. Remembrance is on our part. We're not asking God. We're not going through a passion play to try and get God's attention so that He can remember what Jesus did. All the persons of our triune God are infinitely mindful, eternally mindful of what Jesus has done. But we are to remember Him. Just as Israel in the annual occurrence of the Passover was to remember the exodus from Egypt, to dwell upon the fact again that God Sovereignly, powerfully delivered them from bondage. We're to remember the historical fact of Jesus' sacrifice which has delivered us from an infinitely greater bondage. We come tonight to participate, to remember again our Savior. But secondly, I would suggest to you that not only is there participation, But there's proclamation. We read this text, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till He come. Here's where we have to become experts in our old English again, because it's not even S-H-O-W. It's S-H-E-W. Man, that's getting old. Well, even then, commentators struggle. I don't think it's inappropriate. One I was reading just, well, as you say, through the authorized version under the bus here. I don't think that's entirely necessary. But the showing that is going on is not a play. It's not some passion play. It's not some drama. It's a word that's used and it's frequently used in the New Testament of the proclamation of the Gospel. Paul uses it in Corinthians already in chapter 2 with regard to his proclamation of the Gospel of God. And so here as we come tonight, we participate by remembering Christ, but we're also proclaiming Christ. We're preaching the Gospel. But I ask you here to consider with me for a moment If we tonight, by participating, partaking of these elements, are preaching the Gospel, showing forth, proclaiming the Lord's death until He comes, who are we preaching to? I remember church history class a few years ago now. Dr. Pinozian, our beloved brother, we were privileged to have here not so long ago. But he was talking about the origin of the term, Mass, in the Christian church. The Latin word, mitto, is a word that means to send. When they came to celebrate Communion, the Lord's Table, they would send out the unbelievers. only believers, only those converted members of the church would remain. And that's the evolution of where the term mass came from. Obviously, there's been a lot more evolution since even that thought. But this is a part of the New Testament church that belongs to believers. Now, there are times that the unsaved are present, in communion services. We fence the table is one of the terms we use. Perhaps I should have spoken of that this evening. We have several visitors. Many of you are repeat visitors and know, but this is not the table of free Presbyterianism. It is the table of the Lord. If you're a believer in Christ, If you're not disciplined by some other assembly or have a reason for those causes not to partake, we welcome you to join with us as we partake tonight around the Lord's table. But this is a particular service of the church that's for God's people. It is emblematic. It's sacramental. It's a picture. When we're preaching, when we're declaring, when we're showing the Gospel to unbelievers and even to ourselves, we're usually explaining things. We're talking about the person and work of Jesus. There's not a lot of explanation in partaking of these elements. But as believers, as those coming together to proclaim something here, We're preaching to ourselves. Jen and I have talked often in different contexts over the years about how often it's necessary for us, for you, for all of us as God's people, to preach to ourselves. I think one of the phrases she uses talking to you ladies is we don't sit and have a cup of tea with our sin. Well guys, I don't know whether it's a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or a hot dog, but we don't sit down and just have a conversation with ourselves about our sin and dwell in sin. We have to preach the Gospel to ourselves. And I was thinking of that this morning as we were preparing to come to the Lord's table tonight. You think of Joseph's brethren. And that little phrase that he uttered as they left to go back and bring that wondrous news to Jacob. See that you fall not out by the way. How easy it would be for them to say this is too good to be true. And you know they wrestled with it. We'll look at it a little later. Some of the very last words, last couple paragraphs of the book of Genesis Jacob has died. And Joseph and his brethren take Jacob back and bury him there at Machpelah. His brethren send a message to Joseph. They meet with him again and say, by the way, Dad, before he died, I wanted just to tell you this to make sure you forgive your brothers. Because they were worried. Jacob, or Joseph, you know, he can't really love us. He can't really have forgiven us. He's just playing along until Dad dies, and then we're going to get what we really deserve. And it reads there again, Joseph wept when he heard this. Guys, can you not believe that I've forgiven you? How often is that the case for us as God's people? We wrestle with unbelief. The devil comes and whispers in our ear, how can God forgive you? You come tonight and you hold a little piece of bread And you're called upon in those moments to remember the body of Christ that is given for your sins. You preach to yourself, how can God not forgive me? Because He's punished my sins in Jesus. And so tonight as you come, There's a proclamation you need to make to yourself. There's a sermon you need to preach to yourself. God in Christ has forgiven you and you are accepted in the Beloved. But the last thought I bring to you is that of anticipation. The closing phrase of this text. As often as you do eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till He comes. As we said in the introduction, there's an eschatological aspect to this text. It doesn't answer some of our millennial questions, I'm sure, but there is an eschatological aspect. We do this until He comes. There's no other age that's going to intervene between this age and the Lord's coming. There were prior ages. I'm about to make a statement, I'm retracting before I make it, but the old school dispensationalists, the Scofield reference Bible, the seven dispensations, I actually think Charles Ryrie's argument for there being seven dispensations is good. You know, a lot of dispensationalists in recent years are trying to back off from some of the old guys and says, oh, I'm not a Schofield guy. I don't think seven. I think there's four, maybe three. I'll go with four, but it's not the number. It's what they were teaching about the ages that was the problem. I think the argument for seven is pretty good, but I'll leave that alone. but this one. The age we're in now that Scripture calls the last days. The whole season between the first and the second advent. The ends of the world are come upon us. There's no new age. There's no great change that's going to take place between this age and the age to come. And so the only thing that we're waiting for is Him. Now we're going to talk in the weeks ahead about the Kingdom. We're actually going to find passages of Scripture that tell us very plainly the Kingdom is already here. And then we're going to find some passages that tell us very plainly the Kingdom is still in the future. We'll scratch our heads a little bit and wrestle with that. But this we do until they come. I'm glad tonight we sang that great second coming hymn, Savior, We Love Thee. Somebody was on the same wavelength, because I was going to request that tonight, but I don't get hymn requests on Sunday nights. I'm too late to get here. I guess you get early, and I know there's money going under the table. But I hope you're investing that well, brother. Might need a building someday. We'll need that come back. But I love that hymn. the bride her Lord would see. But you see, there's the longing of the bride. Christ spoke to His disciples about days in which the bridegroom would depart from them. They would fast. They would long for Him to return. But then there's a confidence. The bride of Christ doesn't have to worry about being left at the altar. He's purchased her with His own blood. He's going to present it to Himself without spot or wrinkle. What a marvel. But we do this until He comes. We can struggle. We can wrestle with timing. Lord, what are You doing? Why haven't You come back yet? Why are You letting these things transpire? Jacob wrestled. Joseph wrestled. Let us have that Gospel thought. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. Even in the crisis of the last days, there's a smile on the throne. He's preparing to reveal His Son. We come tonight to preach to ourselves, to preach the gospel afresh. We do this waiting, waiting for that day in which He will come again and receive us unto Himself, that where He is, there we may be, there we will be also forever, enjoying the presence Let us remember Him rightfully this night.