Sunday Morning Service – July 21, 2024
Father God, what a joy, what a joy it is to be together in your house this day. Thank you for everything that you have done. Thank you for everything that you do, that you are doing right now, Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would lead us in song, lead us in prayer, lead us in your word. We pray that your Holy Spirit would speak into our lives today, convict us of the things that need me convicting us and just empower us to live a life worthy of our calling, which is as a son or a daughter of the Most High God. Lord, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to sing and to praise and to glorify your name in all manner. We ask that you take your place as the rightful pastor and teacher of this church and of your church universally. In Jesus name, Amen. In your hymnals in the back are the responsive readings. This is responsive reading 683 Christ the Bread of Life as we head into the Lord’s Supper today. I will begin. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me shall come to me and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me that all that he has given me I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him may have eternal life and by myself will raise him up on the last day. The Jews therefore were grumbling about him because he said, I am the bread that came down out of heaven. And they were saying, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How must he now say, I have come down out of heaven? Jesus answered and said to them, Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets and they shall be taught of God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that any man has seen the Father except the one who is some God. He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread not of life. Please, please be seated. When the time came, Jesus and the apostles sat down together at the table. Jesus said, I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won’t eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Those are powerful, powerful words. We will eat with Jesus again in our physical bodies again in the age to come. Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, Take this and share it among yourselves, for I will not drink wine again until the kingdom of God has come. He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Then after the supper, he took another cup of wine and said, This cup is the new covenant between God and his people and a grievance confirmed with my blood which is poured out as a sacrifice for you. But here at this table, sitting among us as a friend, is the man who will betray him. For it has been determined that the Son of Man must die, but what sorrow awaits the one who betrays him. The significance of what we do here on these days cannot be overstated. We have set aside particular days in the life of this church to observe the ordinances as Jesus has commanded. We believe that that is an important function of the church. Not that these ordinances impart grace to you. Not that these ordinances have some sort of mystical, spiritual power. We perform these ordinances as Jesus commanded so that we may prayerfully consider all that he has done, all that God has done, and we may recognize fully how he indwells us, every cell of our being, every thought that we have, every aspect of our lives. The act of feet washing, as we often talk about, is certainly an act of servitude. And it is taken to the tenth degree when we realize that holy God kneels at the feet of his apostles, his disciples, and washes their feet as an example for others. It demonstrates that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. He is touching that water. He is touching those feet. He is interacting with his human creation. There is so much significance in both of these ordinances, and I am so glad that the church has adopted the mindset that they are important. And we will look at our calendar every year and set aside special times for them. But every single day of your life you should be sharing in the Lord’s Supper. I often say that’s one of the reasons why we pray before we eat. But you can go a bit more deeply than that. You can remember every time you eat and drink. Maybe your prayer before your meal has become just a rote memory prayer that you say, but you can be intentional in remembering the body that was given for you and the blood that was shed for you, whether you are in church sharing unleavened bread and the fruit of the grape, or you’re having a hot dog and a Coke at cheese, one of our favorite stops. You can remember feet washing every time that you serve your husband, every time that you serve your wife, every time that you serve your child, grandchild, you get the picture. You can remember feet washing every time you see somebody that is just having a bad day and you ask if you can help. You can observe feet washing when you’re at the grocery store or the parking lot and there is a single mom holding a baby trying to get her groceries in because she doesn’t want to put the baby in the car. You can help her. We remember these ordinances on a daily basis is the point of this mini sermon. And I hope that you do. I hope that the prayers that we pray here, I hope that the ordinances that we observe here, I hope that the honest conversation that we have here is never taken for granted ever because it is significant. I wrote about holiness, spoke about holiness. It is a part of our holiness. Not everybody does this. And not every Christian is willing to do this with an open heart and an open mind. It is simply something you’ve got to get through in church. It shouldn’t be that way. And I hope that it is not that way for you. We learned about this in John 13. Let me read the scriptures. Today, the men will be departing to the fellowship hall and the ladies will be in the overflow room. My beloved and me will be up front today and I would encourage you if this is something that you are not inclined to do, please go watch. Pray the prayer with them. The men, I think, have song sheets and sing the songs with them and experience it even if it is something that you are still in the process of coming to terms with. So before the Passover celebration, we read this before. Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his father. He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth and now he loved them to the very end. It was time for supper and the devil had already prompted Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. We heard about that in the Lord’s Supper as well. Jesus knew that the father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. This is our significant passage that God is fully human, God is fully divine, and God is about to perform an act, an interaction with his special creation. So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, poured water into a basin, and he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him. Ladies and gentlemen, at this point in time, we will depart. Men to the fellowship hall, ladies to the overflow room, incredibly consider you’re in the sanctuary if you’re not participating, and I would ask my beloved to join me up front. Amen.
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