Communion Exhortation - 4/20/08

Sermon theme: watching and praying amidst temptation...

As Jesus watched and prayed in Gethsemane, He asked that He not have to drink the cup of wrath from the Father. But there was no other way to provide us with the cup of blessing.

This bread, this cup of blessing, shows forth His sacrifice and our forgiveness, our acceptance with the Father, as He offers us His cup, at His table. Have you yielded to temptation? You have an advocate with the Father in heaven. The proof of that is the Word you have heard, the Spirit in your heart, and the Table before you. This table is an assurance of our forgiveness where we have stumbled and fallen.

As we receive such assurance, we also take Christ’s life into our own. He resisted temptation. We receive His vitality to stand firm before the devil’s attacks. We are communing with Christ, not simply remembering Him, though we do that, too. This meal is not so much a mental or spiritual work of ours, remembering, focusing, or feeling something going on in you. In this meal, the Holy Spirit is working upon us, feeding us with Christ. We don’t just receive assurance of forgiveness here, but we receive strength to bear fruit and resist temptation. You are the soil. The seed of the Word has been sown. The Table is both fertilizer for your soil, and weed killer for your soil, designed to bear fruit for Christ.

1 Cor 10:16-17: “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? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”