Let us turn to our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1, Ephesians chapter 1 verses 6 through 12. Ephesians 1, 6 through 12. As you know, I’ll stop at times when I do several verses at a time and drill into them, so this is an opportunity clearly to drill into the work of Christ as we will have the Lord’s Supper.
Most appropriate topic here. Ephesians 1, 6 through 12, let us listen attentively to the word of God. So it’s halfway through verse 6. By which He made us accepted in the Beloved, in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him.
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being protested according to the purpose of Him, who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. Let us pray. Father, may we indeed praise You, the Son and the Holy Spirit, particularly as we focus and concentrate here upon the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the second member of the Holy Trinity, who 2,000 years ago took the body and the soul of a man and lived among us as the God-man, to suffer and to live and to raise from the dead for His people, for those who repent and hate their sin and embrace Jesus Christ and not their own righteousness.
Our Lord, may this opportunity of going through these verses in conjunction with the Lord’s Supper be used, that Your name would indeed be glorified and praised and honored and lifted up among all men as we are here in a public assembly, and that we would learn a connection to communion or the Lord’s Supper and how You have designated it as a way and a means, as only You can, in which we can properly be strengthened in the inner man, but also to praise You through the participation of the Lord’s Supper. Father God above, may Your name be magnified, we pray. Amen.
It is appropriate for the administration of the Lord’s Supper, also known as communion, to concentrate our minds upon the glories of God in Christ. Yes, we thank the Father for arranging our deliverance from before the foundation of the world, as we read in verses 3 and 4. We certainly are grateful for the power of the Holy Spirit, and we’ll hear a little bit about that today in the latter verses of 12 and 13 and 14, who applies the work of Jesus for our regeneration and salvation. And that’s what Paul does as well.
Yet the Lord God instituted the Lord’s Supper for a reason, for it was the Son of God, the second member of the blessed Trinity, that came into time, became a man, born of a woman, lived among us, preached the truth of the gospel, and suffered public humiliation, hatred and harm of His body and reputation, eventually dying for us, even to the shedding of His blood. Near the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus established a special little meal. We have it here, the Lord’s Supper.
He did not do it for Himself, of course, as though He needed it, but for us, for our help and assistance. But how does it assist, and how is it related to His life? In light questions, I wish to tie together here how we can glorify the Son, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We especially focus on being on the Son here through the Lord’s Supper.
Praise of the Glory of Christ
So, first of all, let’s look at the verses here. Praise to the glory of Christ, verses 6 through 12. Praise to the glory of Christ, our beloved Savior.
Reminder again, Christ means Messiah or Anointed One. It’s His title. We read in verse 6, the middle part of verse 6, “…by which He made us, that is, the Father made us, accepted in the Beloved.” And that is Jesus Christ.
In the Beloved. Accepted. What does that mean? To what end? The idea, clearly here, as Paul hammers upon a number of elements of redemption and salvation of believers in these verses, all kinds of overlapping ideas and words.
Here, accepted is the idea, of course, being reconciled to God in Christ. Accepted into God’s good graces, we may say today. Into renewed fellowship.
He repaired the broken relationship that we had in Adam by Christ being broken on the cross for us. This is the idea here, to be accepted in the Beloved. Not because of how good and wonderful we are.
Already by verse 6, as you recall, I’m sure, it’s pretty clear Paul is making it crystal to the point that it’s God. And God alone, that’s why we are saved. From eternity past, predestined us, chose us to be holy according to his good pleasure, and not our good pleasure and desire.
And here, he brings it home as well, by which he made us. God did it. He made us.
We did not make ourselves. Unfortunately, that’s the American way. And there’s some good truth to it, as far as it is with respect to earthly things.
Hey, I’m glad if that person can be a self-made man, we say. That’s good. He’s smart.
He’s got good connections. He’s got perseverance. He prospered.
Of course, it can’t happen often. It’s usually who you know more than what you know, as we know in real life. But it’s not necessarily wrong.
But it is wrong when it comes to spiritual matters. You cannot just simply wake up one day and say, I choose Jesus. I can be reconciled with him whenever I feel like it.
I can come into his good graces and to be accepted by him. No, rather, as we read here, he made us accepted in the Beloved, in Jesus Christ. And of course, it’s by grace and grace alone.
Then it’s the Beloved, and that is our Lord and Savior. I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine. The description of our relationship to Christ, the head of the church, that we are the bride and we are married to him, that is to speak spiritually.
He is the Beloved, not us. Although in his infinite grace and love, compassion upon us, he does take us into such a union and have grace and mercy upon us. And of course, he’s the Beloved of the Father as well.
I mentioned a number of times as Christ speaks to the Father in a unique way, as a unique relationship, that even the average Jew got it. Because the Jews are like, we’re the sons of Abraham and by implication of God. But Jesus is like, well, I’m really the Son of God, the second member of the Blessed Trinity, is what he’s driving at.
And they got the point, and it offended them to no end. We continue to read here that we are accepted God. He made us accepted into Jesus Christ, verse 7. That in him, that is Jesus, we have redemption through his blood.
I think we already know here clearly the connection, how we can speak of blood and reading about blood here and have the Lord’s Supper. But I’m going to unpack this, the idea of blood here. Paul’s usage.
First of all, Paul was not thinking explicitly or writing explicitly, it’s probably perhaps a better way of saying it, of the Lord’s Supper. Just because there’s reference to blood anywhere in the New Testament, the first thing isn’t, well, he must be talking about the Lord’s Supper. That’s clearly not the case, as we’ll see as I go through some of the verses.
And that’s not the case here. It’s about what Jesus has done and how he bled and died for us, which is a teaching most offensive to many. It’s offensive to the old-time liberals of our fathers and grandfathers, of prior generations, and probably still so today, in those circles that are no longer what they call liberal, but more progressive, I speak theologically, more than politically, of course.
They used to mock us for having a bloody religion. And even today, they mock us Christians for believing in this great father in the sky God or something, they make fun of us this way. But it’s also the blood.
They think it’s a barbaric religion. Why does there have to be shedding of blood? What is going on here? What is wrong with you people? But, of course, blood is not about an irrational punishment from the divine judge, but expresses, the word here expresses the seriousness of sin and transgression that even the Son of God had to die to uphold the justice of the divine judge of all the universe. God, the judge, the cosmic judge, did not wink at his Ten Commandments, did not make exceptions for them in different time frames of history, but rather holds all men accountable in thought and word and in deed, not only at one instance in their life, but the entirety of their life.
And because of that, in transgression such a law against a holy and infinite God requires this kind of punishment. And that the liberals of old or the liberals of today and maybe even others who would never call themselves liberal in Christian churches and yet are offended at this teaching that Jesus had to shed his blood, which is another way of saying dying. He died for, in place of, instead of his people because they don’t understand the seriousness of sin, of transgressing God’s holy will.
And I can’t help but think again in the American way of thinking, and we’re all Americans, a little different than other countries, and they all have their own peculiarities to be sure. We really emphasize this independency and how we can resist the government, resist laws, and there’s a place for that, but not here, brothers and sisters, before the cosmic God of the universe in which you are less than a moth before the sun. Who are you, old man, to say to God, why have you done this? But what he has done is always just, right, and holy.
And the evidence of this is by the death of his son. And so it represents the loss of life more immediately, of course, to shed blood, to lose blood, to have it spill out means you’re on your way to dying, unless you stop it. Clearly here, knowing the gospel stories, Jesus did die.
And he died willingly, by the way. Do not forget that. It wasn’t against his desire and will, as though the Roman soldiers came up and killed him on the spot, but rather he gave up the ghost, as we say.
He gave up his life. It says, it is finished and died. So no man took it from him.
He gave it up, voluntarily, for you and for me. Jesus’ own blood spilled for us, as I said. Specifically, and more immediately, of course, is through the nails in his hands and his legs, the crown of thorns upon his head, and all the pain that was involved in that.
Losing the blood over time there, and eventually, of course, in which he died. Broadly, it points to his death and what it signifies spiritually, and through the covenant of grace, as the great representative of his people. And here, it is parallel with forgiveness of sins.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. This is what is achieved here. But there must be a punishment.
We all recognize this. Even those who mock the Bible for being a bloody religion, they want justice. And of course, it especially affects their bottom line.
But if they’re going to have justice with God, without Christ, they’re going to find out the hard way. That hell is the only end result of that way of living. But through Christ, brothers and sisters, through Christ and his death for us, we have forgiveness of sins.
Sins are sins, not just sins in the abstract. Some people like to reinterpret all of Ephesians here, verse chapter 1 that we read last week, as saying, well, we’re all one in Christ, and we’re saved in Christ. He’s the head of the church.
But the church has this abstract entity that isn’t filled with concrete people yet. And by implication, therefore, Christ died for sins in the abstract and not particular sins by particular people. And that’s not helpful at all.
That’s quite sad. I mean, what kind of redemption is that? I couldn’t have confidence in Christ. I couldn’t rejoice and blessed be the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as Paul does three times, if Christ died for the abstract and nobody in particular.
No. It is for our sins, Paul is obviously getting at. And from the power of sin and death by implication, because the punishment of sin is upon the Son, and we have forgiveness through him.
The implication is far more, as we’ll see in other verses as well, that it goes beyond simply, although this is very significant, forgiveness of sins. We do this with our kids when they sin against their parents or spouses when they sin against one another. We do something wrong that we know is a transgression, not just say, whoops, I was ignorant, I didn’t know better.
We simply did the wrong thing, did me wrong. But we forgive them. We pass it off, as it were, we say we ignore it.
But God does more than that, as we know. He doesn’t just ignore it. He ignores it because the blood of Christ is upon us, brothers and sisters.
He sees Christ as punished instead of you. And his righteousness is imputed to us. So that we are in Christ and we have this beautiful relationship and salvation.
The blood is tied more broadly even to reconciliation. Paul is not going to say everything in any single verse, of course. And so we read elsewhere, for example, in Colossians 1. Colossians 1, verse 20.
And having made peace through the blood of the cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him, I say, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven. And so the blood here in Colossians is tied to specifically the cross. Paul doesn’t mention the cross here.
But obviously it’s behind his thinking. It says it elsewhere. But here he writes, and by him to reconcile all things to himself, all people, the Jews and Gentiles alike is the emphasis here.
So the blood brings reconciliation with the Father as well and to one another. The blood is related to the Old Testament sacrificial system as well. We must not forget the connection between the Old and New Testament.
That when Paul and James and Peter and Christ speak of matters, often they are assuming their audience, which was until the time halfway through Acts, what? Jews, Jews, Jews everywhere. They were the first major converts. And so the entire Old Testament way of thinking was part and parcel of their way of living.
Which, of course, was upturned by the coming of Christ. And we know the struggles in the book of Acts. For ourselves, we didn’t grow up that way.
We’ve been away from it for 2,000 years. So sometimes we forget when Paul speaks of blood, he is using, I believe, the theological concept of the Old Testament as well. The teachings of the Old Testament, how they point to the Redeemer, that God insisted in the Old Testament, Abraham onward.
And even before then, with Adam and Eve, how they had the skin of animals covering them. They had to come from a dead animal who bled in the sacrifices of Noah. That there’s a shedding of blood is required.
The shedding of blood. Somebody must die. Because that is how serious violations of God’s will entails.
In the book of Hebrews, the word blood occurs 20 times, if I’m counting, which is the bulk of the New Testament references to the word blood. It’s all in this one book. If you recall, the book of Hebrews, of course, is about the Old Testament ceremonial system, the sacrifices, the priests, and all that entails, and how it is now done away with and fulfilled by the person in the work of Jesus Christ.
You can imagine how hard that is to wrap around the Jewish mind. I don’t have to go to the temple anymore? I don’t have to kill an animal every time and give sacrifices because I touched a dead animal and all this? No, no, no. Hebrews 9.12, Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood he entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
It’s not the animals. It was never about the animals. They represented and pointed to, again, the twofold things.
One, the seriousness of sin. Somebody must die. And two, somebody will die.
That is, it points to Christ. For he is that lamb. He is that calf.
He is that sacrifice on the altar. And by the sprinkling of blood, Hebrews 11.28, by faith he kept the Passover. In the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them.
And so the sprinkling of blood is again to symbolize the significance of death and the importance therein in that you must be under the death of another to be protected from judgment. And we are under the death of Christ. For in him, Romans 6, we were buried and raised again from the dead.
It’s our union with him by faith and faith alone. Hebrews 13.12 is the last verse here I’ll read. Therefore, Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate.
Pointing to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, again, of the goat who is cast outside the gates of the temple, the scapegoat, and set out by himself into the wandering desert. Jesus fulfills all these things. And it’s often by the language of blood.
That he might sanctify, that is to set aside to redeem and save his people by his own blood, that is to say his death. Right? It’s metaphorical again. It’s not, well, we’ve got to find more of Jesus’ blood and pour it on my head.
It’s almost kind of what you have, pretty much what you have in the Roman Catholic system. Because they take the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper and say it literally is blood. They don’t pour it on their head.
They drink it. They drink blood. They’re cannibals.
They literally are cannibals. It’s one of the classic arguments against them. No.
It’s shorthand for his death. We say that often. We use shorthand all the time when we speak.
And all of this, the work of Jesus, verses 7 and 8, in which we have redemption, that is deliverance from the consequences of violating his holy law, by his death, his blood, and all that entails, the forgiveness of sins, one of the particular blessings that we have by his work for us. And all of this is according to the riches of his grace, not according to how obedient I am, how often I have the Lord’s Supper, how often I’m baptized. He says it several times, doesn’t he? According to the good pleasure of his will, verse 5. And again, in which he works all things, verse 11, according to the counsel of his will.
It’s with respect to himself, not us. We can’t move him and change him, for he is immutable. But he has deigned to save us in spite of our transgressions, of being born in sin, in the original sin, the sons and daughters of Adam.
And it’s according to grace, according to mercy, according to unmerited favor. We do not deserve deliverance from Satan and the consequences of our violations. He does not, and never had to have, pity upon you.
There’s nothing in us that can make him have compassion upon us. We must not lose sight of that. For if there was, then our God would not be independent, but rather dependent upon us.
But he’s not. He is his own man, as we say, in the best sense of that term, in which he deigned to make us, he didn’t have to, and he deigned to go a step further and create the covenant of works, as you recall, I preached last week, when he didn’t have to. They were but mere and humble servants, and having done all that was sufficient, that they existed and God sustained them.
But God went further and gave them more of those promises there in the covenant of works. All this shows, all the more and more, that God didn’t have to do any of it, and we’re all completely dependent upon his favor and goodness towards us. And so Paul is tying the forgiveness of sins explicitly here, according to the riches of his grace, verse seven, and nothing else.
He chose us from eternity past, and now grace is bringing us salvation through the work of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. And it parallels similar ideas from the prior verses as well, as you recall, holiness, adoption, here, forgiveness, all of them from grace, and grace alone, and not from man, his works, or even his will and desires. For they are fallen, it’s a fallen will, it’s a fallen desire.
And it’s according to his wisdom as well, Paul unpacks it further, which he made, that is the grace of Christ, in verse eight, which he made, that grace, to abound toward us in or through all wisdom and prudence. As only God can with infinite knowledge, he arranged it such that there was a way out, that Adam and his posterity could be delivered from their transgressions, from their wickedness. And Paul, I’m not gonna go through these other verses here, unpacks a little bit about this more broadly, he doesn’t get very specific, just that in the dispensation or the economy of how God works things out in time, he eventually gathers everyone in verse 10 together, that is Jews and Gentiles, that’s one of the main themes of the New Testament, that in him we have obtained an inheritance, an inheritance which is heaven, of course, being predestined according to his purpose, that we, verse 12, who first trusted in Christ, this should be the praise of his glory, there it is again, the praise of his glory, here the second time.
Glory of the Father, verses one through six, for selecting us to salvation, here glory of the Son for saving us for heaven, and giving us an inheritance, and shedding his blood and giving up his life and going through pain and misery, what we should have gone through instead.
Praise of the Glory of Christ by the Supper
And so this brings us to the second point, praise of the glory of Christ by the supper, or via, or by way of the supper. And I’m gonna explain what I mean by that.
First of all, what is the supper? The Lord’s Supper, communion, sometimes called the Eucharist, or the blessing, celebration, means of grace. It is a means of grace, or a tool or instrument of the spirit of God to bring about growth as a believer, so we can become more like Jesus. That’s a means of grace very broadly conceived.
And a means of grace is also a means, therefore, of praise and honor of God. Yes, they’re there for us, not for Christ. Christ doesn’t have to have the Lord’s Supper, Christ didn’t have to be baptized in himself, per se, but he did it for us, he was baptized for us, in his new, you know, mission as a man, as a prophet, and a priest, and a king, under John the Baptizer, John the Baptist.
But, for our good, but in our goodness, our natural response should be what? Thank you, Lord, for saving me. The Lord’s Supper’s another way of reminding us that God has saved us through the blood of his Son, the breaking of his body, as represented in the Lord’s Supper, in the meal of our Christ and Savior. And so, that’s how it is a way of praising the glory of Christ, because it is about Christ, and it should trigger in us a heart of gratitude.
Our Dutch brothers and sisters on the continent, their tradition divides up their catechism, the Heidelberg, into guilt, grace, and gratitude, which is a helpful alliteration, because pastors love their alliterations. Guilt, right, we’re born in the original sin, we want to sin, we love sinning, that’s the state of mankind outside of Christ. They’re gonna sin, they’re gonna violate, they’re gonna do whatever they feel like doing other than following Jesus and God.
Grace is being delivered from that guilt, and the response of that deliverance by Jesus Christ should be gratitude. And that’s what explains the means of grace and the like. The Ten Commandments are given for our gratitude as well.
But here, I mean, of course, not just any means of grace, but the specific means of grace, of prayer, preaching, reading the Bible, these are public means of grace, in particular, the sacraments. The sacraments, we use the word sacrament not in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Greek Orthodox sense, but just what we mean by that word is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace. It’s a sign and seal.
What we’re gonna have this morning is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace. It is given to us as a sign in the gospel accounts, as you recall, repeated by Paul. So I’ll read this.
We usually read the gospel accounts. I wanna read Paul’s account. Paul gives a short account in chapter 11 in 1 Corinthians, if you recall.
1 Corinthians 24 and following. And when he had given thanks, he’d break it and said, Take ye, so this is my body which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, and when he had sup, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood.
This do ye, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. So the sign, the symbolism, what it points to and signifies is in Christ’s own words. The body, broken, and the blood of the New Testament or the new covenants.
That’s what it points to. Jesus is calling us and his people, as his people, to do an external act, which is to eat and drink. Not because they are magic, but because God ties faith to the act when we exercise the act by faith.
And if it’s not by faith, the Lord’s Supper is nothing but just stale bread and wine upon your lips. Maybe a little tasty. But it does nothing.
And as such, it doesn’t do anything per se anyways. Again, the bread and the wine are not magical. It is the act of faith itself that unites us with Christ.
And where do we find Christ? Most clearly and most abundantly in the Word of God. The elements of the Lord’s Supper mean nothing unless you explain to people what they represent. Because even pagans had meals for their gods.
And you knew what it represented. They’re pagan gods and they’re pagan religion. You had to explain the symbolism.
Because symbolism changes per culture, by religion even. And so again, it’s not the act per se that is the elements, the act by act I mean, the act of faith, of trusting, of renewing, of strengthening your faith, while you’re outwardly eating something. Your inward part should be thinking about Christ and what he has done for you, continues to do for you.
That’s what’s going on in the Lord’s Supper. Nothing more, nothing less. And when you describe it that way, I hope you realize, wait a minute, isn’t that what I’m supposed to do even without the Lord’s Supper when I hear the preaching of the Word, when I read the Bible, when I pray to God I should trust in Him, and believe in Him, and be encouraged by Him? Yes! Exactly! So in other words, nothing different is happening spiritually in the Lord’s Supper than it is outside the Lord’s Supper.
It’s still faith embracing Christ. It can’t be anything more. It’s not anything less.
And in fact, that’s the sealing aspect here. Talk about the symbolism. The sealing here is described, for example, in Romans 4. Romans 4 we read, And he received the sign of circumcision, that is Abraham, a seal of the righteousness of the faith, which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all that believe.
So even circumcision itself, again an outward act that’s occurring, wasn’t really what’s going on in terms of the changing of the soul. The soul was by faith, the righteousness which he had of faith, which is of course in Christ, faith in Christ. But it’s a seal of that.
It is a seal. A seal is an impression upon us and our soul, a certification. And we have that word here again in verses 12 to 14.
The supper of the Lord is for the glory of Christ. And the sealing part of the Lord’s Supper is by the Holy Spirit whenever we believe in Him also you trusted, verse 13, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. And whom having believed, having believed, in the process of believing, of course you’re speaking in the past tense, but it’s in the process of believing in the past tense.
You were sealed. They were happening together. You believed, you’re sealed.
With what? The Holy Spirit of promise. There’s no Lord’s Supper here, brothers and sisters. He says you believed and you’re sealed with or by the power of the Holy Spirit and of course with the Spirit as well as He’s upon you and within you.
And that happens when you’re first born again as an adult or if you’re a kid and you grow up and you’ve never known anything different, that’s a great blessing. You were sealed a long time ago, you just didn’t realize it. Whenever you believe, we having the sealing effect by the power of the Spirit upon us entrusting Jesus, that’s the emphasis here, entrusting Him in whom you believe and trust and rely upon and not upon yourself, not relying upon the bread and wine, you don’t rely upon that, not even relying upon the pastor who preaches but the content of what he preaches which ought to be from the Word of God because it speaks of Christ most clearly.
It’s the Word of Truth as described in verse 13. And that Word of Truth we heard already. What has Jesus done for us? What does He continue to do for us? He died and bled for us.
And so the idea of seal to impress or imprint upon a letter to show therefore authenticity or security of it or genuineness therein of the letter as kings have their seals, right? That wax seal upon the paper, the envelope with the letter inside it. Make sure no one broke it. It’s the real deal.
But here in particular, I think functionally we use those ways of describing seal, the secure genuineness, et cetera, authenticity or security here I think is the emphasis in verse 14 who is the guarantee, right, of our inheritance. The Spirit is. But elsewhere we read Peter describing baptism as an answer of a good conscience towards God.
That’s part of the effects of the sacrament. An answer of a good conscience towards God. And thus in the case of the Lord’s Supper, because there’s an active element to it, you are supposed to eat the bread and drink the wine.
And what happens in baptism? You’re passive. Someone else baptizes you. They sprinkle the water upon you or pour it upon you.
That’s why it’s such a glorious picture upon the child because it shows we are like children before God. There’s nothing we could have done. It was all of His grace that He saved us by the blood poured upon us, shed abroad upon us.
But there are two different sacraments, two different purposes chosen by God, instituted by His mere will and good pleasure. Nothing natural, instinctive in it like prayer is natural. Even unbelievers know about prayer.
These things you find by the Word of God. They have their function. So the Lord’s Supper, having an active element, already tells you it’s not for babies.
But for those who understand what it means, like in 1 Corinthians 11, that warns them that there’s judgment if you take the Lord’s Supper flippantly. And of course, children by nature are kind of flippant and don’t take a lot of things seriously. And that’s okay because what? They’re kids.
They’re still growing up. And we accept them and treat them a little different, but they’re not like subhuman or something or even sub-Christian. No one believes they’re sub-Christian in a church.
They’ve been baptized. It’s a glorious thing. So the sealing here occurs when and while believing and believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ, whatever that is.
And that’s why the Lord’s Supper has the preaching of the Word. Because you’re not supposed to believe in the elements. You’re supposed to believe in Christ.
Just the elements are an addition that helps us, that augments because what? We are weak. We want to see and touch things because we have a body. God’s like, fine, you guys are little kids.
I’ll give you something to eat and something to drink. We do that with little kids, right? Sunday school class. Time to drink, kids.
Here’s some snacks. Yay! It’s kind of like that. God comes down to us and we’re little children.
People don’t want to hear that. We might have too much pride but that’s what we are before Him. The Supper is given here for our good, to be sure.
It’s a means and a tool to grow as believers and strengthen our weak faith in particular. It is used by the Lord as an additional help by the power of the Spirit within us to direct our hearts and faith by the means of the eyes and the mouth on top of the hearing of the Word to embrace Jesus anew to see His love afresh and to increase our faith to the praise of the glory of Christ. Amen.
Let us pray. Father God above, may indeed you be honored and glorified in this the Lord’s Supper and as well, God, be with us that we would grow thereby and look to Jesus and not ourselves. In your name alone I pray.
Amen.