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 oft 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 the blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

John records for us a scene at the cross. He says, Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, "Not one of His bones shall be broken." And again another Scripture says, "They shall look upon Him whom they pierced."

It was the custom of the Romans to allow the body of the crucified to remain on the cross until it rotted away, and that practice was observed for the same reason that our ancestors in ruder days permitted the executed criminals to hang in chains on a gibbet until their bones fell asunder. It was intended to deepen the shame of their death, and to intensify the horror of their crime. But the Jewish law was nobler in its delicacy of feeling. It ordered the removal of the bodies at sunset, and these Jewish rulers whose bitter and rancorous envy moved them to crucified Christ had a fine sense of the fitness of things. Jesus, you see, died on the eve of the Passover feast, and it was not seemly when men were going up to the temple to pray that three corpses should be festering in the sun while they're going to worship.

So at the request, Pilate sent his soldiers to dispatch the crucified by breaking their legs and to give them an early burial, and with a heavy iron mallet they smashed the limbs of the two malefactors, but when they came to Jesus they found that He was dead already. But a soldier, to make His death a certainty, lifted his lance and pierced the Christ, and from the ruptured sack of the heart there gushed out blood and water. Jesus died in a double sense of a broken heart. This ruthless wanton spear thrust was the last and crowning shame of the cross.

In the years after Jesus was crucified, His followers were brooding over the glory of His incarnation and the mystery of His cross, and as they brooded they mused, they searched the Old Testament Scriptures to find the interpretation of the words of Jesus and His deeds. And as they recalled the sayings and the doings of that fateful day, passage after passage of the Old Testament stood out in a new significance. They picked out the marks of Christ's messianic glory. When the chief priest took the coins which Judas had flung down at their feet and bought the field to bury strangers in, they remembered the ancient words of Jeremiah who centuries before had written; "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of Him who was priced, whom they of the children of Israel priced, and gave them for the potter's field." When they marked that He was crucified between two thieves, they read with a deeper understanding the words of ancient Isaiah who had written centuries before; He was numbered with the transgressors. So here, when the end of the day has come and the thieves dying slowly in their agony have been dispatched by the blows of those in charge of the crucifixion, and Jesus, already cold in death though left unmaimed, is gashed by a grim soldier’s spear. Then they recalled the words of the ancient text, a bone of him shall not be broken. They shall look upon him whom they pierced.

Now in contemplating that scene, a pierced Christ, a writer picked up his pen and this is what he said: There are more ways of piercing Christ's heart than with a Roman spear. Do we never indulgent lawless deeds? Do we never burden our heart against, or do we harden our heart against poverty and outcastness? Are we never unjust and untrue, and unkind to those who can make no defense against our words and our deeds? Does the beggar never stand at my door, not only unfed, but unpitied? Are we never scornful or contemptuous or bitter tongued to those who cannot retaliate? You see Jesus said, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you've done it unto me. But I think the writer of that piece probably tried to grapple with that ancient text found in Psalm 51 where David, feeling the wretchedness and the guilt of his sin when he had violated Bathsheba. In Psalm 51 He says, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; blot out all my transgressions. Wash me with hyssop, and I shall be whiter than snow. And then he wrote something, said something, in that prayer that has a depth that most of us always miss. Here's what he said, against thee, and thee only, have I sinned. What David realized, that even though he had sinned against Bathsheba, and he was guilty of the murder of Uriah her husband, as deep and as hurtful as those sins are to an individual, David realized that this sin really hurt the heart of God. And he said, God, it's against you have I sinned.

I want you to think this went through with me. If we understood and remembered that each time we sin we do more than hurting the person or clouding the righteousness of the situation, we really hurt the heart of God. And if we thought of sin in that way we would be less prone to be so flippant in our sinning. If every time I sinned I could see myself picking up that spear and saying, Take it God! I'm going to do my thing. That's the way David saw it. There are more ways of piercing the heart of Jesus than with a Roman spear. Some of us this week pulled out our spear in vicious hurtful words against another and said, take that. But really, the spear was pointed at God because in our action we hurt the image of God. We brought shame to His name. That's why I like communion every Sunday. I can come here with you and I can lay down my spear, and say God, forgive me for hurting Your heart this week, and try with the very best with His strength to do better next week. You can pierce the heart of God and you don't need a Roman spear. All it takes is a violent, hurtful tongue and a disobedient heart. That's why we come to communion, to be forgiven. Let's kneel together, shall we?

We sometimes, dear God, take our sins so lightly, even brushing them off and rationalizing them. But it's very obvious as David understood his sin he realized that it was deep, so deep that it hurt Your heart dear God. So we bow today and I bow with my family, my friends, our guests. Here we are God. We're sinners, every one of us need Your grace. There's not a one of us who would be so arrogant this morning as to claim perfection. I'm a sinner. We've all sinned. We all need Your grace. Please forgive me dear Jesus. And these emblems that I hold in my hand remind me that that's exactly what You want to do. This bread represents Your body, the sacrifice for my sin. And this cup bespeaks of Your precious blood that washes away all sins guilt and its stains. And so every Lord's Day I have this visual reminder of Your infinite love and Your desire to forgive me. I thank you for that dear Jesus. Let's take the bread together, shall we? And then the cup. Thank you for being patient with us dear Jesus, and everybody said, amen. Let's stand and greet one another, shall we?