Enacting Salvation

We're going to be looking at Luke 22 this morning as we continue, and we're going to be looking at one of the greatest acts of hospitality recorded in human history: the Lord's Supper. And this significant meal is probably one of the most significant this side of eternity. This is something that stands in the centre of the whole of human history. As we look this morning at the Lord's Supper, or some call it communion, or some call it the Eucharist, we see that this meal that Jesus and his 12 disciples shared has become one of the most copied examples of the Christian church.

One of the things that the Christian church over two thousand years has emulated over and over again. This night, this special, significant moment had so much emotion, so much freedom, so much relief incorporated into it, but at the same time, so much solemn reflection, so much longing for what it was pointing to. This morning we ask the dangerous question: why? Why the Lord's Supper? Why do we celebrate it?

But more importantly, why this meal? Why a meal? Why do we eat and drink? Why do we eat and drink? Let's turn to Luke 22 and we're going to read from verse seven to verse 20.

Five times in our passage, Luke reminds us that this is the Passover meal: in verse seven, verse eight, verse eleven, verse thirteen, and verse fifteen. Now the Passover was a Jewish tradition, long celebrated in the time of Jesus. In fact, it's still celebrated by Jews today. The first Passover meal, or the first Passover, was celebrated during the Exodus, during the time when Israel wasn't a nation yet.

They were a bunch of ragtag people enslaved by the Egyptians. In Exodus 12, we read that each family was told to kill a flawless lamb, a perfect lamb, and to dab its blood around the door frames of their homes. Then they roasted that lamb and they ate it. They were to eat the whole lamb and they were to eat it with unleavened bread. That night, the Lord came and He passed over the houses marked with the blood of the lamb.

Each house that wasn't marked in this way, whether they were Israelites or Jews or whether they were Egyptians, each house that wasn't obedient lost the firstborn of the house. Even we hear that the Pharaoh's son was not spared. And so this was leading up to a time where the Pharaoh could not maintain his hard heart towards these people and he relented and he let the Israelites go free. He set them free from their slavery. The Passover lamb rescued God's people from slavery.

It gave up its life for them and died in their place. And obviously, as we read in Luke 22, the night before Jesus went to the cross, the significance of this Passover lamb giving its life, giving its life essence in its blood for the freedom of the people is so significant. The Passover celebrated here by Jesus and His disciples was going to have a new meaning, or was going to have a deeper significance. But while the Last Supper of Jesus looks back on the Passover that was before, it also has a future. It looks ahead.

It looks towards the messianic banquet of Isaiah 25 that we also spoke about a few weeks ago. It looks ahead to the time where all of God's people will be gathered together, where they will share and feast together as a people reunited, redeemed, renewed, restored. It looks forward to a time when Jesus will have this banquet with us. Jesus says in verses 16 and 18, "I will not eat this bread, I will not drink of the fruit of this vine until I do it with you in the kingdom of God," until God's kingdom has come. This shared meal not only looks back to Jesus and further back to the Passover, but this meal which we shared this morning looks forward to God's final kingdom, to the final act God delivers in this story.

Luke places the Lord's Supper straight in the middle of the Bible story. It looks backwards and then now it looks forward as well. Now, we also touched briefly on the significance of a meal like this, a feast. We saw in the Old Testament that food, feasting, eating symbolises God's presence. It symbolises God's blessing.

One Kings 4 talks about Solomon and how at the pinnacle of Israel as a nation, as a kingdom, at its pinnacle of strength, it lists just the amazing banquet that Solomon and his advisers had every night, and it was magnificent. Lambs and goats and heifers slaughtered, fruits and vegetables and breads and everything, just the most sumptuous meal every night. In One Kings 4, verse 20, in fact, let's have a read of that.

Verse 20 begins by saying how prosperous Israel had become because of God's blessing, because they had been obedient to God. They had entered into this land flowing with milk and honey, and now they were reaping the fruit. It says in verse 20, "The people of Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the seashore," the promise God made to Abraham.

And they ate and they drank and they were happy. Verse 22 just gives a summary of the daily provisions for Solomon. Solomon's daily provisions were 30 cores of fine flour and 60 cores of meal, ten head of stall-fed cattle, grain-fed, beautiful black Angus beef, 20 of pasture-fed cattle and a hundred sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebuck, and choice fowl.

The best of everything. God blessed Israel. But then we also see that God's curse, God's abandonment of Israel during that time of rebellion is also seen in terms of food. It is also symbolised by a lack of food. In Joel 1 and 2, particularly, the minor prophet talks about how God would remove Himself, remove His presence from Israel because of their rebellion, because of their idolatry, and He puts it in the context of food.

They will be hungry again. Armies of locusts will come and devour their livestock, their vegetables, their fruit. They will be hungry again. The land flowing with milk and honey will not be flowing with milk and honey anymore. And so then at the heart of the Bible story, at this turning point in Luke 22, comes another meal: the Lord's Supper.

And so it's significant. This meal is a celebration of the story's central act, which was going to be the cross of Jesus. Jesus' death and resurrection would inaugurate a new covenant. This new covenant, which we spoke of earlier this morning, a new promise, and it creates a new people, a people that love God, a people that have God's will imprinted on their hearts. Just as Israel had been constituted by the old covenant in Exodus 20, the new community of Jesus is founded by a new one.

Jesus says that night that this cup is a new covenant. At Sinai in the desert, God promised Israel to be their God if they would be His people and live their lives for Him. But Israel broke the covenant. In this new covenant, Jesus represents both humanity and God, the perfect priest. Therefore, this new covenant is eternal, it is secure, it is everlasting.

In fact, what we see in the Lord's Supper is God contracting Himself to make sure that this covenant is going to be signed, sealed, and delivered, and it is done by the blood of Jesus. At the Lord's Supper, this hope of a new covenant is embodied in a meal. But why? Why a meal? Why bread?

Why wine? Couldn't Jesus have simply said, "This is My body, reflect on it, see it, meditate on it"? Jesus says, "Take it. Eat it. Taste it, sip it and drink it."

Why a meal? The first thing we see about the significance in Luke 22 is this meal is an act of remembrance. This meal is an act of remembrance. In verse 19 of our text, we read Jesus saying, "This is My body given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me."

The Lord's Supper is an act of remembrance. Every year, on 11 November, we Aussies celebrate an act of remembrance. The whole country of Australia stops on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. We celebrate Remembrance Day. Now it doesn't matter if it's a weekend, if it's a day off; in fact, this year it doesn't matter if there's a Gabba test on, at the eleventh hour everyone stops.

Midway through your batting innings, you stop and you remember. And at the eleventh hour that bugle plays the last post, and for two minutes people are silent. What's the effect of this practice? Well, it's shaped our culture, it shaped our identity, it shapes generation after generation after generation of Australians. It gives us a sense, a sense of national identity.

It reinforces those values that we hold so dearly: of freedom, of liberty, of sacrifice. It also matters that this moment is not merely done at the home, although it happens there, but this is done publicly in Anzac Square, in Queen Street Mall, at the Gabba test, publicly. Those standing to attention in silence listening to the last post being played by the bugler. It's an intensely solemn moment and it shoots emotion through my body every time, every year. This is how the Passover worked for the Israelites.

This is how the Lord's Supper works for us. The Lord's Supper is a memorial, but it's certainly not just a memorial. Each time we participate in it, we are reminded of the cross. We are reminded that our sins have been atoned for. We are reminded that we are free, that we are forgiven, that we have been adopted, we have been acquitted.

It is not merely a memorial to refresh our minds. It's not simply some intellectual thing that we ponder on for a few minutes. It's not some academic thing we enter into when we sit around this table. It's much more than that. In my study at home, there is a photo, a few photos of my family.

Now someone might ask me, "Are those pictures there because you can't remember what they look like?" I would answer no. Those pictures are not there to inform my intellect; they are there to touch my heart. When I look at those pictures during the day, they remind me of my loved ones whom I am temporarily separated from. I think about what each of them means to me.

My heart is touched as I recall fun moments, those Christmases, those holidays that we've had together. I'm moved to thank God for giving them to me and to pray for their ongoing wellness and protection. In the Lord's Supper, the Lord Jesus leaves us a snapshot of Himself for us to remember Him by. Just like a picture, we should look at it often. It should fill our hearts with a desire to see Him when He comes again because we have been temporarily separated.

It should touch our hearts and make us say, "Thank you God for what you have given us in your Son Jesus." So firstly, the Lord's Supper is a meal, an act of remembrance. Secondly, the Lord's Supper is a meal of community. It's an act of being together like this. The Apostle Paul in One Corinthians 10, verse 17 writes, "Because there is one loaf, one bread, we who are many are one body because we all partake of this one loaf."

The Lord's Supper declares the death of Jesus not just in the symbolism of bread and wine, but in the community it has created. We've seen time and time again how meals create and reinforce community. It is so important as a family to eat together. It is so important for friends to meet around a barbie. Christ told us to take bread and wine because they form a meal that binds us together in community.

This was exactly the problem that Paul was trying to address in One Corinthians 10 when he wrote these words. The Corinthian church was a deeply divided church, rich and poor being together because of their faith in Jesus. But they would have this lavish feast, so much better than this, sharing and eating and drinking together. But what would happen, as was the social custom, the rich would eat in a different location to the poor. The rich would bring their good food and they would eat it and they would eat together while the poor was left with nothing.

And Paul was saying, "This is not what the Lord's Supper is meant to emulate. It's not what it means." Paul says that this is completely the wrong reason for the Lord's Supper. By sharing together in this holy meal, we proclaim the power of Jesus' death by showing the whole world that we are a reconciled community. When we share it this morning, have a look around at those people sharing with you.

They don't act the way that you act. They don't maybe like the same things that you like. But you are one. We are one. Not only that, we see in the meal that we have been reconciled and have become one with God.

The cross and the Lord's Supper humbles us all as we reflect and recognise the extent of our sin, and yet we are exalted and we exalt God as we reflect that we have entered into God's family. A family that eats together stays together. So the meal is an act of community. The third thing is that this meal which we share is an act of participation. Another reason for us having a communion meal together is to express and to celebrate this feast by participating.

In One Corinthians 10, verse 16, Paul makes a statement: "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" It is a participation in what happened on the cross. We're not merely observers around the Lord's Supper table. A Lord's Supper service is not just another normal service where we come to listen to some words spoken by a tall, lanky guy.

The Lord's Supper is tangible. You taste, you touch, you see, you smell. It is a participation of moving into that moment where Jesus gave His life for us. If the feast involved just some words, then we'd be mere listeners. But bread and wine draw us in.

The salvation comes to us. It becomes our salvation. Objectively, our salvation doesn't depend on partaking in this meal. It's not magic. But the Lord's Supper describes this union in partaking in participation.

Through the meal, salvation becomes a subjective reality for us. Subjective, meaning we are involved. We enact a tangible connection with Jesus. We eat like He ate. We live in that special moment created two thousand years ago.

In this meal, we partake in an act of participation. And lastly, the fourth thing about this meal that we see in the gospel of hospitality, the gospel of Luke, is that the meal is an act of formation. Jesus creates a body. Jesus creates a group in Luke 22 of disciples, of men who would start this movement called the Christian church. Later on, Paul would write in One Corinthians 11, verse 26, about the Lord's Supper: "For whenever you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes again."

Participation in the Lord's Supper is part of our spiritual formation. It forms us. It creates us. It forms our spirituality. The Lord's Supper is a drama in which we're all participants.

It's a story being told and each time we participate in it, we're learning and relearning our role. We understand what Jesus has done for us. We're learning the habits of cross-centred living. When we share in this meal together, eating the bread and drinking the wine together, we don't merely show the way things really ought to be; we practice the things and how they really ought to be. It forms our understanding of what being unified in Christ really should look like.

When you take the bread and the wine this morning, have a look around. Reflect. Think of those people around you, how different they are, yet how similar they are in their grateful response to God's forgiveness and grace. The Lord's Supper shapes our spirituality. Not only do we think about what the Lord Jesus has done for us on the cross, but we also have a sneak peek at the magnificent banquet that God is preparing for us when Jesus returns.

We learn spiritual habits when we share this meal together. So why do we have a meal like this one? Because by it we remember. Because by it we become unified into a community. We physically participate in God's salvation, and we develop spiritual habits.

We understand our place before God. We understand our need and dependence on Him. The Lord's Supper has so much to say to us. In a busy culture with people desperate to succeed, we practice in this communion resting on the finished work of Jesus on the cross. It has so much to say to this world.

In a fragmented culture that is radically individualistic, we practice belonging to one another in communion. In a dissatisfied culture of constant striving, we practice receiving things from God with joy and gratitude. In a narcissistic culture of self-fulfilment, we practice in the Lord's Supper the perfect brother or sister to the person sitting in front of you or behind you. Mom, Dad, if you feel comfortable letting your son or daughter take part in this, are you making sure that they understand this salvation? Are you evangelising your son or your daughter?

Are you and your child honest and certain about your need for Christ? If you are, then come freely to the table. Come freely to the table because it is a happy and magnificent feast. Our older brothers and our older sisters, will you approach the table with glad and sincere hearts this morning? Hearts filled with childlike faith, remembering what Jesus has meant to you on your long path with Him.

Will you continue to serve this church, serve your heavenly Father as leaders and guardians, living in unity and love with the rest of us? If you will, if you say yes, then come freely to this table. The invitation is open. Come, every one of you, putting your trust and your dependence on Jesus Christ for your salvation. Come taste and see that the Lord is good.