Faith Basics: The Lord's Supper Part 1

Brian Sayers join Dan Jarms to discuss the meaning and practice of the Lord's Supper. They explain that it is a corporate act of remembrance of Christ's sacrifice, with roots in the Passover meal, emphasizing the communal nature of the meal. The elements of bread and wine symbolize Christ's body and blood, emphasizing incarnation and sacrifice. They weigh in on the debate over frequency of observance, noting weekly practice is growing among Evangelical churches. They contrast views on the Lord's Supper, including the memorial view, transubstantiation, and real presence. The conversation also touches on the order of baptism and the Lord's Supper, pointing to the Biblical pattern of baptism before taking the Lord's Supper, which has been the practice of churches throughout history.

• Automated Transcription

• Dan Jarms 0:00
  We are picking up our basic series, and I have Brian Sayers in the studio with me, and we're going to talk about the Lord's
  
  Dan Jarms 0:13
  Supper. I'm Dan Jarms, and you're listening to faith matters, a podcast to help update you on matters of faith, Bible, church, as well as equipment matters of the Christian faith.
  
  Dan Jarms 0:32
  Hey, Brian, Hello. Glad that you could join us. We do Lord's supper every week at Faith Bible Church, and we thought it would still be helpful to do a review and be able to ask some questions, get some answers about what the Lord's Supper is all about and how we participate in it effectively, and ask questions about, do you need to be baptized first? What about my kids? Things like that that go along with it? So we're going to tackle the kids part in a little bigger session next time. But we're gonna kind of walk through the basics here of Lord's Supper. So Brian, several questions we want to ask about it, just to kind of help teach through it clearly. What is the Lord's Supper like? How would you explain to somebody new to Christianity? Why? Why we do the Lord's Supper? What is it? Well,
  
  Brian Sayers 1:22
  I'd say the simplest answer to that is it's a time when the church gathers together to remember the Lord's death and proclaim it, yeah, picturing it by our actions that he offered his body and shed his blood for the forgiveness of sin. So it's a it's a time to picture those, those realities, corporately together. Yeah,
  
  Dan Jarms 1:44
  yeah. So Jesus says, Do this in remembrance of me, right? And there's, there's a command that we're to celebrate it early on in the church history, if you go to Acts, chapter two, you know verses 4243 3000 people get saved in Ian 241, 242, you have these four practices of the church, listening to the apostles teach fellowship, praying and breaking of bread, which they meant as the Lord's Supper, right? So they got baptized, then they took the Lord's Supper. What are the general components? What do the elements mean? You know, when we think of breaking bread, taking wine, What was Jesus instituting with the elements that we celebrate, we call it a meal. It's really a snack, right for them, it was the end of a meal and a special portion. But what are these elements signify? Right?
  
  Brian Sayers 2:43
  So the original celebration was, of course, in the upper room prior to the Lord's crucifixion, the disciples and Jesus had gathered there, and they were celebrating the Passover meal. And as part of that Passover meal, and I think we're gonna learn some of this potentially around Easter, yeah, in a Seder meal. But as part of that meal, they would pass a cup and they would break bread. And that was that was symbolically representing some things in the Passover which Jesus was about to fulfill in his death, through his own death and shedding of His own blood. And so he tells them, this is my body given for you. This is my blood which will be shed for the remission of sins. And so he's, he's pointing them to say, I'm going to I'm going to transfer and fulfill and then we're going to continue to utilize these symbols to represent what the Passover was, pre figuring foreshadowing, and that was the death of the Lamb of God. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of how it started, yeah.
  
  Dan Jarms 3:52
  And then what Jesus says, do this as often as you remember me. So why is it helpful for us on a regular basis to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Can
  
  Brian Sayers 4:05
  we devote too much time to joyful and careful reflection on what Christ has done for us? That would be the Yeah. The first thing I would say like, right? Some churches do it monthly. Some we're doing it weekly, as as I think even more more and more evangelical churches are doing now, and I think they're in that growing trend in the church. I think acknowledging that this is a wonderful time of celebration and reflection and remembrance of what the Lord has done and and, of course, Corinthians does talk about examining yourself and judging the body rightly and and so a reminder that Christ has died for our sin is a humbling reality that points us to not run from Christ, but rather to run to him. Right for the forgiveness that was purchased at the cross. And so, man, I want to be reminded of my need to do that as often as Yeah. Possible, yeah,
  
  Dan Jarms 5:07
  yeah. So you think of how important it is that we remember that the gospel is a story about what God has done, our repentance and faith is in response to that gospel. So in some sense, it's a way to say these are the realities of what Christ has done for us. We need to remember those realities. That's what we actually stand on. We stand on those realities. Fancy term for it is the the indicatives, the realities and and then the commands of doing things flows out of that. So our remembrance flows out of out of that reality of what he done, what he's done. One of the things I love about celebrating the Lord's supper every week is that whatever sermon we're working through and there are moral imperatives that derive even out of a passage in Genesis that's a historical record like here are things that we should respond to when we remember at the end of that what Christ has done, that's what makes the obedience possible, and that's what makes the obedience lovely. Like, look what Jesus did to restore me to himself. I want to do those things for the Lord, but I can really only do those through through him and his work and his ongoing power. So it's, it's always the the help that my heart needs to say, this is why I want to do this for the Lord. It's not just, here's another list of four things to do. I got four things to do for this week's sermon. It's not just a list of four things to do we when we come to Christ. So that's, that's really good, the body, the bread representing the body, I always like to think of it, and it's long been thought of, is this is where you remember incarnation. Jesus took on flesh, and his body was broken, and then the cup is about sacrifice. Not that the body isn't about sacrifice, but you emphasize incarnation. This is my body, representing body. This is my blood, representing his sacrificial death. And it's a it's part of the new covenant. So this is where it's really important for us in this timeline of the Bible, because he's saying, this is the new covenant poured out in my blood. So the old covenant, which Passover, was a key celebration of the Old Covenant, was fulfilled in Christ. And so in the New Covenant, we have a new celebration. And the covenant is a solemn and sacred agreement between two people. The New Covenant is glorious because Jesus keeps our part and his part. And so when we celebrate his death, we're celebrating because he's man and God. He keeps our part and his part, and he ensures that they'll both happen. So it's a wonderful time to step back and say my standing today is all because of Christ. Amen. So yeah, there are things to do. God commands us to do things, but it overflows out of a heart that is in the right standing with him. So we like to do that. We've moved from the once a month to once a week, largely because of the I would call them hints in the New Testament. They're not commands the New Testament, but Acts chapter 20, when they gathered on the first day of the week for the breaking of bread, it looked like that was the pattern. And the historical record seemed to show that that was the pattern. Yeah, if somebody celebrates it once a month, that's fine once a year. Some people were worried about overusing it, so they do it once a year. Like, well, that doesn't seem like that's often enough. And then one of the arguments that was that most often heard is like, well, we don't want to cheapen the Lord's Supper. We want to really make it meaningful. So we don't want to do it too often. I'm glad we don't apply that to preaching. We don't want to hear preaching too often. We don't want to sing too often, otherwise it won't be meaningful. So we kind of rethought that a little bit, not saying that anyway, a church that wants to do it once a month is they have their elders have to make their choices. And sure, and we can too. So there are a lot of good reasons to do it. Let's, let's talk about just really briefly, there are some other views about Lord's Supper. People who are generally in our theological stream. We call ours the memorial view we're remembering. What are the other views as as you remember from comparative Christian studies? Sure.
  
  Brian Sayers 9:33
  I mean on the extreme end would be the Roman Catholic view that the bread and the wine are transformed into the literal Body and Blood of Christ, and he's re sacrificed, yes, for sin in the celebration of communion as they would take it. And then,
  
  Dan Jarms 9:56
  yeah, I mean growing up as a Catholic kid, yeah. So whenever you went to Matthew. Mass, like people go to Mass every morning. So really devout people went every morning. They would take communion every morning, and they would accrue SPIRITUAL MERIT by the RE sacrifice of Jesus every week. So whether it was weekly or whether it was daily, and we were nominal Catholics, and we went like 15 times a year, yeah. So we got a little little merit, yeah, in that.
  
  Brian Sayers 10:22
  So I think that's called Transubstantiation. And then a Lutheran view is that, not that the bread and the wine is transformed into the body of Christ, but that the presence, the Real Presence, of Christ's Body and Blood, is in the elements. Yeah, yeah. Lutheran view, it's Yeah, similar, called Constant substantiation, yeah.
  
  Dan Jarms 10:43
  Luther had this interesting phrase over, under, in, yeah. And there was some kind of spiritual presence in a sense that came down into it, right,
  
  Brian Sayers 10:53
  yeah. And then the memorial view, I think, was Zwingli, who was a disciple of of Luther, which is, I think probably the majority of Protestant evangelicalism, yeah, that would embrace that. But one
  
  Dan Jarms 11:06
  other view that's different from constanti Ian, they might call it the Real Presence view, and that Jesus is really present at the meal. And there's different ways people understand that, like he comes down and is really present in kind of a special way, or that, since He is omnipresent, he takes a special pleasure in in that it starts to get beyond what you can really make out of texts, although, although there is something special about the Lord's Supper, so I think I'm I'm comfortable with more of the Gods present everywhere, all the time. And he's, he's, he's got a special interest in our remembering him. So it is a special moment, sure, but it is not a mystical moment, right? And we are, unfortunately, not taking a real meal. We're not breaking open and taking a big chunk off of a loaf, although I would love to do that every week. Yeah, yeah, kind of kind of complicated. Well,
  
  Brian Sayers 12:07
  in some ways, when you look at those examples in Acts two and acts 20, and you see that the church is gathering to break bread, they probably were taking something that more resembled a meal, right? Than that pictured a sort of individualized ritual. Yes, that sort of looks like for us. Yeah, tease that out, because
  
  Dan Jarms 12:27
  the much of the my my experience, much of the once a month celebration of Lord's Supper was really focused on self examination. And we're going to talk about why you need to examine yourself. Lights were down. We sang a number of hymns about the cross. They were often the minor key hymns about the cross. Oh, Sacred Head. That wounded. Man of sorrows. Man of Sorrows, you know the and it was hymns. Yes, it was sweet to remember those things. But there's everywhere in the New Testament, it is a community meal. So that's, that's the only way you see it in the Bible, is a community meal. And we would say it's a church meal, not just my family's gonna do communion to have a special remembrance of Jesus, but it's a church meal. And again, that's the only examples we have. Are church meals and we have, we have some specific passages to look at, but unpack that. It's, it's not just an individualized celebration, right?
  
  Brian Sayers 13:36
  When Paul is talking about it in first Corinthians 10, he he says, I is not the cup of blessing which we bless. A sharing in the body of Christ. Is not the bread which we break, a sharing in the body of Christ, since there's one bread, we, who are many, are one body. For we all partake of the one bread. He's saying, this is a corporate celebration, yes, even more significantly than it is an individual celebration. In fact, you you couldn't really celebrate a sharing yes by yourself, right, right? And because he points to this as a practice of the whole body, is why we would call it a church meal. Yes, and that made it even more I think it's made even more clear in the next chapter when he talks about when you gather together and people are partaking of this meal in an unworthy way, he talks about some who are eating more than they need. One is hungry. Another is drunk. They were clearly having a meal, and some were not getting enough and some were indulging. And he's saying you're missing the whole point of this corporate event where we're sharing together. Yeah, you're making this about your own indulgence or your own wealth. Perhaps. So yeah, and
  
  Dan Jarms 15:01
  and thrown into that in the first Corinthians context, there was social, religious, economic factors at play, because they had all of those divisions, right? So most scholars would say you probably had it in some wealthy person's home, because they were the only person who had a big enough room, and they might have invited their friends early into the inner room for the supper. The working class people don't get off until late, and they come and they get what's left, and they use the outer room because it's the inner one's not big enough. And so you had all these class and working class distinctions, and we're supposed to be one. There's no Jew or Greek, no slave or free. He makes these emphasis of all the so we don't necessarily have that problem. We don't have two ways to celebrate it, but we can easily in an individualized culture, we can easily think this is just about me and the Lord, so we want to fight against it. Comment, Brian and I were talking about ahead of time is in order to have communion in one service relatively quickly, we have individualized cups with we have a cup and a little piece of bread, and they're stacked so that we can get this thing over like when you have 400 people that need to take it, if we had a meal, you'd have to devote a whole hour to try to do that, that that kind of wages a little war against the idea of corporate it'd be probably better to see everybody grabbing a chunk of a loaf as I went down the aisle, right? Although that'd be pretty complicated to clean up and have enough loaves. And am I really wanting all those kids to have their hands on it? I don't know. Yeah. So there's all kinds of things, but the point is, we need to remind ourselves that this is about the whole church family coming together with it, and my personal application to that is, I prefer when we take the Lord's Supper to have all the lights up as opposed to having the lights down, because then we can see everybody around us. Might even say, look down the rows and notice who's here, because this is your family. Those are, those are things that may help our hearts. Remember this is a part of the community you had alluded to that we do need to examine ourselves, and it's related to this community aspect talk us through about how to prepare for the Lord's Supper, and what we're doing when we have those minutes where all the cups are passed out And there's just you and the Lord talking before we all take the meal together.
  
  Brian Sayers 17:44
  So one, you should be wanting to prepare your heart humbly before you come to corporate worship in general, yes, which means you you want your heart ready to receive the teaching of the Word. You want your heart ready to be able to express praise and adoration of Christ. So you should be thinking about, yeah, confession and praise on it that morning, yeah, the evening before, etc. But then there are times when, you know, we're just kind of rushing through life, and we show up on Sunday morning, and how many of us have been there as we take that cup and think, yeah, I I need to confess some sin, and that is totally appropriate, yeah, in that moment as you're physically holding the symbols of Christ's sacrifice for you to be like, Yeah, I've harbored that, that sin in my heart, or that resentment, or whatever it is, and you you plead for the Lord's forgiveness. There may be other times where you've come prepared, and those symbols are just a reminder of of why it is and how it is that your heart is is freed, yes, from the shackles of sin, and can just express your praise and thanks. So could be a moment of confession. It could be a moment of repentance. It could be a humbling moment where you say, you know, I need to defer this until I go and make things right with that person that I know has something against me. It could be that as well, yeah?
  
  Dan Jarms 19:02
  Because if it's, if this is a family meal, and I'm going to have my own little personal conversation with the Lord and I am out of unity, yeah, with another believer that, look, that's, that's not quite right. It's not, it's hard to have a family meal like in your family, right? If the siblings or the parents are in the middle of a fight, yeah? So you,
  
  Brian Sayers 19:29
  I mean, some of us have experienced those awkward holiday meals, right, right? Oh yeah, we're all sitting around the same table, pretending nothing's going on, yeah, but there's all this tension and maybe hurt, and nothing's really getting dealt with, and that's awkward. We don't want that to be part of our worship, right? So we Yeah, that's a reminder. It's time to remedy those situations. Yeah,
  
  Dan Jarms 19:50
  and since the Lord really is present, I mean, he's present everywhere, but he's, he's really, it's really Jesus meal, he's really presiding over it by a spirit, um. He's looking out and he's he's looking at you, saying, so you're going to offer me this worship and remember me, but you have this thing with your brother. This is not right, like we you you, before you offer me the worship, you need to make sure you're right with a brother and sister and and that's a that's the point of that examination, right? So make sure your heart is right, not only personally, but also corporately, recognizing this as a family a family meal. Yeah, that's that's really helpful. Let's, uh, let's just take one more question, Brian, let's talk about order of baptism and Lord's Supper. So this is, I think, a question that parents might ask for kids, but it's a it's a general question, what's the Bible clear about with this? How should we think about the two ordinances so we have baptism, which we would say is an initiatory Right? Like it's the introduction into the Christian life, so that everybody knows we were baptized in front of a bunch of people. So everybody knows that these are my brothers. So like we're in the church together. And then there's the remembrance or the continuing right in Lord's Supper. Talk about how I think about new person coming to church that I'm evangelizing has become a believer. How do I help them? What about my kids? Yeah,
  
  Brian Sayers 21:22
  so I agree, baptism is the initiatory right? We could think of it as kind of the seal or the sign that you are a participant in the New Covenant, that you've put your faith and trust in Christ and and being baptized in the context of a local church means that there's someone in spiritual authority, with with spiritual maturity, who has affirmed that your profession of faith is is credible and real, yes, and so in a sense, in that sense, we'd say, well, until someone is willing to publicly confess their faith in Christ. The question remains, have they truly believed? Have they truly repented of? Have they truly been saved and and so we're not, we're not saying that the baptism saves you or that you can't be saved unless you prove it through baptism. We're just saying it's the initiatory, right? It's, yeah, that's, that's the first step that you take. And, yeah, we kind of live in Western culture America, where getting baptized can be kind of cool, because my friends did it or or whatever, where in other parts of the world, professing faith in Christ and getting baptized is a is a death sentence. Yeah, right. So in other parts of the world, it would make a whole lot more sense to say people who are welcome to participate in the Lord's table are those who have publicly confessed Christ through baptism. Yes. So that's what that is, what's practiced in large part of the world, and it's sort of lost on us, I think, as individualized Americans, I
  
  Dan Jarms 23:03
  did a bunch of research on this seven or eight years ago, and the quote came from one of them came from Spurgeon says there's no, there's no history in the in the whole of the church, that anybody ever took The Lord's supper until after baptism, right? And then only about 50 or 60 years after that did it become sort of common to just say baptism is an act of obedience. So as long as you intend to obey and you're really a believer, you're fine. Go ahead and do that, and it's sort of lost any decide there was no discipling value in the process of getting to bap, getting to baptism. So only in the last 50 or 60 years, according to church historians, did, did communion become independent of baptism. And
  
  Brian Sayers 23:55
  they used to call church members communicants, yeah, because when they were baptized and became part of the local body of Christ, then you were given the the right, yes. Hate communion as a member of the body, so they call members communicants, right? Yes. And we've gotten away from Not, not that I'm demanding that nomenclature, just saying, we've gotten away from thinking of it that way.
  
  Dan Jarms 24:21
  The people that's going to be tricky for is somebody who has grown up in a church tradition where they baptize infants. And in baptizing infants, it's also then okay for as soon as those kids are of age to also take the Lord's Supper. So you would have, everybody knows these are not yet believers yet, but they are participating in the covenant community's meal. So if you come to faith, Bible Church, where we are believers Baptist, but you were baptized as a baby and you're not baptized as an adult, can you take communion? And you should have a conversation with an elder or pastor about that? Yeah. And then parents come up to me and they ask, When should my kids take it? I said, Well, are they ready to be baptized? And no, they're not ready to be baptized. Well, then are they ready to take the Lord's Supper? So if they're, if they're not mature enough an understanding of the gospel and a demonstration that their salvation is really real, like they have fruit of it. We're not asking for, you know, being able to memorize or or do something with the apostles creed or we're not talking about that. We're just talking about credible so if they can't give a credible gospel, credible testimony, then they shouldn't be baptized. They also shouldn't take the Lord's Supper, yeah, so don't. They
  
  Brian Sayers 25:41
  can't articulate the truth of the gospel, and they can't articulate and demonstrate the reality of having been transformed by the gospel. Then what are they really celebrating? Right? Right? Because now they're just celebrating something very fuzzy, right? They're participating in a ritual, and that might actually be a detriment. Yes, training your children to participate in empty ritual without the significant depth of understanding in their soul about the ritual they're going through could give false assurance. Could it could do a number of negative things as well, so, but
  
  Dan Jarms 26:23
  we also know what little kids are like, yeah? So here comes this delicious, massive cracker they can eat that. I want to eat some of it too. It's like, it's not that great.
  
  Brian Sayers 26:38
  I got some Styrofoam at home for you to suck on. Yeah,
  
  Dan Jarms 26:41
  yeah. Another reason why I really love when we can do real bread. And so that's, that's the same thing. And I really try to tell parents, you know, move them toward baptism first, and then take the Lord supper. Now they move towards baptism. They they give credible testimony, give credible statement about the gospel. I'm not going to niggle over two weeks. Sure they're really a believer. They're scheduled for baptism like we're not. We're not pressing it that far. We're just saying that the normal practice in the New Testament was baptism, First Lord supper. Second, initiatory right, then the ongoing right might, might help them, but this, this might be how you help. I think back, I think the Lord's Supper, of all the things we do, you know, when we do baptism and we do Lord's Supper, are these golden opportunities to talk to kids about the gospel. So they just become the teachable moments where a 10 year old listens to kind of an older brother or a kid that he respects who's 14 just got baptized. They talk about his testimony, they talk about his gospel. It's great lunchtime conversation. The same is true when the four year old says, When can I have some like Man, that's a golden moment to talk about what Jesus has done in the gospel and then keep talking about it for year in and year out, for sure. All right, that's really helpful. Any other thoughts that you have on baptism Lord's supper that might be helpful for our people?
  
  Brian Sayers 28:19
  You know, early on in our Christian life, we went to a little assembly where we celebrated the Lord's table together in a circle and and we don't that's not common in American Christianity. So both the singing and the worship and the celebration of the table was done in a way where we could see each other's faces, and that really helped to communicate the corporate nature, yeah, of of what the meal was designed to do, it's impractical, and I'm not suggesting we need to get back to that, but I have those memories in me when we celebrate communion, and I do sometimes like to look around. And maybe you see me looking around, and it's not because I'm disinterested, and it's not because I'm looking to see who's thinking it who shouldn't, or anything creepy like that. It's, it's really, this is God's people. This is the family of God, and this is the meal where we gather, and that's that's what we do. We have meals with our most intimate companions and friends and family, and that is what that's designed to be. So, yeah, I just encourage you to think of it that way, like what a glorious thing that all of God's people are gathered here together to celebrate what Christ has done for them, the
  
  Dan Jarms 29:41
  family of God is together celebrating with the meal. Yep, love it. Thanks, Brian, yeah, thanks for having me.

Brian Sayers

Brian is the Pastor of Counseling & Equipping at Faith Bible Church. He is passionate about the local church, and equipping the saints to effectively serve one another. Before coming to Spokane, he spent 14 years serving God's people as a pastor in rural New England (Vermont & New Hampshire).

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Dan Jarms

Dr. Dan Jarms is teaching pastor and team leader at Faith Bible Church in Spokane Washington, as well as associate dean at The Master's Seminary in Spokane. He has been married for over 30 years to Linda, and has three adult children. He earned his B.A. in English at the Master’s College, B.Ed. at Eastern Washington University, M.Div and D.Min in Expository Preaching at The Master’s Seminary. His other interests include NCAA basketball, woodworking, and art.

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