Please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 11.
At LBC, we observe the Lord’s Supper every other month. That’s in contrast to some churches that observe it every week and others that hardly observe it at all. The argument can be made not to observe it every week because if this is a weekly practice, this ordinance will lose its meaning. In fact, it can become nothing more than a meaningless ritual.
On the flip side, the death and resurrection of Christ is the core of our faith. It’s the gospel embodied and remembered. And for those who practice it too infrequently, there is danger that they will lose the central component and anchor of our faith and drift into all kinds of peripheral teachings.
I pray that the Lord’s Supper would never become a mundane routine. I pray that the gospel would always be held at the center of this church. Thus, we need to observe Communion with regularity and with enough frequency for its message to have impact in shaping this church.
With what kind of heart are we to partake?
28 A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
We can’t partake without first examining our hearts. Today, we talked about the sin of a judgmental spirit. And I would like us all in a moment to focus our prayers on this particular sin. Ask God to reveal areas of blindness. The plank in our eye. Examine your attitude toward others. Do you speak redemptively or with a condemning tone?
Pray through the gospel. Preach the gospel to yourself in your prayers. Remember how lost you were and how thankful you were when you were first saved. You used to be enemies of God. You deserved to be cast off forever. But God had mercy on you. He saved you. Nothing the world does to you can take your salvation away. Nothing anyone says about you will change your eternal destiny if you are a child of God. Think back to those days when you first believed. There was no judgmental spirit then. You were just overjoyed to be rescued from sin and embraced by the loving arms of your Savior and Lord. Let the gospel permeate your thoughts and your prayers. If you do that, your attitude toward others will change.
I am going to ask Brother Jae and Brother Matthew to come forward and stand facing the congregation. As you come to partake in the Lord’s Supper, the 3 of us are going to pray for you silently because it is our commitment to serve you and to lead this congregation first and foremost through the preaching of the Word and through prayer.
We are going to ask you to come forward twice. First, I will invite you to come forward to take the bread and you are free to take it whenever you are finished praying on your own. This is to stress the individual aspect of the Lord’s Supper. Second, I will ask you to come forward a second time to take the cup and this time, I ask that you wait until everyone has been served and we will take the cup altogether. This is to stress the corporate aspect of the Lord’s Supper.
Christians are all welcome to come forward. If you are not a committed member of a church, I would encourage you to commit here or somewhere else. Otherwise, you will not get the full impact of what the Lord’s Supper represents. If you don’t yet believe in Jesus as your personal Savior and Lord, I would ask you to refrain from partaking in Communion because this ordinance has no meaning for you.
Let me read starting from the second half of v23 —
23 …The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 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.”
Let’s spend some time in prayer – about 1-2 minutes. When you have finished praying, come forward and take the bread back to your seat. And when you are ready, please take it individually as a symbol of Christ’s forgiveness given to you personally.
You can come forward using either aisle. Let’s pray.
If you haven’t come forward to take the bread already, please come forward now because we will be moving on soon. [TAKE BREAD]
Now is the time we invite you to come forward for the cup. This time, I ask everyone to take the cup and wait at their seat until everyone has been served. Then, as a symbol of our corporate unity, we will take it together so please hold on to the cup and wait for everyone to be served. Please come forward. [TAKE CUP]
25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
You may take the cup. Closing prayer.