Remember Me

1 Corinthians 11:24 …Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

Christians have bad memories. Jesus in His mercy provided a way for us to worship Him and have our blessed Lord's work to the forefront of our minds. The closer we get to the world, or the more we give our hearts over to worldly pursuits, the further our hearts are from God. One purpose of the Lord's Supper is to see the Lord with eyes of faith, and remember what He did for us. Our Lord Jesus has been gracious to us in giving us means to remember him. This does not mean Christians forget Jesus exists, but rather Jesus is not thought of as we go through our lives.

Vasily Polenov's The Lord's Supper

God's people need to daily look to Jesus and remember our sins, confess them, and then know that our sins were dealt with by the sacrifice of Jesus. Remember, the Lamb of God came to lay down His life for His people, to save them from their sins. Remember Christ shed His blood, the just for the unjust. Remember Jesus shed his blood for the remission of your sins. Remember, Jesus bled to purge and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Remember that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins and this real blood spilled from His real and true body. The same body that was beaten and the same body in which the Lord bore our sins laid dead in the tomb. The same body from which his life blood poured out, laid cold and dead and buried for three days and three nights . Remember, that the same body which was broken for you, and died for you, and was in the tomb for you, raised from the dead for our justification.

Jesus said to take the Lord's supper in remembrance of Him. This is a blessed gift to the Lord's church. Are you saved but deny yourself the privilege of partaking of this Heavenly ordinance by not joining the Lord's church? The Lord Jesus established a supper and uses it to draw our hearts and minds to His sacrificial work on the cross; and will you forsake this? For what? What could be so important? What other object in this world could be so worthy of your time and your attention that you will forsake the Lord's Supper for it? Don't discard the blessed means of remembrance. Do not ignore or abandon the gracious invitation to fellowship with Christ. Do not renounce the kind command given for your benefit. Do this. Do this for remembrance – not for regeneration. These are memorial aids, not sacrificial offerings. These are pictures of the Lord, not the Lord Himself. To say the Lord is sacrificed afresh with each observance of the ordinance is blasphemy. You cannot take the Lord's Supper in remembrance of the Lord if you have never come to meet him the first time.

Jesus Alone

The book of Hebrews is a brilliant epistle. The author points us to Jesus and then expounds the superiority and exclusivity of Christ as the only way of salvation. If you read the book of Hebrews in one sitting, you can see the flow and get the overarching theme: Christ is superior, Jesus is the way. But, if you slow down, and examine word by word and line by line, you see the depth of theology and meaning in the text. Notice one small section of the books first sentence: “when [Jesus] had by himself purged our sins, sad down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3b).

Jesus purged our sins. Jesus cleansed us from our guilt and transgression against God's law. Christ Jesus took our sins, bore them and removed them from us as far as the east is from the west. Jesus, by himself, purged our sins. The Old Testament tells the story of thousands of priests and thousands of years of sacrifice and offerings; yet the sum total of all those offerings  could not, once and for all, deal with sin. There were many priests who had daily priestly tasks. Yet Jesus, by himself, dealt with sin, once and for all. 

Jesus purged the sins by himself, without your help. The priests could not do the job alone. It was not physically possible for one man to do everything that needed to be done in the service. One man could not provide all the animals and offerings, and then offer all the sacrifices, be the judge of controversies, keep the cities of refuge, judge case of leprosy, pray and bless the nation and provide the spiritual needs of the people, just to mention a few. Jesus, by himself saved us, without your assistance. He did not need your opinion or your help. He doesn’t need you to offer your good works along with His. Jesus fully and completely and perfectly saves. There is no other way of salvation. Jesus is the only way.

Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father. When a priest walked into the temple, he would pass the altar, the table that held the shewbread. The smell the incense wafted from the altar and the lights flickered from the lamp-stand. He would gaze upon the veil that separated him from the Holy of Holies, and once a year, would enter and behold the ark of the covenant. But what he did not see was a chair. There was not a seat to rest or a throne to sit upon. The job of the priest was never done. But Christ, after he purged our sins, rose from the dead and ascended on high. And he sat. He sat down because the job was finished. He sat down because the victory was won. He sat down at the right hand of the Father because the wrath of God was satisfied, sin was paid for, and the work of redemption was accomplished.

The Gracious God

"And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" (Exodus 34:6).

God is good and kind to sinful men. Jesus Christ is the fountain from which all God's blessings flow to us. We do not deserve the smallest of God's blessings, but because our Lord is gracious, He freely blesses and shows kindnesses to us. Before the Earth was formed, the gracious God freely chose to display this grace upon a people who did not deserve it. Through the good pleasure of His will, God freely chose to adopt men in Christ. It was the Lord's will that these people would love Him and enjoy His presence forever. God desired that these vessels of mercy would stand and live before Him forever as His holy children. Here's the catch. These people are not holy. They are not clean and pure. They are not seeking God and do not enjoy His presence, but spend their lives hiding from Him and ignoring Him. In God's mercy, He ordained His plan of redemption. The Father, being gracious, freely elected from among men, individuals to show His kindness. The Son, being gracious, freely choose to enter into His own creation, and be the sin bearer and take upon Himself all the sin of all His people, and be their substitute. The Son would die in their place, pay their sin debt, and freely justifying them before God. The Spirit, being gracious, freely draws men to Christ and gives them life by the same power that raised Christ from the dead. The Spirit seals them, indwells them, and guides them all the days of their life. Because God is gracious, He saves sinners all the way to the end.

God won't ever stop being gracious. Ephesians 2:7  "That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." In heaven, we will be objects of the great riches of His kindness and trophies of His amazing grace. He saved us and will show us, through all eternity, how gracious and kind He is to us through Jesus. God has already shown you more mercy and kindness than we can comprehend and yet the storehouse of His goodness will never empty. We will never get to the bottom of the treasure house of Grace.  We will never see the end of God's kindness. In the ages to come, God will still be showing us how good He is through Christ Jesus. Christian, you have this eternal joy waiting for you. God will show you forever how awesome He is and how much He loved you and how kind He will be to you. This grace is received, not by works, but by faith. By coming to Christ by faith, you receive the grace of an eternally kind God and will enjoy His graciousness forever.

The Merciful Lord

And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth (Exodus 34:6). God revealed Himself to Moses, declaring that He is merciful and gracious. These two beautiful attributes are similar, but they are not the same. Mercy is when that which is deserved is withheld and grace is when that which is underserved is given. Mercy withholds deserved punishment whereas grace gives underserved favor.  Today, we will focus on God's mercy.

Mercy flows from God, because He is the "Father of mercies" (2 Corinthians 1:3). This attribute of God tells us that God shows mercy because He is merciful. You may show mercy to an ornery neighbor boy because you long ago received mercy for being an ornery boy. You may show mercy to a bad-tempered cashier by ignoring it because you feel it is your duty to show mercy. God is not compelled to "repay" a mercy and God is not under an outside law to be merciful out of duty like we are. Mercy flows from God because that is who He is. Luke 6:36  "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful". We are to be merciful to others because God the Father is merciful. His mercy is abundant and everlasting (Psalm 136).  

God delights showing mercy (Micah 7:18) and takes pleasure in those that receive His mercy. Psalms 147:11 "The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy". What could be better for a guilty man than to receive mercy from the judge? God is a judge that delights in being merciful and takes pleasure in those poor souls who deserve punishment for their sin, but flee to Him for pardon. God delights in those who trust in His mercy for salvation. God shows mercy to the unrighteous (Hebrews8:12) and pardons the guilty sinner. God's mercy shows us the only way to salvation is through Him because God is the offended party in our sins. Sin is rebellion. It is disobedience. It is disloyalty. It is high crimes against the King of glory. God's mercy is showing compassion to the miserable by withholding the His wrath towards those who have offended His holiness. You cannot be merciful to those that deserve it or earn it. The guilty never cry out "give us what we deserve!", rather the guilty man's plea is "have mercy". God shows mercy, by withholding what we deserve, not punishing us for our sins, but instead He punished a substitute; Jesus Christ. Poor and wretched as we are, by trusting in Jesus, we receive mercy and pardon because God is merciful. With great compassion and loving kindness, God shows mercy and pity. God would have been just to send us all to Hell, but the merciful God chose to display His mercy in the salvation of sinners. God delights in rescuing the beaten, the broken, and the hopeless. Do you need mercy?

 

The LORD God

And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth (Exodus 34:6).

Jehovah is God. Not a God among gods. He is God. The phrase "The LORD God" tells us that there is a God who is a self-existent personal being. We believe this truth by faith, but not blind faith. Faith based upon the evidence of God's general revelation and God's special revelation in the Scriptures. The general revelation of nature and observation tells us that there is a Creator. Our own hearts witness the fact that we know that there is a God. The Scripture is God telling us who He is. If your view of God comes from any other source than the Bible, you have created an idol and a false god. The spirit of our age tells us that everyone is right and no one is wrong when it comes to spirituality. Everyone gets a trophy and everyone gets to pick their own truth.  But that isn't how truth works. John Adams said "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." There is a God and there is only one God, to the exclusion of all other gods. If you worship another god, you are wrong. If you worship more than one god, you are wrong. If you believe that we all can come to the "higher power" in our own way and on our own path, you are wrong. Since God is a personal being, His existence and attributes are not dependent on what we think of Him. God is who He is, regardless of our opinion of those facts. When Moses met Jehovah on the mountain, Moses met a personal God who revealed Himself. How absurd a scene if Moses had said "I know you have told me who you are Lord, but to me, you are…" Don't make up a god and call Him Jesus.

God is truth and He will be worshipped alone, to the exclusion of all other gods, as He has revealed Himself in Scripture. God will be worshiped in spirit, through faith. Not with idols and graven images. God will be honored and His name will be honored because He alone is God and worthy of worship. This truth is not regulated to the Old Testament. God is revealed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus affirms the Old Testament teaching that there is only one God and tells us that the only way to the Father is through Jesus. There is one God who demands your heart, your soul, your mind, your affections, your obedience, and your worship. There is only one way to God and that is through faith in the finished work and shed blood of Jesus Christ. All other ways, all other paths, all other gods lead to eternal damnation.