Communion Message
(The table of emancipation)
January 8-9, 2000
Pastor Donald Sheley

For I 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. 

Always before our participation as a family in the communion, we take a brief moment to discuss some aspect of the communion service itself, some truth that relates to our salvation. And the reason why we do this is because when you study church history, and you go back into the early days of the Christian church 2000 years ago, you learn some very interesting things. First of all the service was built around the communion table, and it was that way for 1600 years in the life of the church. But prior to the participation in the communion there was always a teaching time, which took between 8 to 10, 12 minutes whatever the Pastor so chose, and it was called the homily. Now you folks that come from liturgical backgrounds that word is familiar to you. You've read that in your little recital books and your prayer books, the homily. We as Evangelicals are not so familiar with that term. But what it simply is this, it's a short talk, a heart to heart talk from the Pastor to his congregation on the subject at hand and or relative material. 

And so that's the reason why Sunday after Sunday I take time to discuss some aspect of our Christian faith or redemption or some great truth that relates to the communion service, and today for our homily I have chosen a passage out of Colossians where Paul writes; For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not ceased to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy. So Paul begins this part of the Scriptures in a prayer, that they might receive God's wisdom and spiritual understanding in that which pertains to their relationship to Christ. And then he goes on, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. 

You'll note that in Paul's writing all of a sudden rejoicing fills his heart and he'll start penning a great doxology right in the middle of his Scriptures. And then at other times his heart is caught up in prayer and he will write a prayer to those to whom he's writing the letter, and here Paul turns to grateful thanksgiving for the benefits which Christians have received in Christ. And there seems to be two thoughts that Paul has here in this passage. First of all he talks about the inheritance. He says you've been qualified to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. There is in this whole passage a very close correspondence with Paul's words in Acts where he's giving his defense before King Agrippa. And this is what he says, King Agrippa, he said, this is the task that God has given me to do. To open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in God. King Agrippa, my assignment is from God and here's my task, to turn people from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to the power of God. That's the inheritance that's ours. And he relates that because when he used the term inheritance, they thought of the blessings that God had promised to the Old Testament Israel, and what Paul is simply saying, all the promises that God made to Israel they're your inheritance too as a believer. You are now a part of God's family. 

Secondly, you'll notice he says, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us. Now that word is translated different in various Bible translations. He has translated us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His dear Son. Here is the word conveyed. It's an interesting word. It comes out of ancient history, and here was the setting of the word. When a nation moved into another nation they usually conquered the people, took all of those people back to their homeland, and they became slaves. They removed them. They conveyed them from their homeland back to the foreign land. When Assyria came into the northern kingdoms of Palestine, Assyria took most of the people back to Assyria and left little Palestine, the nation of Palestine, almost without any people. They were conveyed, transferred, from northern Palestine back to Assyria. 

Years later, when the Babylonians came in from the east they came into Jerusalem and ransacked it, and they took all the people out of Jerusalem back to Babylonia, and that's what we know of as the Babylonian captivity. And here Palestine is left almost desolate without any people because the inhabitants had been conveyed from one locale to another. So as soon as Paul penned that word and the Colossians are reading it, they immediately understood. What Paul was saying is that when we put our trust in Christ, He conveys us, He transfers us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's eternal light. He conveys us from sin's bondage to Christ's liberty. He conveys us from the dominion of Satan to the power of God. When you put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior that act of divine transference, conveyance, takes place. We often look at the table as the table of mercy, the table of forgiveness, the table of reconciliation, the table of love and forgiveness. 

I'd like for you today to think of it as the table of emancipation. Those elements, simple as they are, bespeak a divine and glorious truth, that because Christ died and because salvation has been made available to whosoever will when we put our trust in Jesus, He takes us from darkness, brings us into the kingdom of His love, a kingdom of truth, a kingdom of light. He takes us from sin's bondage and its guilt and its pain and its condemnation and He takes us into forgiveness, love, mercy, grace. That's what takes place when we become a Christian, and that's what that table, that's just part of what that table represents. Paul said to the Corinthians every time you partake of this communion you are proclaiming, you are proclaiming the Lord's death and what took place in the glorious miracles of salvation that are the result of Christ's death on the cross. So when you and I take these elements today we're saying Lord Jesus, I thank you that You took me out of Satan's kingdom and brought me into Yours. You took me out of darkness into light. You took me out of misery into glory. You took me out of sin into forgiveness. That's what happens. That's what we're going to rejoice today in as we kneel together.

Let's kneel, shall we? Lord Jesus as we kneel in Your presence this act of participation seems so simple. We have a little piece of bread in our hand and we have a little cup, but You told us that the bread is Your body and the cup represents Your blood. And this we do understand dear Jesus, that You who did not sin, You who were sinless, You went to the cross, You became sin for us, You took our sin and its guilt and its penalty and You paid it in full by dying on that cross so we could live. And this bread represents that body that became the substitute, the sacrifice, for us. And this cup, as mysterious as it is, tells us that when You shed Your precious blood dear Jesus at Calvary, You provided cleansing for all of our sins. Now that's hard for us to grasp. How does blood cleanse us? But Your Bible tells us that Your precious blood is our cleansing for all of our sins. And when we put our trust in You dear Jesus, what glorious miracles take place. Now You're our Master. Now You're the Lord of our lives. Now You're our Savior and our God, and we love You today dear Jesus. Let's take the bread together, shall we? And then the cup. Wondrous grace, marvelous Jesus, blessed Redeemer, glorious Lord, we love You today from the very depths of our being we say that dear Jesus to You. And everybody said, amen. Let's stand and greet one another, shall we?