What I Would Do Differently
Sermon 7 Matt 28:16-20
IV. The Lord’s Supper is a serious act
A. When we partake, we are communing both with Christ and with one another.
i. And while we do not believe that Jesus literally inhabits the bread and drink, He is present with us when we partake and so is the
Holy Spirit – not only indwelling each believer, but amongst us binding us together.
ii. The elements do not change before or during the Lord’s Supper, but something special is happening.
iii. If it were not special, if it were not important, why would Paul even bother writing what he does here and why would he say it the way that he does?
iv. Why would he say, verse 31, that we must judge ourselves truly, so that we will not be judged? Why would he make it clear that this time is not a time of posturing or self-deception, but that it is a time of honest introspection to examine how we relate to the body of Christ: the church? Why would he say that if we do not, that we may, verse 29, be drinking and eating judgment on yourself? And why would God literally make people ill, or even take them out in divine discipline, if it did not matter how we approached and took the Lord’s Supper?
v. This is a serious matter, and it is a matter of obedience for us as individuals and as a church.
vi. It is a means by which we act like a church because we are saying to everyone who partakes that we believe they are kingdom people striving toward unity and faithfulness in Christ.
vii. Taking the Lord’s Supper helps remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, it is a covenant renewal of sorts telling our fellow members that we remember what we have covenanted to be and do with them, and that we will continue to strive for their good and God’s glory as we consider them more important than ourselves.
Conclusion
Let me ask you this: when we partake in a few minutes, how will you be partaking? Will you be partaking in a worthy or unworthy manner?
Consider what we are doing. The text says we must, at minimum, do the following 4 things: We must, (1), look back at the life, substitutionary death, bodily resurrection, and ascension of Christ. We must, (2), look ahead, verse 26, to the future when Christ returns and brings the kingdom in fullness, when He will judge the living and the dead, when He will make all things new, when He will make every sad thing come untrue. We must (3) look within and examine ourselves and our identity in Christ. And (4) we must look around at our brothers and sisters in the church and examine how we relate to them and treat them. Then we can partake.
And we allow all of this to spur us on to action in light of it in our day-to-day lives. In other words, like we remember our baptism, we remember what we did in the Lord’s Supper and let it inform us.
And when we partake in the Lord’s Supper, we are proclaiming Christ to one another and to the world. As baptism proclaims one’s initial allegiance to Christ, the Lord’s Supper proclaims one’s ongoing allegiance to Christ.
Sermon 9
Various Texts beginning with Matthew 18:15-20
Introduction
If you have been listening to the sermons in this biblical church membership series, you cannot help but have seen that much of it has to do with authority. The authority of Christ, the authority of the Bible, the authority of the church gathered (and our need to submit to all three) – these have been recuring themes throughout. Without authority, church membership is utterly incoherent.
Which brings us to the question of today: what should be the polity of the church? Polity is a word that basically means the form of government that an organization has. So, in other words, how ought the church be structured and governed?
To be sure, the topic of polity matters greatly. You cannot escape the question of polity.
Polity is like theology in that everyone has a theology – everyone has a set of beliefs about God and man and the world – even atheists. The question is whether your theology is right or wrong. Similarly, every church has a polity. The only question is whether one’s polity is coherent, orderly, and most importantly, biblical.
Surely if it is true that Christ is the head of the church, died for the church, rules over the church, and cares how she is treated, then He must have a design for how she is ordered and governed, right?
If Christ is the founder and head of the church, surely, He has a structure given to us in Scripture that we ought to follow and thus, whether we do or not is a matter of obedience.
Because you can hear about this topic and think it does not have much to do with you, but it does because members have a responsibility to pursue and safeguard biblical polity and obey Christ.
But polity is one of those things in the Bible where you cannot just turn to a single chapter that has the nifty heading of “on church government.” Nor can you turn to the
“book of church polity.”
Polity is, in fact, in the New Testament – it is there, but you have to be paying attention – which is why we will be exploring several passages and not just one single passage.
So, what is the structure or polity that the bible gives us? This is what we will see: the biblical polity, or form of governance under the headship of Christ is: plural-elder-led, deacon-served, congregationally-ruled.