Table Talk

He is exalted, the king is exalted, on high we'll ever praise him. He is exalted, forever exalted, and I will praise his name. He is the Lord, forever his truth shall reign.

Heaven and earth rejoice with his holy name. He is exalted, the king is exalted, on high. He is exalted, the king is exalted, on high I will praise him.

He is exalted, forever exalted, and I will praise his name. He is the Lord, forever his truth shall reign. Heaven and earth rejoice with his holy name.

He is exalted, the king is exalted, on high. He is the Lord, forever his truth shall reign. Heaven and earth rejoice with his holy name.

He is exalted, the king is exalted, on high. He is exalted, the king is exalted, on high. Worthy, oh worthy are you Lord.

Worthy to be thanked and praised and worshipped and adored. Worthy, oh worthy are you Lord. Worthy to be thanked and praised and worshipped and adored.

Singing Hallelujah, Lamb upon the throne. We worship and adore you, you've made your glory known. Hallelujah, glory to the king.

You're more than a conqueror, you're Lord of everything. Worthy, oh worthy are you Lord. Worthy to be thanked and praised and worshipped and adored.

Worthy, oh worthy are you Lord. Worthy to be thanked and praised and worshipped and adored. Singing Hallelujah, Lamb upon the throne.

We worship and adore you, you've made your glory known. Hallelujah, glory to the king. You're more than a conqueror, you're Lord of everything.

Continuing in mission praise, number 547 takes up what we heard about this morning, about spiritual blindness and how we should open our eyes to see the glory of the Lord. See the glory of the king. Lift up your voice and praise the king.

I love you Lord, I will proclaim. Hallelujah, I bless you. See the glory of the king.

Lift up your voice and praise the king. I love you Lord, I will proclaim. Hallelujah.

Please be seated. I have a selection of scriptures to bring to your attention. You perhaps would like just to listen for the first couple.

And then maybe when we get into the New Testament you'd like to check through with your Bibles what I'm reading. Here is the most well known of all the Psalms of David. Psalm 23.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Here is another Psalm, Psalm 78 verse 19.

They spoke against God saying, can God spread a table in the desert? Now let's go to the New Testament and to the Gospel of Mark. And here in the 14th chapter our beloved Lord with his disciples gives them instructions to make preparation for the Passover. Verse 17 Mark 14.

When evening came Jesus arrived with the twelve. When they were reclining at the table eating he said, I tell you the truth. One of you will betray me.

One who is eating with me. They were saddened and one by one they said to him, surely not I? It is one of the twelve he replied. One who dips bread into the bowl with me.

The son of man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to the man who betrays the son of man. It would be better for him if he had not been born.

While they were eating Jesus took bread. Gave thanks and broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, take it. This is my body.

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them and they all drank from it. This is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many. He said to them, I tell you the truth.

I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God. And now in 1 Corinthians and chapter 11. Verse 20.

Reminds the Corinthians of the nature of the meal to which I invite you this evening. The Lord's Supper. Verse 23.

The instructions which the inspired apostle received. For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus. On the night he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you.

This do in remembrance of me. In the same way after supper he took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Martin Luther is a name that should be known to all sensitive Christians who are concerned to know something of the great work of God in centuries gone by. He was one of the great teachers of the church.

And sometimes in the morning he would gather together just as our tabernacle staff have been doing until the last few weeks. And he would have breakfast with his men. And because the wisdom of Luther was so wonderful, one of his men in particular would take notes.

I haven't yet seen Tim Saunders do this at breakfast when Eric Harmer is speaking, but we live in an age when wisdom is wasted. Luther's words however were written down and I now speak seriously. There was a book printed by Luther's disciple and it was entitled significantly, Table Talk.

Table Talk. We are going to come round the communion table in just a moment. In one sense I look forward to our first Sunday evening in a month with great enthusiasm.

But there is that within me that causes me to be a little apprehensive. And I'll tell you why. It's the possibility that people could come to this table and not clearly understand what they are doing.

And what I want to secure this evening is that all of you here shall have a full comprehension of what this table signifies. For there is a sense in which the communion table does talk. And you have to listen to what it has to say.

Tucked away in the Old Testament and we've read one or two of the references, there is prediction made of God's provision not only physically for His people, the children of Israel, but spiritually. And sometimes in a prophetic fashion ultimately how God will come and meet the needs of ordinary people. Not just Jews but also Gentiles.

And that's the question in the Psalms that we already heard sounded. Can God spread a table in the wilderness? And then that lovely ejaculation in the 23rd Psalm. Even when I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, even when I'm in unpleasant circumstances, the Lord will provide a table for me.

He will give me the nourishment that is absolutely necessary. Now what is the final fulfillment of Psalm 23 and Psalm 78? Well I want to suggest to you that it's found in the story of our Lord Jesus when towards the end of His life He invites His disciples and then by extension the likes of you and me to come to a table and there partake of it and benefit not only physically, that's only a small aspect, but spiritually in a much larger degree. You know in medieval England it used to be said of people that they kept a good table.

You knew of the stature of a nobleman if you attended his house and there was a succulent roast made available with all the vegetables and so forth and the sweet and the drink and you would benefit from the offering that he gave you. Well there is in the New Testament the idea found upon its pages of our Lord Jesus suggesting that you and I should come to a table that He has spread for us. A table that actually will meet your needs and my needs in such a significant way that those who are sensitive will appreciate that this is the most important or at least one of the most important things that they do on a weekly basis as they remember the spiritual provisions that the Lord Jesus has brought into this world through His sinless life and through the vicarious offering of His body on the cross.

Vicarious means something done on behalf of someone else. And so when you come into our service this evening you notice this communion table with bread on it and little goblets of wine and there will come a time when we will invite you to take of the emblems. But our concerns are that you will appreciate something of the significance of this table, of the nobility of our Lord Jesus and the way that in a very special sense He has made provision for your deepest need.

You see the communion table, it really is traced back to the day when our Lord Jesus was in the upper room with His disciples. Three years had passed into history and He had taught His men what they needed to know about the kingdom of God. He is in Jerusalem and He knows that given a few hours He will be rudely snatched from that little company of men and He will be butchered to death.

It so happens that this particular time coincided with a feast, a feast of the Jews called the Passover. When they remember the deliverance, the supernatural intervention of God on their behalf in Egypt and their deliverance from the bondage of slavery. The Jews for many a century had recounted God's gracious intervention in their lives.

And Jesus used that feast and lifted it into a much higher meaning and spoke of an even greater deliverance that the Jews could have not so much physically but spiritually and not only Jewish people but Gentile people like you and me. You can imagine the utter astonishment of the disciples as in one part of that feast He took some bread and He broke it. And He used some significant words.

He said, this is my body. This bread actually stands for me, my body. And then He takes one of the Passover cups, the next to the last cup in the feast of the Passover and He lifts this up in front of the disciples and He indicates His utter dependence upon His heavenly Father and He says this cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for many for the remission of sin.

And then He predicts next week and next month and next year and speaks not just to the disciples but to all who will follow in the trail of the disciples down the centuries even to 1993. And He says this do in remembrance of me. In other words, you are to take bread and you are to drink wine and as you do so you will be recalling that remarkable day when I the Son of God took into my body the consequences of your sin.

Now, here is the Apostle Paul, you see, and he gathers all this together in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and he sets out the instructions for the churches. This is what they are to do certainly on a weekly basis and if you read in the Acts of the Apostles often more frequently. And when the Apostle makes a conclusion in terms of what has been done by those who participate in this meal he uses these words.

He says whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Because this table, you see it speaks. It speaks to those who receive from it and those who eat the bread and the wine they are talking in the very act in which they engage to the Lord Jesus Christ reaffirming the trust and the confidence that they have in Him and they are in effect testifying to the world that they belong to the Lord Jesus.

The table talks to them, they speak to the Lord and the world knows that at the heart of the Christian message there is a cross and the benefits of that cross are reenacted by Christian people on a regular basis and preferably every Lord's Day. Now did you notice that when I read to you from Corinthians and from the Gospel there was no sort of suspicious element, superstitious element involved in all this. There was no priest, there's no red light with a little holder into which the bread can be placed and called the reserved host.

There is no magic, there is utterly no superstition at all. It's a very simple feast. It's the ABC of simplicity.

A little child can understand what is being done and yet a great man or woman with tremendous intellect cannot fathom the depths. Essentially at the heart of the Christian sacraments, and there are only two, the sacrament we were hearing of last week so clearly expounded, that of baptism and also the sacrament of communion, the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, which means I praise or I rejoice, call it what you will. And it's to that table that I invite you in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Anyone can come who will listen to what the table speaks of. Not only was Martin Luther a very great man, equally great in the history of the Christian church was John Calvin. And John Calvin taught something which I've always appreciated for I believe that his understanding of Scripture was one of the clearest that we have in the whole history of the church.

And he said this, that before you come around the table, you have to listen to the exposition of Scripture. He said that to take bread and wine with no explanation was in effect to be present at a dumb show, a dumb feast. You see, God gives His Word, the Bible, for a most important reason.

It leads us into an understanding of the truths of the gospel. And before we come to the table, it is right that we come to the Word to have reaffirmed what perhaps many of us already know. Therefore, we thank God for the sacrament of the Word.

You know, preaching has never been a very popular thing. Queen Elizabeth I, she used her influence to prevent the established church in her day from having what she called prophesyings at the communion table. And you will find today in the Book of Common Prayer that if it is rigidly adhered to, there is not room left for the proclamation of the Word.

And John Calvin would say, that is all wrong. There must be an explanation. The table must be allowed to talk.

And it talks of its significance as the Scriptures are expounded. This bread, it is ordinary bread, and yet there is a sense in which it becomes extraordinary, not through the superstition of those who would teach that it becomes literally the very body of Christ, for that would turn us, in effect, at least at a literal level, to know better than the cannibals. What it speaks of is the blessed consequence of the breaking of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The bread becomes, in one sense, significant, as, if you can understand this, you actualize the benefits of Calvary in your own experience. You see, there is a sense in which, although we come to the table in community, dozens of us, this evening hundreds of us, there is also another very important factor, and that is you take the communion on your own. He loved me.

He gave himself for me. You see, then you are speaking. Not only is the table speaking to you in terms of the broken body of our Lord Jesus, in terms of the poured-out blood, but you are saying, yes, and as I take this morsel of bread, as I put this cup to my lips, I remember this.

He loved me. He gave himself for me. I am proclaiming this fact.

I am reaffirming this. You see how necessary it is for us to be reminded, time and time again, of the significance of this meal? Tell me the old, old story, for I forget so soon. Alas, and did my Sovereign bleed and did my Saviour die? Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I? Was it for crimes that He had done He hung upon the tree? Nay, it was His own matchless grace and love beyond degree.

All these things should be going through your mind as you are actualizing afresh the benefits of the death of our beloved Lord. In the wilderness of this unbelieving world where many millions of people could not care a fig for the reasons of the cross, for the cross of Jesus Christ, you stand out. You utter your own protest to such a secular society.

And you say, as for me, I'm on the Lord's side. I am going to proclaim His death. And not only are you remembering the past, the coming into this world of this beloved Lord Jesus, but you are also realizing as you take this bread and you take this wine that the Lord Jesus, who was born in the anonymity of Bethlehem, who was butchered so callously on a cross, is the Lord of history, and at the end of time He will return and institute His government and claim this world which is rightfully His back for Himself.

We take this bread and we drink this cup and as we do so we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. You see, I'm not exaggerating, am I? When a few moments ago I suggested that this is one of the most significant things that any person can ever do. This is when every individual in the congregation becomes the preacher.

You proclaim the Lord's death. You say, yes, as for me, I've trusted Jesus. And in my conception, the most important day following that of my conversion will be that of His return.

And in the interval, as He poured out His life for me, so I will pour out my life for Him. God has spread a table in the wilderness. Hear me, it's a succulent table.

It is spread with a provision that sinful people need more than anything else. It is a table that does not ask those who come to be qualified to receive from its store. Rather, the invitation is sent out to the sinners, to those who are broken, to those who are failures, to the lepers of this world, to the spiritually blind.

The invitation goes out. Come, come to a table and let the table speak to you of a Lord who meets your need, of a Jesus who is mighty to heal and mighty to save. Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until... until He comes.

The old Puritans, those are preachers who lived some 400 years or so ago, they had an expression. Those of you who did me the honor of coming to my address on William Carey, you may remember that I referred to this for Carey used it. The expression was this, they would fence the table, fence, F-E-N-C-E.

I do not mean that literally they would put a barrier around, but what they would endeavor to do was to sieve the congregation and they would give certain tests and unless the congregation, the individuals could respond favorably and get through the sieve, they couldn't come to the table. And in Puritan theology, the responsibility for checking who comes to the table rests with those who bring the bread and bring the wine to the communicants. Our understanding is slightly different.

We believe that the test should come from you. Let a man examine himself. You see this is the flip side of the argument.

In one sense I told you I rejoice that we have communion praise on a first Sunday in a month and yet I'm, Sunday evening, and yet I'm afraid. I'm afraid that I don't want to be responsible for putting bread or wine in front of people who cannot legitimately take it. And yet, basically, my understanding is this, that someone who responds to the gospel, someone who tests themselves from the holy word of God can declare whether or not they have a right to take this bread or this wine.

Let me go through it again in case you misunderstand me. We are going to offer you these emblems in just a moment or two. You do not need to be a holy person to take this bread and wine in the sense that you have never committed any sin, for none of us is in this category.

To take this bread and wine, hear me, you have to be a sensitive sinner, sensitive to the nature of your own failing. And alive to the fact that Jesus Christ has come in the grace of God for the likes of you. Can I take this bread? Can I take this wine? Yes, you can, if you trust to the Lord Jesus.

If the table speaks to you, and if you speak from the table to the Father and say, yes, I reaffirm my allegiance to your Son. If you're prepared, so to speak, if the world was eavesdropping, to talk out loud to unbelieving contemporaries and say, I have trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior. It's all a question of table talk.

Have you heard it speak? Are you going to echo what you have heard to others? Are you going to speak to the Lord as you take bread and wine and make this a personal act of commitment, even though you do it within the context of 400 or so people? Let's sing about our beloved Lord. My shepherd brother, when I called him recently, he is to see me as my... My shepherd brother, And give me all the honor and praise the truth of faith, for you are the King of glory, the Creator of all things. And I pledge to you, I give my life to you, I hold out my knee as I worship you, I give my life to you only.

And whose favors upon me now you leave behind me, and the gift of mercy I receive. And I pledge to you, I give my life to you, I hold out my knee as I worship you, I give my life to you, I hold out my knee. You have broken chains around me, you've set this mountain free.

I will lift my voice to praise your name, for all is well with me. And I pledge to you, I give my life to you, Jesus, we enthrone you. Number 388 We will ever claim you are King, standing in the midst of fire.

We lift you up with our hands and as we worship you, as we worship you, as we worship you, we lift you up, our Lord Jesus, and thank your name. Jesus, we enthrone you, we proclaim you are King, standing in the midst of fire. We lift you up with our hands and as we worship you, as we worship you, as we worship you, our Lord Jesus, and thank your name.

Lord Jesus, we know that there is only one place for you and that is on the throne, and we pray that you will have the throne in our own lives. We've sung these tremendous words, Lord help us to put them into practice. Father, our place is at your feet, we fall on our knees at your feet, and we give you our lives.

We pray that whatever that might mean for each one of us here today, that it will be true, that we will give you back our lives. For Jesus' sake, Amen.