What is the Backstory of Communion? [Sermon Transcript] Elder Jonathan Moseley Fair Haven Primitive Baptist Church | Tifton, GA

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The sermon traces the biblical and theological foundation of the Lord's Supper by unfolding a narrative from Abraham's time, centered on Melchizedek—a mysterious priest-king of Salem who blessed Abraham and received a tithe, symbolizing a priesthood superior to the Levitical order. This figure is revealed in Scripture as a type pointing to Jesus Christ, the eternal High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, who fulfills the promise of a permanent, sinless priesthood. The Lord's Supper is thus not merely a ritual but a sacred remembrance of Christ's sacrificial death, resurrection, and ongoing reign, patterned directly on Jesus' own command during the Last Supper. The practice is rooted in Scripture, intended to proclaim Christ's death until He comes, and is to be observed with reverence, unity, and doctrinal purity, reflecting the church's identity as a gathered people called out by God to worship Him in truth and spirit.

Speaker: Elder Jonathan Moseley

Church: Fair Haven Primitive Baptist Church in Tifton, GA

Date: October 19, 2025

Bible: 1 Corinthians 11; Genesis 14

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[Sermon Transcript]

So if you're a little mentally and physically taxed by our Roman series, we're going to take a pause on that this morning. Kinda had a little Camden in mind as I was preparing this week and thinking about it. I want to be, and in general, I want to approach my messages so that an eight year old child can get 95% of it. Because if I do that, guess what? The rest of y'all should be fine. And I know that if you can teach simply, it's easier to retain it. Now, I will confess, I've not done a real good job with that in Romans, because it's hard. And these are very big and precise concepts, and there's just some things I don't feel like I've been able to break it down any simpler. And so, for that, forgive me, pray for me, maybe I'll get to be a better preacher.

But what I'd like to consider this morning, since we're going to observe the Lord's Supper a little bit later, is just kinda answering some big picture questions.

You probably know them…that’s good.

I'm going to remind you.

But if you wanted to ask the simplest question, what's the deal with communion?

Why do we do it?

What does it mean?

What's the scriptural pattern for doing that?

And we could go straight to the garden [of gethsemane], right before the garden, and the Lord observing the Passover with his disciples, but the story actually starts much, much, much earlier. And so, yall be praying for me this morning, we're going to try and tell you a story, okay?

A story.

About 2,000 years before Jesus was on the scene, There's a guy named Abraham. We've heard of Abraham, right?

From Abraham, God is going to bless a whole nation to grow, which is going to be known as the nation of Israel. And that's where Jesus, when he comes into the world and takes on human flesh, he'll be born of that family, that tribe. Those are the Jews, known as the Hebrews, right?

Well, it all started from one guy who was living near modern-day Kuwait. I don't know [exactly] where that is. Look it up on the map, all right? Near the Persian Gulf.

Nowhere near Israel, and God appeared to him, or spoke to him, and told him, get up, start walking. Leave your family, leave your household, leave the land where you're born. I'm going to take you to a new land, and I'm going to make a great nation out of you. And so, we know the bulk of the story of Abraham, and you should, that he obeyed, he left. Now, he didn't obey completely because he took his father and his nephew named Lot with him, and they journeyed up the Euphrates River north until they came to a town called Haran, and they hung out there for a while until his dad died.

And then after his dad died, they actually came into the land that we know as Israel today.

Back then it was called Canaan because descendants of a guy named Canaan lived there. And Abraham grew very wealthy, very wealthy. He had a lot of stuff, a lot of cattle. I mean, he didn't have, you know, a house, right? He was more like a nomad, right? He had places where he would set his tents, because he had a massive household, and then he'd have these big fields, or not fields, he'd have flocks that he would have to field out in these open pasture lands, okay?

And so, he continues to get wealthier and wealthier and wealthier, and so, does his nephew. Lot, he's doing well too.

Now Lot's describing the New Testament as being a righteous man. And so, the problem was, is they had more cattle than they could have grazing land, right? And so, there started to be some disputes among the servants of Abraham and the servants of Lot. Like, well, this is our turn for these sheep to graze here, or our cows over here. And so, they decided we need to part company. We can't all travel together because the land can't bear us all. And so, they did. And so, Abraham let Lot choose. He said, all right, here's two portions. We're looking up here at a mountain. You've got over on the right-hand side towards the Jordan River and this area around it was so green and lush and a lot of grasslands. And then you've got, you know, the left side, which is like mountains and the other. They're both good. Lot looked at him, and he chose the right hand over towards what was known as the cities of the plain. There were multiple cities around this plain of Jordan, so the flatland near the Jordan River. You've heard of some of them, Sodom and Gomorrah, and there were others. And so, you had urban cities, and you had villages around them, and just this very rich environment. And that's where lot chose. Why do we use the expression lots? You have a division of things, and you're picking one. It comes from this guy's name. They chose lots. Lot chose. And so, he wound up pitching his tent towards one of the cities, just kind of facing it, the city of Solomon.

Now, at this time, Abraham still has zero children. God had promised him he was going to be a big nation, but he has no children. And so, you are going to have a 25-year gap between Abraham coming into the land and between Isaac being born. So, what I'm going to tell you this morning is a story of one of the events that occurs during that gap. And I believe it's during the first 13 years, because I don't think Ishmael was born yet either.

All right, so relatively narrow period of time that we're talking about, but there is an event that occurred. Well, one of the things that happened for backstory to this story is that that land where Abraham had come from, now, I put it in as a walking thing from here, from Jerusalem to modern-day Kuwait, is about 1,000 miles the way they said. Now, that's using some modern paths, and so, it probably would have been even longer, but to get from where Abraham was to come here, about 1,000 miles. Well, there was a king from back in the land where Abraham was, right? It's the plains of Shinar. That same region will later be known as Babylon. So, an ancient king in the region that we later know as Babylon, near Kuwait, southern Iraq, is going to come to Canaan, and he is going to conquer them, and they are going to become tributaries.

What's a tributary? That means This neighbor, this foreign king has come in, he's beat your army, he says, you owe me money. You're now under my protection. That's a nice way, kind of like you're under a mobster's protection. As long as you pay me money, I'll protect you from me.

So they paid him money, these kings, like these individual cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, they all had their own kings.

So it's not talking about big nations, but like a city king, a mayor on steroids. But he had his own little army. And so, these guys had lost, and so, they wound up being tributes. They paid them money. Well, after about 13 years of that, they got tired of it, and they decided to rebel.

And so, what does rebelling look like? It means you don't pay.

So this king from 1,000 miles away gets some of his other kings that are still subject to him, and they journey 1,000 miles to deal with these shenanigans. All right? Because kings like being paid. And it was worth the trip to come. But while you're there, you can't just deal with these guys. There's a whole region. You’ve got a whole army. And so, if you want to read the play-by-play, go read Genesis chapter 14, I believe.

You'll see these kings who travel in, and they're going to wind up whooping everybody around Canaan.

So you've got the land of Canaan, and then you've got all the inhabitants around it. Later, we'd know them as Ammon and Moab and Esau. Those people don't exist yet. These are the people in those regions, and these are big people. These are giants. These are tall guys. And this regional, you know, army, because it's not just a little city king. This is one who's got a domain that extends over a thousand miles. He's got some power in a military sense, right? He's got some force behind him.

So what he does is he has a campaign where he whoops all the people around it, and then kind of as the last stop, he goes and deals with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain. Now those guys try to join forces, and they set their forces together against these kings, and it goes about as bad as you can imagine. They wind up picking a spot to fight where there were slime pits. And so, that's where the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, their men, they get stuck, they get bogged down, they die, and then some of them ran away to the mountains to flee. Well, if all your soldiers who are alive flee to the mountains, what does that mean for those cities? Nobody there to defend them.

So these conquering kings and their armies, they go through and they clean out the cities. They took all their stuff, all their goods, and all their food, and all the people, all right? So those soldiers, they had wives, they had children, they had family, right, who weren't there. They're all now conquered. And then that king takes their spoils, because this is not the first place they've defeated. So they are just like busting at the seams with stuff. This has been a very successful campaign. And they start journeying home.

So we talked about that guy Abraham, right, who went by Abram at this time. Somebody comes and tells him the bad news. Everything has been conquered, because he doesn't live over there by the city's plain, he's farther to the south. But in the midst of all this conquering, your nephew, Lot, and his wife and his children and all their stuff, they got caught up in that, because you know where they were living at that time? In the city of Sodom. So they were captured. And this big army with all these spoils and everything, and they're heading home. And so, Abraham, who again, he doesn't own any land there. He's actually pitching his tent on some men's land with permission. He goes to his very close neighbors, his landlords really, and says, hey, I'm going to go and fight these guys. You want to come too? And so, they're like, yeah. Now, I don't know if they brought anybody with them. It just mentions there's a couple of brothers. But Abraham, he was so wealthy, he had 318 of his servants that were described as trained servants. So, I want you to think about a wealthy individual today, a celebrity. They may have a bodyguard. They may have two. Do you know of anyone who is so wealthy that they maintain enough staff that are trained in defense and military rights to have 318 show up? I don't. That probably doesn't exist in America. We've got a relatively stable society, so there's not really great need. But say you live somewhere where society is not so stable, that might be very needful. You've got all of these flocks to protect, and they're, you know, subject to somebody coming.

So you've got not only the people taking care of the flocks, you've got the people who are guarding the people taking care of flocks. Now, these are described as being born in his own household, so they've been around a while. They're loyal. And so, that's your force of 318, plus Abram, an old man, plus his couple of neighbors. That's it! Now remember, who are we going to go fight? A group that is strong enough to travel a thousand miles, beat all the armies around you, whoop them, I mean, just absolutely demolish them, and you're going after them with 300 little men? We remember the story of Gideon and his very small band and a large number. This happened, this was well before Gideon. And so, what happens? Well, they're not anywhere close, so this band has to start traveling north. And I would suspect they could travel a lot faster than this bloated caravan carrying treasures and goods and captives. And so, they catch up to them. The scribes would catch up to them near Dan. That would be in the northern part of Israel, whether the city was called Dan then or not, I don't know. But they wound up catching up to them and fighting them and just, I mean, who gave them the day? The Lord gave them the day. There is no logical military reason that 318 men should be able to whip a force that's big enough to conquer your entire region around you. But they do. And they start running. This is the regional army. These kings from Babylon, they start running. and they run all the way from northern Israel, almost to Damascus in Syria.

All right, so they ran, we're talking, I don't know, over 100 miles, that they're trying to flee from these pesky household servants of this one guy who the Lord has richly blessed and protected, though he hasn't given them a child yet. And so, I mean, they just absolutely mop them up. And do you know what they get? all the people, all the captives, all the stuff, and they turn around and they come home. I mean, wow, what a victory that the Lord has given, including Lot, he's okay, all these people, all this stuff, they start coming home, and the kings of Sodom, somehow they survived, the other kings of those cities, they come out, the king of Sodom greets them, and they're just so happy because their wives, their children, their stuff is back.

And the king winds up telling Abraham, this is wonderful, tell you what, let me have the people that you freed here, and you just keep all the things. You keep all the things. Now Abraham's going to wind up turning down that offer, because I mean, That's a pretty generous offer, right? I mean, you can't imagine all of these multiple cities that have been conquered. I mean, just the volume of wealth that's been amassed and captured back, and Abram's going to say, no. I'm not going to take... I've already sworn a vow to God. I'm not going to take any of it. Not even a thread. Not even a shoelatchet. Let's say you're going on this trip. You're chasing them 70 miles north and 100 miles west. You may have worn out your shoes a little bit. I'm not even going to replace my shoelaces with anything lest you, King of Sodom, say that somehow you have made Abram rich. So he didn't want any scintilla, not the slightest bit that God was not the blesser of Abraham, that somehow it was this king and his generosity, because the king had no hope of getting any of this stuff back. And so, he's basically saying, you take the stuff, I'll get the people, and the king is much better off than he was before.

And you say, Brother Jonathan, why are you telling me this story? I thought we were going to talk about communion. And we are.

So there's three little verses, and I jumped over it, three little verses where we're introduced to a very strange So it's as they're coming back, they've got all their captives, and I'm going to read this in Genesis 14, and in verse 18. So the king of Sodom's coming out to meet him, right? And in verse 18 it says, and Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the Most High God. And he, Melchizedek, blessed him, Abram, and said, Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of the heaven and earth, and blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. That's what Melchizedek said. And he, Abram, gave him, Melchizedek, tithes of all. So you've got this massive haul of goods and stuff. This is before he has that conversation with the king of Sodom. He takes a tenth of it, and he gives it to this guy, the king of Salem, whose name is Melchizedek, who is blessing him, and he is a priest of the Most High God.

So someone had asked me a question recently. Before the law is given and before Abram, is there anybody worshiping the Lord Jehovah? Yes! Here's an example. This individual, Melchizedek, was a priest of the Most High God. We can talk about that more in a minute.

We don't hear anything else about Melchizedek for like a thousand years. We do hear one other in the Old Testament. It was in the time of David. And that is in Psalm. Oh, let's see. I don't even know if I wrote it down. Psalm 110, maybe? I'm going out of the order from what I was going to say. That's okay, yeah, Psalm 10. Psalm 10, 110, excuse me, Psalm 110. This is a Psalm of David. And this is a Messianic Psalm. That means a Psalm talking about the coming Messiah, okay? The anointed one, the Christ, the one who will come in the future, all right? He hasn't come yet, so it's the time of David. And these should sound familiar. We've heard these portions of this psalm quoted before, so just read the whole thing. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The dean quoted that the other day, talking about Hebrews. The Lord, L-O-R-D, all caps, Jehovah there, the Father is saying unto my Lord, so David is speaking. Who is David's Lord? That's Jesus, second person in the Trinity. The Father saying to the Son, sit down at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. That's where Jesus is right now. For our purposes, that's where we are in time. That's where Jesus is. He's sitting at the right hand, waiting until the enemies are made the footstool. That will be the culmination of the end of the world when he comes back. That's where we're at. The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion. Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. In the beauties of the holiness of the womb of the morning, thou hast the due of youth. The Lord hath sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through the kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall wound the heads over many countries. He shall drink of the broken the way. Therefore, he shall lift up the head. All right, verse four, where God the Father is talking to the second person in the Trinity, talking about Jesus Christ. He's saying that you will be a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Those are the only two mentions in the Old Testament to this individual, Melchizedek. And we really have to go all the way to the New Testament to see it kind of unpacked of what are we talking about here? So let's do that. I

Go to Hebrews. Let's go to the end of Hebrews 6. Hebrews 6 and, oh, let's start in verse 19. which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered. Even Jesus made a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." Go to chapter 7. The Hebrew writer is going to unpack this concept How is Jesus like Melchizedek? What was Melchizedek pointing to? Because Melchizedek was an actual individual, but the way he was written about, God inspiring the scripture, Moses writing down, how he was described, both his description and his actual person, is pointing as a type for one who would come who is much, much better, right? Talk about Jesus, all right? for this Melchizedek, king of Salem," so we're referencing there Genesis 14, "...priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings," was it a slaughter? Yeah, absolutely, "...and blessed him." So Melchizedek blessed Abram. "...to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all."

First... alright, so he's going to unpack it.

First, being by interpretation king of righteousness. You ever wonder, well, what if Jonathan talks about this name means that, or this name means that? How do we know? Sometimes, the Bible just does it for you. So if you go to look up the word Melchizedek in your Strong's Concordance, it will say King of Right, or King of Righteousness, all right? The names that people had, particularly in Hebrew, often had very distinct meanings because they were those words. I was at Lowe's the other day, and there was a young lady whose name was Charity. We know what Charity means. That name means love, and in English we understand that. Well, if you were hearing Melchizedek, you would know that word meant a compound word of king and right, or righteousness. So he's a king. and he's righteous, right? That's a really good name, right?

Now, for him as an individual, as a man, he was just a man. He was a sinner, but he is pointing to one who will come after, who is the actual king of righteousness, who can be the king of all kings and higher than all highs, who has a perfect, sinless life, only Jesus Christ, right? So he was a king of righteousness, And after that also, all right, second thing we're unpacking, the King of Salem. The name of the city in which he was a king was Salem, which it tells us means King of Peace. All right, so the name of the city was Salem. Salem means peace. Ever wonder why there's so many Salem Baptist churches? Right, it means peace. That same city, Salem, will be later known as the city Jerusalem. Same city.

So the King of Salem, the King of Righteousness, the King of Peace, at the location that will later be known as Jerusalem, right? Who is the King of Righteousness? Who is the King of Peace? Jesus, right? What did the angels say in that field of Bethlehem that there was such good tidings that there was peace on earth? That's talking about Jesus, right? The one who is actually able to make peace between God and man by reconciling us, by taking away his sins. Peace had come down among men, right? There was goodwill towards men. He was the embodiment of peace, okay? King of peace, King of Salem. Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, abideth a priest continually."

All right. In that story, did it say, Melchizedek, son of so-and-so?

No,

did it say, Melchizedek, born the year of blah, blah, blah?

Which is very different than how most of the rest of Genesis had been written.

Well, we know Abraham, you know, had been the son of this father, and this father, and this father, and he was this old when he had his first son, and you could just [keep going backwards].

And you knew eventually, what happened to him?

They died. That's kind of the natural course of human history. It is, right? All sinners die. Did Melchizedek, the man, have a mother and father?

Yes. Yes, he did. He was just a man.

Melchizedek was born one day and he died one day.

He had a mom, he had a dad, probably had kids, but it wasn't written about. It wasn't recorded.

The Holy Spirit, through Moses, writes him onto the scene. Here he is. We've got no introduction, just the King of Righteousness, the King of Peace, comes onto the scene and goes to Abraham, blesses him in the name of the Most High God, and Abraham in return gives him a tenth of all that he has just amassed.

So, by not recording his father, or who his mother was, by not showing the beginning of his days or the end of his life, he was a type made like unto the Son of God, abiding a priest continually. When Aaron is set as the first high priest, he didn't make it out of the wilderness. He was priest for a pretty good while, I mean, you know, 38, 39 years, but he had to have someone ready to go, which was going to be his son, because he was going to die, right? And every, you know, high priest since then under Aaron's, you know, descent, and who could be a high priest under the law? Only a descendant of Aaron, right? You had to be of the tribe of Levi, but it was narrower than that. You had to specifically be a child of Aaron, right? Those are the only ones that were available to be a high priest. But they had to have an order of operations of, well, who comes next? And who comes next? And who comes next? Why? Because men die.

Whereas the way that Melchizedek was written about, we don't see his beginning and we don't see his end. It's not written about because he, you know, in this type is pointing to an enduring priesthood.

. So if you go back to Psalm 110, you don't have to turn there, but I'll just quote it to you. is that thou shalt be a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. And the word in there is forever. Who is qualified to occupy a role for forever? Somebody who doesn't die. Jesus assumed that role, he allowed himself to die, but he rose from the grave and he is in that role for forever. Who is going to be the next high priest after Jesus? trick question nobody right he never relinquishes that role he never relinquishes that title right so the way that Melchizedek was written about with just those three little verses and then that fourth reference to it there that fourth verse from Psalm 110, speaking about the Messiah is going to be after his order because he's going to go for forever. Not like Aaron, not of Aaron's tribe or descent. Not one that has to be replaced, but one that endures for forever. And then here in Hebrews, it's unpacking and saying, yes, Jesus is a high priest. He's a better high priest than, not from the tribe of Aaron.

Now, was Jesus of the tribe of Levi? Was he physically born into? No, he was Judah, which is where it was promised that a king would come. The scepter is the symbol of the king's power. It was going to come from the tribe of Judah. Now, during all of Israel's reign, was any of those kings, David and Dan, were any of them entitled to be a priest? No, right? They were tribes of Judah, and then you had some other kings from Israel in the Northern Kingdom. They were often idolatry, but they were not, and some of them tried. Didn't go so well. One guy tried to burn incense, and he was taking it upon himself, and the priest was like, don't do it! And he's like, I'm doing it, and he burned some incense, and immediately he broke out in leprosy. And then the priests were not so subtle about it. They pushed him out of the temple and he had to spend the rest of his life in quarantine because he had disobeyed God. He had tried to be both roles of king and priest. But what was Melchizedek? Melchizedek was the king of Salem and a priest of the Most High God. Who is entitled to be both the king and the priest? Jesus Christ. That's what it's pointing to. All right? And then even in just showing how one is better, because in Hebrews we're talking about better, right? That Jesus is better than the priesthood of Levi, of Aaron. He's better than Abraham. You have this exchange where Abraham gives tithes to Melchizedek. and Melchizedek blesses. So who is the better in the dynamic between two men? The one that's giving the tithes and the one that's doing the blessing is better, right? That's what's being established there. So this was pointing to a change in the priesthood, right? You had a type of this high priest thing, and then you have the real, which is Jesus, where it's enduring, it's better, it's got a better covenant, it's got a better promises. All of these things are described as better.

Okay, so Jesus is the fulfillment of this teeny-weeny little type in this one little reference in Psalms that say, hey, it's going to be, and there he is. Now, what did Melchizedek bring when he came out to meet Abraham from the slaughter? He brought bread and wine. And so, when you go to why Do we observe communion? This goes all the way back 2,000 years before Christ. So 4,000 removed from us of the beginnings of this concept of remembering something notable. There was a great victory that had been achieved that day. A great victory. There had been captives who were made free by a victory that could only be given by God. That was something worth celebrating back then, but it's a small picture. Guess what happened to all those captives? Eventually they died, right? Age took over. The victory that we are charged to remember is the victory that was accomplished by Jesus on the cross where he laid down his life to purchase his people by paying for their sins. He set All of his children, for all eternity, who were captive and slaves to sin, he set them free, and he gives them a life that's eternal in which they will never die. So, Melchizedek and Abraham had something to celebrate. We have something greater, something better to celebrate, found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

All right, so that's your big picture arc. Where did it stem from? Why are we doing this? Let's get into the more nuance. Why do we do it? Why do we have the Lord's Supper? Why do we observe communion? I mean, why? All right. All of you at some point asked your parents questions, and at some point in their frustration, they looked at you and said, because I said so! That's good enough. There's more, but from a starting point, why do we do this? Because our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said to do it. We don't have to go any farther. We will, we'll unpack farther, but if we just stop there, that's good enough. Luke chapter 22. Luke chapter 22. Jesus is going to be arrested this very night. He is observing the Passover feast with his disciples, right? This is just before the big Passover festival and feast, whatever's going to go on in the town. So you're at the time right before he's going to be arrested, and he's there. So this is described as being the Last Supper. While they're eating the Passover meal, he does something else. He starts something new. We'll just start reading. Let's start in verse 15. Luke 22, 15. He sat down with the twelve. He said unto them with desire, I have desire to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. He took the cup, so they were drinking something, and gave thanks. And he said, take this and divide it amongst yourselves. For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall come. And he took bread and gave thanks and break it and gave it to them saying, this is my body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me. This do in remembrance of me. This is your cuz I said so. do it because he said so. We observe this and then likewise after the cup, likewise also the cup after supper saying, this cup is the New Testament in my blood which is shed for you. So you have both this picture of the cup and the bread being given and divided amongst his apostles, his disciples. And they were told, do it in remembrance of me.

All right. That's the most basic reason. Why do we continue to absorb the Lord's Supper? Because He told us to. That's a very good reason. Second reason is, in all that we do, we want to pattern ourself over the New Testament church. What did they engage in? What did Jesus tell them to do? How did they follow through on that? And so, we're trying to do that. Well, if you go to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, you will see A teaching done through a negative. Teaching done through a negative. What does that mean? It means we're going to look at someone else's bad example as a way not to do it, where we're going to be taught what we should do instead. Alright? If you're not familiar with the Corinthian church, they had some issues. It was made up of 100% sinners. And so, Paul had to do a lot of teaching in his absence to correct some of their practices. And so, 1, so 1 Corinthians 11, we'll just start reading in verse 18. For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions amongst you, and I partly believe it." He says, there's something about whatever I've experienced with you, I am not surprised that there are divisions amongst you. Now this is probably having to do with divisions of doctrine. things that they thought or believed or taught. He says there's divisions among you. How he started this letter, because there was folks who were saying, well, I'm a follower of Paul. I'm a follower of Apollos. And others, I'm a follower of Jesus. And he's like, yo, is Jesus divided? Did I die for you? Did I baptize you? I baptized very few of you. And he lists off a few of them. And if anyone else, I don't remember, but it's not in my name. And so, they already had these little cliques about who was their figurehead. It was somebody other than Jesus, so that's a problem. And it says, for there must also be heresies. A heresy is a disunion, a separate sect amongst them where they were divided, that they which are approved may manifest among you. So why do you have these different cliques? So the ones who are leading the clique can show off how much they're in charge. And so, followers of men. This is what he warned the elders at Ephesus. You take care of yourself, watch over the flock, because from without they'll come wolves trying to scatter the sheep, but from within they'll come up men teaching perverse things, trying to lead people away to follow them. So that's what's going on there in Corinth, and then he gets really specific. When you come together, therefore, in one place, this is not to eat the Lord's Supper. He says, what y'all are doing, you think it's observing the Lord's Supper or communion? You're not. The way you're doing it is wrong. First as a starting point, you've got disunion among your church. We should be of one mind and of one accord, all right? one set of doctrine, and we're following that wholeheartedly, not tearing off in different pieces. This is part of the reason that when we observe the Lord's Supper, we limit it to people of the same light, faith, and order, generally of the church, because we've all been baptized under the same gospel, right? It's part of the reason we require someone from a different faith or order to be rebaptized, because I want to make sure that when we come together at the Lord's table, we are all believing and teaching and agreeing in the same doctrine. So we can be all moving in the same direction to avoid what we've described here. So what else were they doing that was wrong that we don't want to emulate? You're come together therefore in one place. This is not to eat the Lord's supper. What you're doing, that's not it. For in eating, everyone taketh before other his own supper. One is hungry and another is drunken. Now obviously they weren't using little thimble glasses. And obviously they were using wine, if you could get drunk. So, what they were having, I don't know, have any of y'all ever seen the Music Man? There's some really snarky people in there who have a line in one of the songs that says, you're welcome to come to the picnic and eat your fill of all the food you bring yourself. The idea is that the wealthy folks were bringing this abundance of food, and they were making sure their plates were all gobbled up, and the poor guy over here who couldn't bring anything, he's sitting over there starving, and the overabundance, this guy is just indulging until he's drunk, and this guy over here, he's just hungry. This is not a coming together to remember the Lord's Supper, the Lord's death, which is what he charged us with. Y'all have turned this into an unfriendly potluck, right? It's just a carnal meal. This should be different. He says, what, have you not houses to eat and to drink in?

This is not a meal where you're coming to feel your natural appetite. That's not the purpose of it. He says, you have houses to eat in, right? Go eat there. But when you do this, or despise ye the church of God, are you doing this intentionally because you hold this in such low regard? And shame them that have not? So the poor brother over here who can't afford all this that you've brought, Are you doing that to harm him, to bring him shame, to expose him to ridicule? I mean, there's a lot of bad reasons. What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? That's a rhetorical question. He's going to say, I'm not going to. You're doing it way wrong, it's grotesque, it's vile. And then he's going to give them, this is what Jesus told me, and this is what I told you, right? Going back to the original pattern, because Paul is an apostle, right? To be an apostle, you have to be an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ. Jesus appeared to Paul on multiple occasions, and on at least one, he told him, for as I received of the Lord, that which I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, And when he had given thanks, he break it, and said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me. That because I said so, there it is again. After the same manner he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me." As oft as you drink it. Does that mean that you have to have communion every Sunday, or every month, or every quarter, It's not saying how frequently, but whenever you do it, you better make sure that you're doing it in remembrance of the Lord.

Are you doing it in remembrance of the Lord if you're just coming to have a meal to get drunk?

No!

Does that glorify Him?

No!

So, why you're doing it matters, and how you do it matters.

For, here's the reason, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show, or shew, the Lord's death till he come.

How long are we going to be engaged in this practice? At least until he comes. There may be a different version in heaven, but for now, we have been charged to observe this with the bread and with the wine, taking it in remembrance of His blood, which is a symbol of the New Testament. A testament is a will. A will that's enforced upon somebody's death. He died, and His will, the Father's will, was that you would be holy and without blame before Him in love and abide with Him in glory. That was His will. That was what was documented. And He performed the acts, all of them, to make sure that was going to happen. But what had to happen was He had to die. Right? Blood is often a symbol of the life, right? It's part of the reason that drinking blood was forbidden. It's because the life was in there and you're not allowed to, you know, consume that. But it was pointing to the death that he was going to allow himself to die for you. And what comes with that? So, it is a remembrance of a particular act of self-sacrifice and what it accomplished. Okay?

If you're just having a meal because somebody died, well, we call that a funeral, right? That's a Southern thing. You have a death, you bring the potluck, and then you eat. Does that make that person, you know, still with you? Or anything they're doing still effective? No. And so, it's kind of only backwards looking, because we're remembering them and we're never going to see them again. When we're remembering the Lord's death, That's not the end of the story, right? Because if you're here and you're baptized in this church, you know that he didn't stay in the grave, that he rose from the grave. That's part of the big thing of why we come, is because he is alive! And so, when you come and you remember his death, you're remembering the sacrifice, the pain, the sorrow, and suffering that he was willing to go through for you and through all of his children. But it's not a sorrowful remembrance. Because it accomplished something.

One, he purchased all of his children. He redeemed them. Absolutely did. And death couldn't hold him. And so, he's alive. So you are celebrating your living victorious king who's sitting on the right hand of the father until all of his enemies are made his footstool. You're rejoicing in the sacrifice he was willing to make for you. That's good news. That's a real good read, right? So he told us to do it. We now know how long we're supposed to do it until we see him in person. And then he can give us different instructions. But until he comes, we're going to continue to observe it. We've been doing this for 2,000 years now. And this story started, you know, 2,000 years before that. So 4,000 years where you've got a type of this high priest coming with bread and wine to celebrate a victory that was accomplished by God deliver captives who were had no hope what army was going to come and rescue them right but God using you know something that appears weak and delivers them and that points again several hundred years later so you got nearly 1,500 years later so before David comes on the scene maybe thousand years I've done the math recently look at it And then this one little sliver of one little psalm saying that the Messiah, the anointed one, is going to be after the order of Melchizedek. He's going to be a priest, but he's going to be a priest-king. We know he's also a prophet, which is one who speaks for God. He was, you know, before God spoke by the prophets.

Now he speaks by his very son, right? The image of God. And so, with prophet, priest, and king, he's the embodiment of all of those things. Those individual men couldn't do it. They were just types pointing to something that's far better. And here he comes. And here on the night that he knows, he knows all that he's going to go through. He knows the pain that he's going to suffer. He's desiring to have this meal and to start this formally with his followers and be continued by all of his followers, where he's going to give two symbols. Bread representing his body. His body was about to go through it. This body that had been prepared for him, that he came down, this is God incarnate, and this body is going to be slapped, beaten, spit upon, whipped. From Isaiah, it looks like even his beard was ripped out. We don't have that recorded in the New Testament. But his face and his visage, the way he looked, was going to be so marred that he wasn't even recognizable. Imagine the worst boxer you've seen go through a fight. They've at least got gloves on, right? This is just battered and bruised, ripped and bleeding, and then exposed to shame, because he was naked hanging on the cross. I mean, they did, you know, gambled for all of his clothing. And then, as he's pierced in hands and feet, and later in his side, what will come flowing out was his blood, representing the very life, that he was not just going to be beaten, for your account, he was going to be beaten and battered and bruised all the way, all the way to death. And would it have been possible to redeem a single sinner without his blood? No. All those sacrifices in the Old Testament that the other Aaron's descendants would slay day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, they never had an end. Why? Because they didn't really accomplish anything.

Now, they were being obedient to what God said, so it was needful for them to do it. But as far as the ability to take away a single sin, they couldn't. And so, it took Jesus' blood. And not just a little bit. right it took him bleeding and allowing his entire life to be spent for his people right and so, when you come and you're taking of this wine right and that's and that's what they used right Jesus instituted with wine it's consistent with the pattern from Melchizedek distort some things. I read, saw some sermon titled, Jesus wasn't a bartender. Somehow he's produced, you know, water into wine at the wedding, but it was the non-alcoholic kind of wine. I was like, I don't know what you're reading into this. But if you go read through the New Testament, or the Old Testament, across the theme of the Bible, wine can have a very good connotation.

All right, it gets better with age, right? It was a way to preserve the fruits of the vine for a long period of time, and that was how God was describing the blessings that were going to be upon Israel, is that you would have this land where it was rich, and it would be flowing with these things. Now, does that mean drunkenness? No, and we know that from Corinth, where they abused it. But we wanna follow as closely as possible, You know, was there any chance that they had just gone out and grabbed some grapes and made some grape juice that night? When was the Passover observed? Winter. Guess what's not harvested in winter? Grapes. And you couldn't preserve grape juice until, you know, Mr. Welch and the pasteurization process in the late 1800s, and so, they used wine. Why do we use wine? Because we're following Jesus' pattern, right? And there's also other depictions about the blood of wine representing both the wrath from the Father. Who was going to bear the wrath of the Father entirely on his own? Jesus, right? And so, it is a good picture. Why do we use unleavened bread? Because Jesus used unleavened bread. How do we know they used unleavened bread? Because that whole week leading up to the Passover, it was called the week of unleavened bread, because they were forbidden to have any leaven in their households. Okay, so if there's no leaven present, the only bread they could use was unleavened bread. Okay, that's fact, but why? Because Jesus would teach about leaven and describe it as being a synonym, or he'd use it to illustrate corruption of doctrine, and for sin, a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. What does leaven do, right? You start a little bit of leaven, it bubbles, it grows, and the thing that would start in one shape dramatically changes, right? If we start off teaching the truth of the doctrine of the Bible, And then we start adding in a little bit here and a little bit there, what will eventually happen? You will look radically different than where you started from. And so, that's a picture given by Levin. And what does it produce? It produces air bubbles. There's no new substance. There's no new bread. It just changes the shape. And so, you've got none of that. You've got no sin. You've got no impurity and doctrine. Well, who better to embody for him and his body than that which is pure, which has no sin, which is righteous." So he used unleavened bread. That's what he used. It's consistent with his imagery in which he taught about unleavened bread. Leavened yeast, right? The thing that makes it rise. So does it taste a little funny? Yeah. That's okay. I imagine it tasted a little funny back then, too. Why did people use leaven in their bread? Made it taste more pleasant. I mean, There was a reason that God took away the leaven during the Passover, right? Then the Passover goes all the way back to Egypt when he spared them, when the destroying one, the destroying angel's going to come through and slay all the firstborn of anyone whose house was not marked by blood, the blood of the Passover lamb, right? And they were to eat that lamb with bitter herbs, and they had all their kneading troughs bound up on their shoulders, because in the morning, they're hightailing it out. They're eating with their shoes on, their shoes laced, You ever tried to tell your kids to get ready to go in the morning, Sunday morning? They say, oh, where are my shoes? They were ready, they were packed, they were loaded up, and they're eating, just waiting for the go signal. And they left that morning. And so, they were eating unleavened bread then, and they didn't even know why it was going to be, but that was just the nature of what it was. And so, we want, in all that we do, here's your biggest picture. In what we do as a church, we want to use scripture as our model. for both what we teach in doctrine, like we've been teaching some doctrine in Romans, you better believe it. And now we've been going line by line by line, you better believe it, because that's how we build doctrine, line upon line, precept upon precept. But it's also true for everything else that we engage in in our practices. Why do we sing hymns, right? We look at the New Testament and say, what did Jesus establish for his church? What pattern do we see? They sang hymns. You know what Jesus did after they observed the Last Supper, right? They sang a hymn. and then they went out to the garden, right? And so, after we observe the Lord's Supper and we wash feet, we're going to sing a hymn. We're trying to follow that pattern. This is a good thing, right? And this is a safe thing, because when it becomes just, well, this is my opinion, or this is how things are changed, and we're trying to weigh and balance different factors, and what do we do if we limit ourselves to what is the pattern we see in Scripture? Let's stick to that. It makes it much simpler. And it's easier for the next generation to see, why did you do that? We go back and we reestablish it. Oh, well, there it is. And we should be teaching the next generation. But anything that we do, we should have the scriptural basis for it, right? And then there's some other things around the fringe. Where do we meet? Do we have air? Do we have running water? Those are just conveniences. None of those are necessary. Y'all remember from COVID where we meet. Outside, parking lot, under a tree, right? It doesn't matter, right? This building is not church, right? It can be destroyed tomorrow, and while that would be inconvenient in the natty season, okay! As long as y'all survive, right? We can have church. The church is the gathering together. Church means the called out assembly. You've been called out in the world to just be different on your own. No, to assemble together, to worship the Lord, to grace his name, to be strengthened and edified, to learn more about his word, and then to go and apply it as you're out interacting with others, because there are other of the Lord's sheep that are out there, right? They're not just all in here. And a lot of them operate under some really sorry doctrine that gives a lot of chains of burden and baggage that they have to carry around, particularly if they feel like it's up to them to acquire or maintain their salvation. That's a heavy load. So when Jesus is talking about coming to me, all you that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, He was serious about it. And what's going to make you free is the truth. So, we are very blessed to be here. This is a great blessing to be able to come and observe the Lord's Supper. We are continuing something that Jesus Himself set up. When we come and sing hymns and we listen to preaching and we pray, we are following the pattern that Jesus gave Himself as He set up the church. That's a good thing. And so, none of this is really about us. Preacher, you're making me feel kind of small. Good. We're good at making ourselves feel big. It's about Him, right? Are we the beneficiaries of Jesus's work? Absolutely. Exceptionally blessed. But the primary focus of what we do, not just here, but in all of this, should be on our Lord, should be on our Savior. And not just when we leave here, but when we're on our roads, driving home, when we're at our houses, when we're interacting with others. Everything about our life should be revolving around the core truth that Jesus Christ is alive, bare minimum, and too, He is my boss. that will affect how I govern myself and how you govern yourself.

All right. So big question. Let's deal with communion. Why do we do it? Because Jesus said so. You don't remember anything else. Do that. And we're painting a a picture. These are symbols. Do this in remembrance of me. It's a symbol pointing back to a day, the most notable day in the course of human history thus far. Before this, the coolest day in human history is when God came down in flesh. He was born of a virgin, an actual virgin, not just a young lady, but one who had never known a human man. That had been the most notable day that had ever happened. You fast forward, he's about 33 years old, and he's about to sacrifice himself. That is the most notable day that has happened in human history, until about three days later. And then, when he comes up out of the grave, that is the most notable day in human history, and it stays that way, up until now. And it's far forward until it is the right time, and God knows, Father knows, for him to return, and then that will be the end of history, and the end of time, and the most notable day, this wonderful climax, and then you'll be at the beginning of eternity. Has no end. Now this is an aside, this is free. I quit covering the wine in the mornings. When you come in here, you can smell it. You know how much imagery is used in the Bible describing both good and bad smells? Remember in Egypt when they had all those frogs and he pleaded with Pharaoh, take the frogs away. Pharaoh was pleading with Moses, take the frogs away. God relented. The frogs all died and they gathered up in heaps. You know what it was described as? They stank. The land smelled nasty, right? We're going down. That way, you get far enough, there's going to be a dump. And if you don't turn the inside air on your car, you're going to smell that dump for quite a while. This world has an odor of decay, of death. You know the cool thing about heaven? There won't even be bad smells. And so, here is you're coming and you're observing this supper. You're remembering the Lord's death, remembering the blood that He spilled for you, shed for you, however you want to describe it, that He sacrificed for you. Even the smell of it is good. You go read the Song of Solomon. and you've got this beautiful imagery describing this woman who loves this man, it's a picture for the church and Jesus, but she has so many descriptions about how he smells, about his hands dripping with myrrh and aloes and these beautiful smells that even our Lord, this is pointing towards him and even the smells, right? Because our prayers, you know what they're described in heaven as being like incense, right? Prayers of the saints, beautiful aroma not only in God's eyes, but there in heaven. And so, just, that one was free. That wasn't even on topic. But I was just thinking about it this morning, and I was coming up with smells. That everything about heaven and about glory is so much better than you can even imagine. I bet you never even thought about what it's going to smell like.

But all of that is accomplished because of what we come to remember today, which is the Lord's death. burial and ultimately his resurrection and what that victory has achieved.

Thank y'all for your good attention and bearing with me on my long-winded story about Melchizedek.