Communion Message
(IOUs scrubbed perfectly clean)
May 22-23, 1999
Pastor Don Sheley

For I have received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me. In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 

Now Paul has made it very clear that every time the communion service is participated in, within the body of believers, it is a proclamation. A time where we declare once again, in very visual form, the story of the cross of Jesus. Now, Paul describes the cross and its effects and its meanings in words, pictures, so vivid that it really is a marvelous way of helping us to understand what took place at Calvary. He writes to the Colossians and he says, And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. 

Paul thinks in word pictures, and first of all in our passage he sees mankind as insensitive, incapable, and absolutely unable to do anything about their condition of sin. He speaks of it in another passage. We are dead, that is, we are spiritually incapable of forgiving our sins or doing anything about our salvation. We are dead in our trespasses and our sins. And so what Paul sees at Calvary, what takes place in this marvelous capability of spiritual resurrection, when a person comes to Christ the Bible speaks of us being taken from the kingdom of darkness and being put into the kingdom of God's dear Son. And Paul says what takes place at Calvary and what took place there is that we as sinners, dead in our trespasses, totally incapable of doing anything about it, because of what Christ did at the cross, we now have that glorious experience of coming to new life in Christ. We're being born again. Then he went on to paint some more pictures. He said, having wiped out the handwriting that was against us. In the original language in which the New Testament is written, which is Greek, the word for handwriting is autograph. And it was a word that was used to describe an instrument whereby someone personally autographed an instrument that said I owe you. Today, in our society, we call it an IOU or a promissory note, and what Paul sees is that because of all the violations that we have committed against God, they are spiritual IOUs to God. They are violations of His commandments and of His ordinances, and so Paul sees man as piled up with a vast list of debts to God that he could not pay on his own. 

And then he went a step further and he uses the word, He wiped out these handwritings, and the word for wiping out comes again from an ancient setting whereby the material on which instruments or writing things was put on to was either a papyrus or a vellum made out of animal skins. And its composition was such that it did not have the capacity to absorb the ink and the ancient ink did not have any acid in it so it did not grip into the substance itself. It just kind of laid on the top. So it was very, very easy in ancient days simply to takes this vellum or this papyrus and take a sponge and wipe off the ink that had laid on the top that never ever griped the paper, the substance itself. And so Paul sees all of these IOUs of mankind and he sees Christ in His grace taking the sponge of His mercy and His forgiveness and simply wiping the IOUs clean. Nothing on the paper; no charges against us. Totally set free in Christ. And then Paul's picture mind travels one more step. You see, in ancient times when you had a debt and you went in and paid it, they took a piece of wood, or whatever it was a stick or a twig, they took your IOU and they pierced it through to the stick and gave it back to you. And thus a pierced promissory note said it's paid in full. So when you walked out of your debtor's office or home or whatever it was, when you paid your debt, you had a stick with the paper plugged through with some kind of a steel instrument. 

Now here's what Paul sees, Paul sees all of our sins, all of our IOUs, nailed to the cross of Christ. Paid in full. That's the scene that he sees, but he doesn't stop there. You notice in verse 15 he says, Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them. What's he talking about? Well in Paul's mind in ancient Rome when a general had gone off to a distant country and he had captured and he was victorious, he brought home his captured foes by the tens of thousands, and the king, and they were all his spoils, and he was able to march down the street of Rome in front of everybody. And behind him were all of these spoils chained together. He was the conquering king. Now Paul takes that earthly scene and he transposes it up here somewhere in the cosmic heavens. And what he sees is when Christ came out of that tomb, he sees Christ marching across the cosmos and behind Him Satan and all of his demons chained totally captive, and Jesus Christ is the supreme conqueror of the universe. That's what Paul sees. The dead coming back to life again. The IOUs being scrubbed clean with mercy, nailed to a cross, and Christ marching across the skies in total conquest. That's how he saw the cross. May God help us to see it that way today. Amen.

Let's kneel together, shall we? Lord Jesus, with our finite minds and our limited knowledge it's hard for us to grasp these great spiritual truths, but this is one thing we do know, when we came to You, placed our trust in You as Lord and Savior, You forgave us. You cleansed us. You took away all of our sins. You took all of our IOUs scrubbed them perfectly clean with Your mercy, and now we stand before You just as if we had never sinned. Marvel of marvels. Infinite grace. Glorious deliverance. Blessed redemption. And these emblems tells us, Lord Jesus, that in Your body You became sin for us. You took our sins. And with this cup that we hold, by Your precious blood, all of our sins are cleansed, and thus we proclaim once again the triumph of the cross. Thank you Jesus. Let's take the bread together, shall we? And then the cup. Wonderful Jesus. Thank you for loving us, and thank you for what was accomplished at Calvary for all of us, for all the world, thank you Jesus. And everybody said, amen. Let's stand and greet one another, shall we?