Communion Message
Precious Moments
January 8, 2006
Pastor Donald 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 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 blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

I often turn to the Book of Hebrews because as you know it was written to make the comparison between Christianity and Judaism. And the writer draws the contrast between the ancient worship of Judaism and what we believe as Christians, and this is what he said: But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of eternal life.

For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with the blood of another- He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.

When we come to the communion time we really have come to the very heart of our Christian faith. The Bible is very clear that man was born a sinner, that we have transgressed the laws of God, and we have failed in being obedient to His commands, every one of us, for all have sinned, the Bible says, and have come short of God's glory.

What we celebrate now was God's answer to sin's problem. The Bible tells us that in the fullness of time God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, born of a woman, born under the law, and Christ came to this world 2000 years ago, God incarnate in human flesh, and He took upon Himself our sins. The Bible says that when He went to that cross to became our substitute He became sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God.

And when Jesus left instructions to the church, He didn't tell us to celebrate His birth nor His resurrection, what He did tell us to do though was to celebrate His death, and that's why we have communion. He says as oft as you do this, you do it in remembrance of Me. So we here at our church, and Christians around the world, come to this moment today, and what we're doing is we're honoring Christ who came to this world to be our Savior. And by partaking of these emblems we are identifying with Him; we are saying, Jesus, I'm Your follower, I love You, and I trust in You as my Savior, and I thank you for the gift of life eternal. This is the very heart of Christian faith, and thus it's a very precious moment to us.

I'm going to ask you...we normally kneel...but I'm just going to ask you to stand for a moment in God's presence. You bow your heads and if you've got something to resolve with God, a thing you want to talk to Him about, maybe there's estrangement, maybe you've wandered from God. All of us have sinned so we can ask Him to forgive us. Why don't you just talk to Him for a few moments?

Lord Jesus, we stand in Your presence today. We've sung the hymns that have expressed our heart of adoration and praise, and the anticipations of spending time with You in prayer. We come to this very blessed moment where we have the opportunity as believers in You, Lord Jesus, to declare our faith and to identify with You as Your followers in the participation of this communion service. Before we do, Lord Jesus, we want to ask You to forgive us. There is not a one of us standing here who claim any degree of perfection. We've all failed to follow You. There are times when we, in rebellion, even depart from the pathway of righteousness and do the thing we want to do, even knowing it was wrong.

We need Your forgiveness today, and Your word has declared that if we will confess our sins, You will be faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We need Your forgiveness today Lord Jesus.

These emblems that we partake of and we hold in our hands, really, we hold the promise that the prayer we just pray has been answered, because Lord Jesus, in Your body You became our substitute and with the shedding of Your precious blood You have become our cleansing. And these tokens, these beautiful simple expressions of bread and the fruit of the vine, remind us when the whole matter of sin was resolved in Your great act of love. Thank you very much dear Jesus. Let's partake of the bread...and then of the cup.

Lord Jesus we recognize that this is such a simple act and yet it is so profound with eternal significance. Because You forgive us, we stand before You just as if we had never sinned. That's wonderful, and we thank you from the very depths of our heart Lord Jesus, and everybody said, amen.