In Remembrance of Me: Understanding the Lord’s Supper

1:16And I'm sure you don't either, unless you understand exactly why we tell an opposing coach who is being loud and protesting a referee why they are just like a bud. Driver and should sit down, and why a bus driver was standing up in the first place. I don't understand all these things. I don't know exactly where they come from, but it's fun to engage in them, and it's part of being an Aggie. Well, I think about that, and I think about in the local church that oftentimes, as believers, we have things that we celebrate together, things that we do together that mark us as a New Testament church, including the ordinances of the New Testament church, Lord's Supper, and baptism. And we may not necessarily understand exactly what we're doing and why we do it.

2:11And so, I want today, this morning, for you to walk with me, not only through the scriptures, but through the history of the church, and to examine why we have done the Lord's Supper the way we've done it, and how the Bible tells us we should do the Lord's Supper, and to see if those things match up. That's important, amen. I think it is too. So, I want to just kind of brace you for this morning: that this is not going to be what we normally do at New Life Baptist Church, which is the verse-by-verse expositional preaching of the Word of God through whole books at a time. This is going to be a little bit different. This is really more like a teaching time. And as an elder here, At New Life, I've been tasked by the other elders to come and to help in this equipping time by talking about what the Bible and what the church's witness has said about the Lord's Supper. Matthew 26. Let me read this passage again. This, not from 17, but just in the institution of the Lord's Supper, from 26 through 29.

3:24Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat. This is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you. For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many of the forgiveness, for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom.

4:02What are we witnessing here? What is this that we're looking at? That's what we're going to do today. We want to talk about what is this? What's the nature of the Lord's Supper? And then what are the elements that are involved in the Lord's Supper? And then finally, how often should we take it together? Now, I've got to tell you, it would really be helpful right now if we had a New Testament version. Of the book of Leviticus. That'd be awesome. That'd be fantastic. Because you know what I would do? I'd just read it. Because that's what the book of Leviticus did. The book of Leviticus lined out for God's people how they were to come and approach and worship him in a very, very specific manner.

4:48It talked about how people should come and pray, what kind of sacrifices they should bring. It talked about how, particularly, how the priests should come before the Lord, even to the point of what they should wear before the Lord. We don't have that. We sort of do because I wore this last week when I preached. So this sports coat is the equivalent of the temple vestments right now for the preacher. We don't have that, though. And so what we have to do is to take the New Testament, the newer Testament of the Lord, as a whole, and to examine it as a whole broadly.

5:31And then to see the witness of not only the scriptures, but the witness of the New Testament church through the centuries and to see how things maybe have shifted, how they've changed, why they've changed, and what our convictions are as elders trying to shepherd and lead New Life Baptist Church. So, why do we observe ordinances? Why do we observe baptism and the Lord's Supper? Those are the two ordinances. That we observe here at New Life Baptist Church. There's other things that we do: we preach, we sing, we pray, but these are two things that we do that mark us as a confessional Reformed Baptist Church.

6:16It's the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Well, Charles Hodge, the great seminary professor from Princeton, he said this about why we observe baptism and the Lord's Supper. He said, Baptism and the Lord's Supper are admitted to be sacraments or ordinances, something we do on a regular basis. They are, one, ordinances instituted by Christ. Two, they are in their nature significant. Baptism of cleaning, the Lord's Supper of spiritual nourishment. Three, they are designed to be perpetual. That means that they're supposed to be not only ongoing, but they're supposed to be regularly occurring. And four, they were appointed to signify and to instruct, to seal and thus to confirm and strengthen, and to convey or apply and thus sanctify those who by faith receive them.

7:10So, what is this? What is the Lord's Supper? The Lord's Supper is a church-wide communion meal that Christians partake by faith in remembrance of Christ's atoning death upon the cross, as Jesus had done with his disciples the night before he was betrayed. That's what we saw there. In Matthew chapter 26. Now, many different Christian traditions have understood the nature of the actual elements and the nature of the practice of the Lord's Supper differently. For example, the Roman Catholics believe in transubstantiation, meaning that once the priest blesses the Eucharist, the piece of bread, the wafer, and the wine, that he holds that wafer up, and that somehow that wafer becomes the literal body and the wine becomes the literal blood of Christ.

8:08There's also consubstantiation. If you're from the Lutheran background, for example, this is what Martin Luther taught, that those elements don't become the body and blood of Christ, but that they contain spiritually the body and blood of Christ. He would use the phrase that the presence of Christ is in and with and under these elements. If you're from, like me, you're from what we call affectionately, although it was used in the beginning as a term of derision, if you come from a low church like myself, a Southern Baptist, who is not so much tied to a liturgical tradition, you probably grew up in most Protestant denominations, as a matter of fact, you grew up with a memorialization view of the Lord.

9:00Lord's Supper, meaning that this was strictly a remembrance, just remembering what Christ has done for us. That is certainly important. And we're instructed to do so. But we really believe here at New Life that it's more than that. It's more than a memorial. We believe and we hold to the view that most of the Reformers held to, that John Calvin held to, and that is that Christ's real spiritual presence is there during the gathered meal with his saints. Think about Matthew chapter 11, verse 20, where Jesus, talking to his disciples, says, where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. The full context, the fuller context of Matthew 11, is that Jesus is actually talking about how to discipline within the church. But the greater, broader, general context is the church. This is what happens.

10:03This is how Christ engages his body when two or three are gathered in my name. Wayne Grudem, in his systematic theology, he wrote this about this particular verse and how it pertains to how we understand the Lord's Supper. He says, and if he, Christ, is especially present when Christians gather to worship, then we would expect that he would be present in a special way in the Lord's Supper. We meet him at his table, to which he comes to give himself to us. As we receive the elements of bread and wine in the presence of Christ, so we partake of him in all his benefits. We feed upon him in our hearts with thanksgiving. Indeed, even a child who knows Christ will understand this without being told and will expect to receive a special blessing from the Lord during this ceremony because the meaning of it is so inherent in the very actions of eating and drinking. Yet we must not say that Christ is present apart from our personal faith, but only meets and blesses us there in accordance with our faith in him. That's the nature of the Lord's Supper. That Christ meets with his people when we dine together on the bread and on the wine, remembering Christ's death until he comes. Okay, well, what's in it? We've seen very clearly what it is, but what's in it? What are the elements that Jesus used in instituting the Lord's Supper? Well, they were unleavened bread and wine. Unleavened bread and wine. Why unleavened bread? Well, understand the occurrence of the Last Supper. Understand the context of what's going on here in Matthew chapter 26. Now, we understand it as the night of Jesus' betrayal. Betrayal by Judas in the beginning of his arrest and his trial and ultimately his crucifixion. But understand that they were meeting together on the night of the Passover. Night of the Passover. Well, what is the Passover? The Passover from the book of Exodus is when God led his people Israel out of Egypt, out of slavery and out of bondage. And on the last night in which he would judge Egypt and judge Pharaoh for not releasing his people as God had commanded, God promised that he would send death, the angel of death, through Egypt and that the firstborn of each house would die. But to the Jews, he gave this promise that if they would take an unblemished, perfect lamb and slay that lamb, and take the blood of that lamb and put it above the doorposts, then those that are within that house behind the blood of the lamb would be safe. And God did it, and he held true to his promise. That's the context of the Passover. That's why they were meeting, and God told his people that I want you to reenact this meal with wine from the Old Testament, the Hebrew, the Yahin, the wine, which is the oinos, the real wine that we see in the New Testament, and with unleavened bread. Now, why with unleavened bread? Well, we understand the wine part because its wine has that colorization. It looks like blood. It's to remind them of the blood that was shed for them. But unleavened bread, also, because God said, you're about to leave. You're about to go. And we can't wait for the bread to rise. You need to be ready to go. And so you make this bread without yeast, without having to wait for it to rise, and it will remind you that you left, that I called you out. So those are the elements of the Passover meal from which we get our Lord's Supper. Now, the Passover meal was just the first night. A lot of times people think, well, yeah, it's the Passover week. There's no such thing as a Passover week. There is a week of unleavened bread, which is one of the three major pilgrimage festivals on the Jewish calendar. And Passover is the first night of that week-long festival, that week-long celebration. It's the celebration, the feast of the unleavened bread. Jesus and his disciples undoubtedly used unleavened bread. Undoubtedly. The doctrines, by the way, of transubstantiation, where the bread and the wine become Christ's actual body and blood, and consubstantiation, where Christ is really present in, with, and under the elements, it really would make no sense of Jesus' words in their historical context. As Jesus holds up a loaf of bread and declares, this is my body, no one Listening in that room would ever imagine that he's claiming the bread to be his literal extension of his flesh. Moreover, in Aramaic, which would have been the common tongue that he spoke with his disciples, these sentences would not have been spoken with a linking verb, is, but simply as this, my body, and this, my blood. Craig Blomberg, in his commentary on this very text, he states, as frequently elsewhere, Jesus is creating a vivid object lesson. The bread symbolizes, represents, stands in for, or points to his crucifixion in some otherwise unspecified sense. Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper with bread, but he also instituted the Lord's Supper with wine. Why wine?

15:55Well, let's understand wine and strong drink, as it's called in the Old Testament, throughout the Scriptures. Though prohibited, wine and strong drink among the Levite priesthood, the Old Testament reveals that God commanded an offering of wine and strong drink be sacrificed to him. The Old Testament explicitly calls wine a great blessing from God in numerous passages, but it also strictly prohibits its abuse and drunkenness. This motif of God giving wine as a good gift. Remember that Jesus consumed wine according to Luke 7, and that his first miracle at the wedding feast at Cana in John 2 was in the creation of wine.

16:42That motif of God giving wine as a good gift and prohibiting its abuse is clearly seen in the New Testament. A really helpful book with this subject was a book by a man named Brad Whittington, who wrote What Would Jesus Drink? And he breaks down the biblical references of alcohol into three types. In all, there are 247 references to alcohol in Scripture. 40 are negative. These are warnings about drunkenness, potential dangers of alcohol. 145, though, are positive. Sign of God's blessing, use in worship. And 62 are neutral, in that they just state that alcohol was present. People falsely accused of being drunk, vows of abstinence, like the Nazarite vow that Samson and John the Baptist took for themselves. The Bible is anything but silent on the issue of wine. It, like all alcohol, must be treated carefully, seen as a blessing, and received with thanksgiving among those who drink it. It must not be abused. As the old saying from the Reformation goes, wine is from God, drunkenness is from the devil. Jesus uses this term in Matthew 26, this term, fruit of the vine, which was widely attested as an identifier. For the wine used in Passover meals, Jesus, really, without any kind of scholarly contention, used actual wine, oinos, in instituting the Lord's Supper. Now, there's another Greek word for wine that we see. We see this from Matthew chapter 9, when Jesus is telling the parable of talking about the new covenant and using the comparison between old wine and new wine, old wineskins and new wineskins. That phrase, the word that he uses for new wine, is the word glucose. Now, we talk about glucose, and that's where we get another word for sugar. That's not biblical glucose. Glucose is new wine, it's sweeter than an older fermented wine, but it's still wine. It's not grape juice. This is a principle that we really need to understand: grape juice is not wine, wine is not grape juice. They are not the same thing, they're not the same substance. When you press a grape, especially think about this in the first century, where you don't have refrigeration, you don't have pasteurization yet, you don't have any way to keep that grape juice, that juice from the vine. You have no way of keeping it from fermenting. As a matter of fact, the fermentation process begins really quickly. And so, by the next day, man, that grape juice tastes really sour. That's because it's turning into. To wine. There's no way to keep it from doing that. There's no way that they wanted to keep it from doing that. They wanted to use that as wine. They would wait until the fermentation process would end before they would even consume it. Fruit of the vine, again from Dr. Blomberg, that phrase fruit of the vine in verse 29, it was a stock phrase. It was a colloquialism that was used in thanksgiving prayers in the Jewish faith for the wine and therefore does not refer to unfermented beverage. In the early church and from the early church fathers, we see that wine was exclusively used in the Lord's Supper. Exclusively used. If you read the writings of Athanasius, if you read Tertullian, if you read Justin Martyr, you will see consistently that only wine was used in the Lord's Supper. Dr. Keith Madison from Reformed Seminary, he makes this statement in talking about the Protestant Reformation. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, there were disagreements over virtually every other issue related to the sacraments. And this is very true. You read as Martin Luther began to separate himself from Ulrich Zwingli and others within the Reformation, there began to be a divide even over this idea of: is the Lord's Supper a memorial? Is it a constant? Substantiation? Is it a spiritual presence?

21:07But what they didn't argue over, what there was no disagreement over, was the use of wine. All of the churches continued to teach that bread and wine are the proper elements of the Lord's Supper. Wine was used in virtually all denominations, in all parts of the world, for the Lord's Supper for over 1,800 years. The three major historic Baptist confessional statements, the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, the Abstract of Principles of 1859, the original Baptist faith and message from 1925, all explicitly call for the use of wine in the observance of the Lord's Supper. How did we change? Why did we change? To understand that, you really need to understand two great historical events that happened, particularly in the United States. The first is the Second Great Awakening. The First Great Awakening, which happened in the 1600s, 1700s, was this incredible revival that God used in America to put the gospel back forth as the center of all preaching and proclamation and life within the local church. God did amazing things. He brought amazing theologians out of the First Great Awakening. When we think about Jonathan Edwards, When you think about Charles and John Wesley, when we think about George Whitfield, these men were big propagators of the First Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening, which happens in the 19th century, is different, radically different. So different that there are a lot of church historians that don't like calling it first and second great awakening because they don't like there to be any sort of historical connection between the two. Because there wasn't. They were completely different. The second great awakening gave to the rise of revivalism and emotionalism and moralism and conflating that with the gospel. When you understand that and you understand the context of the second great awakening, then you begin to read and to understand that out of that second great awakening, where you had less of an emphasis on regular expositional biblical preaching and more of an emphasis on the manipulation of emotions, you begin to see that there was another movement that came out of that, and that was called the temperance movement. The temperance movement. Now, that's a really odd name because it had nothing to do with temperance. A temperance, by definition, means moderation. Temperance movement was not about moderation. The temperance movement was about prohibition. As a matter of fact, prohibition came out of the temperance movement. Now, listen, understanding the roots of the temperance movement should cause all of us as believers. To stop and to consider how difficult it was for many people, particularly women, wives, and mothers, who were tired of their husbands, who could not find work, but through the advancement of technology, we had the mass production of alcohol, were able to cheaply and freely drink without any sort of recourse and wisdom, and began to come home drunk and would leave their families or would cause serious physical and emotional harm to their wives and to their children. The temperance movement rose up out of this, out of a great concern that women had for their own welfare and their own families. We can all agree that that is something that is a cause of concern over the welfare of families.

25:01So, out of this temperance movement in the early and mid-19th century, various denominations sought out ways to exclude alcohol from their observance of the Lord's Supper, even though it was scientifically impossible to keep the juice of the grape from fermenting at the time. As a matter of fact, in the first edition of the Methodist Book of Discipline in 1843, the Wesleyan Methodist expressly required for the Lord's Supper, for communion, that unfermented wine. Which does not exist, by the way. There's no such thing. Unfermented wine only should be used at the sacrament. And so people, well-meaning people, begin to use things like raisin tea. It's as bad as it sounds. A mixture of molasses and water, anything, anything, but what the Lord actually instituted on the night of his betrayal.

26:02It even went so far as teetolers from the temperance movement even going so far as trying to change portions of Scripture and publish new versions of scripture, which changed the meaning. There was a dentist. Always starts with a dentist. If you're a dentist here, God bless you. Thank you so much for what you do. There's a dentist and a Wesleyan Methodist lay minister named Thomas Welch, who invented the pasteurization for grape juice in 1869. Look at his exquisite beard. He was absolutely wrong in his theology, but his beard is amazing.

26:50He helped spread the use of non-alcoholic grape juice, not wine, which is the expressly given element of the scriptures and the historic creed. And confessions across virtually all American denominations. Church, as elders at New Life, we believe that it's biblical to return to the right and proper observance of the Lord's Supper of using unleavened bread and wine. One of the questions that may come up is: well, what about alcoholism? We stand against, just like the scripture does, against alcoholism. However, let us not believe that alcoholism is something that just came up in America in the last 200 years. As a matter of fact, when you read 1 Corinthians 11, which I am not going to read all of it because Alan is going to preach on that next week, so you better come back. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the Corinthian church struggled with drunkenness in the congregation in association with the observance of the Lord's Supper. Now, think about this for a second. It was not that some tasted a thimble full of wine and then were prompted to go home and drink to the point of drunkenness. They were getting drunk at church.

28:15I've only been here on staff for about six months. I don't think we've done that here. Okay. Awesome. But see for yourself. You don't believe me? See for yourself in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, beginning of verse 17. But in the following instructions, Paul says, I do not give You. Because you come together. When you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worse. Notice how many times he says, when you come together. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe in part, for there must be factions among you, in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you to this? No, I will not. There was a big problem in this church in Corinth. You had rich folks who would come in and they would eat up all the food and drink up all the drink to excess while the poor people still had to work their jobs. They could come early. And then when the poor people came, they didn't have enough food to eat. And they didn't have anything to drink, but they had a bunch of drunk rich folks that were around in their church. There's a real problem here. There was real division that was here. And part of the problem was the abuse of alcohol. Now, there were other problems. And Alan is going to talk about that next week and talking about division within the church and other things. But alcohol abuse. Was a big issue here.

30:03What's Paul's solution? He did not say, let's use grape juice, because there wasn't any. No. He rebuked the church for their sin, and he urged repentance. He did not listen, church. He did not alter the words of Christ. He did not put a band-aid on the issue. Instead, he got to the heart of the issue by urging repentance. Real wine and unleavened bread are absolutely parts instituted by the Lord for his supper. How often do we do it? How often do we do it? Well, amongst Reformed and Baptist churches, of which we're both, there's no agreement on how frequently the Lord's Supper should be celebrated. When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, the only specific reference to occurrence and frequency is in the phrase, as often, or do this, in reference to so often as you eat and drink, do this in remembrance of me, in Mark 14, Luke 22, and 1 Corinthians 11. When Jesus simply commanded that we observe often, the church in the book of Acts seemed to be sharing it regularly on each Lord's Day. So let's look at two passages from the book of Acts. First, Acts chapter 2, verses 4. 42 through 47. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

31:41Notice that. The apostles' teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers. What is that breaking of bread? In its context, it's the Lord's Supper. Now, look, I love What did that come from? I love What there are many who look at verse 42 and say, oh, he's just talking about how they went and just ate together. No, this is what is awesome, but preaching and prayer and What I'm a native Texan do not all go together The Lord's Supper does the communal spiritual presence of Christ in this meal that he instituted from Matthew 26 fits here it's how this verse makes sense and awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need and day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes they received their food with glad and generous hearts praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved what about Acts chapter 20 Acts chapter Chapter 20, the Apostle Paul, with a contingent of people with him, lands at this place called Traus. And at Traus, listen to this, as he's meeting with other believers that are there, it says, On the first day of the week, Sunday, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. Now, listen, they ate more than just one day. Amen?

33:33But the Bible tells us that on the first day of the week, that they gathered together specifically to do this. What? To break bread. To have the Lord's Supper together. That passage in Acts 20, the breaking of bread, that is the term that's used specifically in Acts for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. And this passage is of particular interest in providing the first allusion to the Christian custom of meeting on the first day of the week for that purpose.

34:04Listen to Ray Van Neste from his commentary on this. The centrality of communion to the weekly gathering is stated casually without explanation or defense, suggesting this practice was common among those Luke expected to read this account. These early Christians met weekly to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Think about Paul's warning. Admonition in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 against the abuse of the Lord's Supper as a problem in Corinth that strongly suggests that it was celebrated with frequency, weekly even. Remember how many times he says, when you gather together.

34:50One of my old professors from Southeastern Seminary in Historical Theology, John Hammett, said, for most of Christian history, the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper has been the central act of Christian worship. So, when did we stop observing it weekly? The weekly observance of communion or the Lord's Supper began to wane throughout the Middle Ages, coinciding, not coincidentally, but coinciding with the de-emphasizing of weekly expositional preaching. To the point that the Fourth Lateran Council of the Roman Catholic Church in 1215 required that the faithful partake of that sacrament only once a year.

35:36Once a year. When you get to the Reformation, the Reformers clearly, clearly called for a return to the weekly observance of the Lord's Supper. Martin Luther saw it that way. John Knox saw it that way. Martin Bucher saw it that way. Philip McLanthen saw it that way. John Calvin. In his institute, said the Lord's table should have been spread once a week for the assembly of Christians, and the promises declared in it should feed us spiritually.

36:13Now, there may be some objections, or maybe even just some questions, about a weekly observance of the Lord's Supper. Question number one, or objection number one: since there's no explicit command in the New Testament to celebrate the Lord's Supper weekly, we can simply observe the communion whenever we want. There's no explicit command in the scriptures to preach, pray, or sing on a weekly basis. There's no command. So, we don't have a reason, or we don't have a New Testament version of the book of Leviticus, but what we do have are several passages in the New Testament which place the frequency of communion on par with the regular practices of preaching, of praying, and of singing. Objection number two: well, weekly observance of the Lord's Supper, that's a Roman Catholic practice. I would say that, for one thing, that's kind of a smear. That's just first and foremost. But, second of all, a closer study of church history shows us that the weekly communion was the church's practice long before the rise of Roman Catholicism. In fact, it's the rise of the Roman Rite, Roman Rites, R-I-T-E-S, which leads to the infrequent communion. Use of the Lord's Supper. That's why Calvin and Bucher both make the reinstitution of the weekly Lord's Supper such a priority in reforming the church. Also, preaching, praying, and singing, these are all parts of this Catholic Mass. We don't abandon these biblical means of worship just because they're used incorrectly. Objection number three: weekly communion will obscure the centrality of the preaching of the word. Calvin called the Lord's Supper the seal of the promise contained in the gospel concerning our being made partakers of Christ's body and blood. If the word of God is preached accurately and the Lord's Supper is explained clearly, how on earth could the Lord's Supper detract from the proclamation of the gospel? Can I tell you, as over 20 years of a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I could never come up with an illustration that more perfectly pictures what Christ has accomplished for us by some story or some illustration than by observing the Lord's Supper together.

38:51Objection number four: weekly observance will lead to its overuse and render the Lord's Supper meaningless and ineffective. Answer. This objection can be applied to everything else in Christian worship service. Unless one is open to the infrequent, let's say the monthly preaching of the word. No? Okay, Alan says no. The monthly singing of the hymns. Caleb? Okay. Or just getting together once a month to pray, then this argument is unequivocally invalid. Think about the words of Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers. Shame on the Christian church that she should put it off to once a month or mar the first day of the week by depriving it of its glory in the meeting together for fellowship and the breaking of bread and showing forth of the death of Christ till he come. They who once know the sweetness of each Lord's Day, celebrating his supper, will not be content, I am sure, to put it off to less frequent seasons. Beloved, when the Holy Ghost is with us, ordinances are wells to the Christian, wells of rich comfort and of near communion.

40:17Now, college students, this is not, this is not a requirement. And in order to go home and, in arrogance and in ingratitude, start a fight with your grandma over the fact that her church does it wrong or to alienate the people that are paying for your school. But instead, all of us need to approach the scriptures and the history of Christ's church in humility, understanding that we all, we all stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before us and that we all submit to the authority of the Word of God.

41:12Many of you know my brother Matt. Matt Beavers was one of the, he and Casey were two of the people that helped start New Life, that helped in the beginning. For about two years, the Lord called Matt and Casey to go live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be out of state, to be away from in a foreign land, away from the Republic of Texas. He has since called them back, and they live in northwest Houston. But during that time period, they had the blessing of having their last child, their youngest child, Kendall, my niece. Kendall had some real complications, and Casey had some complications during the delivery process.

42:01Kendall had to spend a lot of time in the prenatal ICU, and it was a difficult, difficult time. Being away, never lived outside of the state of Texas before. It's difficult for them. And I remember talking to Matt on the phone, and he broke down in tears, and he was crying so hard, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. Matt's kind of hard enough to understand without crying. It's difficult to hear. As he slowed down, this is what he kept communicating. He said, Bo, I'm just so tired of this world.

42:41I'm just so tired of this world. He said, I'm tired of sin. I'm tired of sickness. I'm tired of all of this stuff. And he said, I just want to be with the Lord. Matt's longing for not only the health of his little girl, who Kendall is as healthy as can be, but his longing to be present with Jesus is why we have the Lord's Supper. This world is difficult, it's hard to live in as ambassadors for the risen Jesus. We need to come back together. To connect in together as the body of Christ, as the people of the Lord, on a weekly basis to remember what Christ has done for us because we long, we long to be in his presence. And he is there as we commune in a special way. He is there as we take of the bread and of the wine that he instituted the night of his betrayal. Let me pray for us.

44:08Father, thank you, Lord, for your word. Thank you for the promises therein. God, I pray this morning that, Father, we would take to heart the totality of your scripture and, Lord, the witness of your church through the centuries. God, help us to be faithful. Help us not to be arrogant, to presume that we have the right to change that which you have instituted by your word. But help us to come in humility, God, seeing that we spiritually need to feed on the preaching of your word and the remembrance of your promise.

45:03Lord, we love you and we lift you up in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.