The Lord’s Supper

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm still woe. On today's Stone Choir we're going to be discussing communion or the sacrament of the altar or the Eucharist. We are doing kind of a collection here. Uh we began with baptism about a month ago, about two weeks ago we did the Reformation episode. And we thought that we would end up that sort of grouping with a discussion of communion because they all go together and we'll explain kind of how that works historically. I mentioned in the Reformation episode that there are effectively four distinct groups that emerged from the Reformation, at least by Lutheran standards. There are obviously the Roman Catholics who remained Roman Catholic, their doctrine

1:24 really didn't change much at Trent. It did change, but not much. You have the Lutherans who emerged from out of the Roman Catholic Church, you have the Reformed and you have the Anabaptists. And the reason that we divide everybody else, including ourselves into those four distinct groups, has to do with the nature of the arguments in the Reformation itself. So obviously, the Reformation principally was kicked off based on disagreement about justification. So on one side, you have Rome with one approach to justification, and on the other side you have the Protestants with a different version of justification, effectively faith alone, grace alone. As soon as the Reformation kicked off, there were immediately additional arguments

2:08 within the Protestant camp about a bunch of other stuff. Because as we said in the Reformation episode, like the gates were open. Once people started asking the question, what did the Roman Catholic Church get wrong? Get wrong, it became a matter of concern. Well, you know, did how many things did they get wrong? And unfortunately, a lot of people reflexively went way too far in rejecting things that were not distinctives of the Roman Catholic Church, but in fact just been traditional Christian doctrine in the East and the West, going back to the very beginning of the Church. So the initial division was on justification. The substantial immediate divisions after that were about the sacraments.

2:57 The two principal sacraments that the Lutherans recognize are baptism, which we did an entire episode on, and communion. And as we mentioned in the baptism episode, Lutherans and Roman Catholics are more or less in agreement on almost all baptism. There's a small matter of disagreement surrounding original sin as it interacts with baptism, but otherwise we're pretty much on the same page. And when you look at communion, there are very significant differences between Lutheran and Roman Catholic doctrine that were initially part of the arguments of Luther and the other Lutheran reformers had against Rome, but almost immediately all of the other people who had also left Rome but didn't agree with the Lutheran position

3:41 went so much further that looking backward today, Lutherans effectively get lumped in with Roman Catholics in terms of communion. You know, a lot of people if they're coming from, you know, certainly like a Baptist upgr upbringing, when you look at r Lutheran doctrine on baptism and communion, you're gonna say these guys are just papists. these guys are Catholics. And And there like you said, there's significant disagreements on communion, but there's so much more significant between Lutherans and the Reformed and the Baptists that they're kind of right. And so there's not a clean division of three and one anymore. It's almost kind of one and one and a half and then the other two. And so we'll talk a little bit down the road about in

4:25 the Lutheran confessions, initially, what became as us disputing with Rome very quickly became a four-way fight with what the confessions call the Sacramentarians, today it's the Reformed, and the Anabaptists, which today are Baptists. And those four distinct bodies, the reason we consider those distinct is that none of them agree on both sacraments. They'll fall into one camp or the other on either of them, such that there's no possible substantial agreement about doctrine among any of them. of them. there cannot be any sort of unity until we overcome those disagreements about the sacraments. So that's why they're foundational issues. And that's it's probably why we're going to do this episode.

5:07 As we said before, we don't do too many episodes. They're kind of systematic theology. And we're not trying to sell Lutheranism. Obviously, we're Lutheran, we think it's important, but we had a lot of questions about it. And it's like I said, it really nicely bookends the Reformation episode with the baptism episode in terms of like, here's it, here's why we have these different groups. why did I mention in the Reformation episode that Lutherans just kind of laugh when reform guys think that we're part of the same camp? Like it seems alien to us. And it has to do with communion. Doesn't have to do with baptism. It has to do with communion. And so working through these issues, at least explaining them.

5:46 Like I'm this is an episode that I said earlier on Twitter teasing it that this is gonna make everybody mad because what we say is going to disagree with everything that everyone else believes unless you're Lutheran. And even some of the Lutherans gonna get mad at some of the things we say because a couple things we say disagree with Luther, but don't disagree with the confessions because they weren't always completely aligned. And it's not something to worry about, but like it's just it's how things play out in history. So to begin, we're gonna dig in in John 6. This is one of the first areas where we uh don't agree with some of what Luther ended up saying down the road. John 6 is the chapter that begins with the feeding of the

6:29 5,000, and then it's what's called the bread of life discourse. And it's a beautiful chapter. It's a very long chapter in John. And there's so much theology packed into it. The reason we want to begin there is that our view, in distinction from Luther's, but again, as I said, not in distinction from what the confessions say, John 6 is fundamentally Jesus catechizing the disciples and the assembled crowd about communion. It's about faith. It's about the entire Christian faith, but specifically dealing with some of the particulars of communion in such a way that later on when we address the other verses that deal specifically with the words of institution on the last at the last supper, and then subsequently when

7:16 Paul reiterates them, there's a short version there at the time, but the long version is found in John 6. And so it's important because this framing of the discussion of communion really lays bare all the disputes. Every single disagreement that you will have with us and that you all have with each other in different denominations, that we we all are mutually incompatible in terms of how we view communion, it boils down to the short version in first Corinthians eleven and the long version in John six. So we're gonna read all and then go through some of the particulars because the divisions are clear in Jesus teaching, including the responses from both the Pharisees and the crowd, who had the very same responses two

8:00 thousand years ago that we see today in these discussions. Two quick points before I get into reading the long passage from John 6. First, to be entirely fair to Luther, he did affirm both that John six is catechesis on the Lord's Supper, and that it deals with faith, which is the position of the confessions, the Lutheran confessions. He did emphasize the faith aspect in dealing with the reformed in part because he was simply tired of arguing with them. I'm sure that even some of our reformed listeners can commiserate with Luther on that one. And the second point is Woe mentioned that these divisions in the church really center on the sacraments, which is absolutely true. And I just want to read Article seven of the Augsburg Confession

8:54 because it really points out this has been the nature of things from the Reformation forward. And so Article seven defining the Church. Our churches teach that one holy church is to remain forever. The Church is the congregation of saints in which the gospel is purely taught, and the sacraments correctly administered. For the true unity of the Church, it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere. As As Paul says, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Ephesians four five through six. And so clearly, given the definition of the church, unless we can

9:43 agree on the sacraments, we can't have that full unity. That doesn't mean we can't agree on many things and get along and work together. It just means we can't have the full unity of full communion without agreement on the sacraments. And so I will read now from John VI. the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, But that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberius came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats, and went to Capernaum seeking

10:27 Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus answered them. truly I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on him God the Father has set his seal. Then they said to him, What must we do to be doing the works of God Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom He has sent. So they said to him, Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written,

11:16 He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus then said to them, truly I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They said to him, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out, for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me, and this is the will of Him

12:02 who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say I have come down from heaven? Jesus answered them, Do not grumble among yourselves, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, and they will all be taught

12:47 by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God, he has seen the Father. truly I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If any one eats of this bread he will live for ever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you, unless you

13:33 eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him, as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it they said, This is a hard saying, who can listen to it?

14:21 But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him, and he said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father. After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, Do you want to go away

15:03 as well? Simon Peter answered him Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the holy one of God. That's obviously a very long passage and I recommend you go back and reread it yourselves. It's beautiful, it's straight from the mouth of God and it's it's vital to understanding the theology of both faith and communion. There are a couple interesting things in there that I want to tease out. Obviously, there's extensive discussion of eating flesh and drinking blood. And when you look in the Greek words that are used for flesh, it's it's sarks. It's the it means actual flesh. As in, you know, if you were to find roadkill and cut

15:51 a piece off, that's what it's you're talking about, that type of flesh. It's not any sort of metaphorical version. It's the real material version of the thing. And so the historic disputes about this have been, well, this can't possibly be true because from the post-Reformation era, we have faith alone, precluding all works. And so there's the passage where Jesus says, whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks on my blood has eternal life, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. If you misunderstand faith alone, grace alone, you will not understand that this is not a work. And that's one of the problems that we addressed in the in the baptism episode at some lengths.

16:40 We're not going to repeat the arguments about how sacraments interact with human action. I mean the short version is when God says to do something and you receive his gift when you do it, and then you do it, that's not a work in the sense of us affecting anything. That is us receiving God's gift. It's like going to church and hearing the word of God. Yes, going to church is obedience, but the hearing is passive, it's receptive. So when it discusses us eating and drinking from Christ's body and blood, it's receiving something. It's not doing something. And we'll we'll get to that elsewhere in this episode. But it's just important that this is one of the distinctions of a sacrament, that if you misplace the action as oh, well, I'm

17:26 doing this, and therefore any passage that says do something must necessarily mean that it can't be salvific. You're missing out on a lot of scripture because there's stuff that God says to do that's clearly not us saving ourselves. I mean there's there's nowhere in scripture where God says you can save yourself, yes, there's many places in Scripture where God says to do stuff. And in particular when the sacraments are delivered by God to us, as in the case of baptism and in the case of communion, what we receive is the very forgiveness that God promised to deliver from the cross. I think the strongest argument to be made for how none of this can be taken entirely as allegory. Obviously, it's describing faith.

18:07 You know, there's faith is absolutely an inextricable faith is how we receive salvation, no doubt about that. Faith is how we receive the gifts in the sacraments. God is pouring out his abundance of his grace to us through the sacraments. And the fact that there's a physical means with it doesn't change the equation apart from giving us a physical touchstone in history, in time, in a place, that we can point to and say, yes, right here, God is giving me his stuff here. And whatever he promised to be be to be attached to the stuff, I will also receive. And so the physical presence of elements is part of God's reassurance to us that he's keeping all the other promises. And you know, the the argument from the Jews, they disputed him

18:52 and said, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Well, that's one of the arguments that is used against this passage possibly being about communion. Because how can that be? You know, one of the arguments is that, well, God is he's stuck at the right hand of the Father. He has a corporeal body, Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, can no longer do what he could do when he was not corporeal. And so how can this man give us his flesh to eat is I think critically set in the context of this this passage, which, as I mentioned at the beginning, it's immediately after the feeding of the five thousand. So the day before they had all sat down and they had the five loaves and the two fishes, and Jesus performed the miracle,

19:40 and they got back twelve baskets full after everyone had been fed, five thousand men and women and children beside. So right in the very context of him saying this and the Jews saying, how can this be that he could give us his flesh to eat? The very context of the miracles demonstrates that God was showing how he does it. He says, I'm going to do it, and he does it. And it's miraculous. Like it's it is outside of the material world that five loaves and two fishes could feed everybody. It's impossible. But Jesus did it. And it was it was just as plain as day. There was there was no magic, there was no moment, there was no flashes. He just said pass it out. And they did. And they got back so much more than they had handed out

20:25 that it was clear to everyone that a great miracle had been performed. And that was his introduction to saying, Here is how I will feed you. And then when he finished, the disciples heard it and they grumbled. They said, This is a hard saying, who can listen to this? And many of them grumbled and they walked away. They abandoned him on the spot. Now, this is critical because if this passage in John six were just about faith, which they understood, you know he'd been talking about faith, even the Jews who were not believing understood faith. They understood the concept of believing and then receiving things from God. If it had been clear from Jesus' teaching that day, the text that we just read, if it had been clear that this was

21:07 only about faith and not about something more immediate, more material than that, they wouldn't have been confused. They wouldn't have said this is a hard saying. And if they had, he was said, no, wait, come back, come back. I didn't mean that. it's all spiritual. It's it there's no there's nothing physical here. And instead he said, Do you take offense? What then what are if you are seeing the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? He's saying to them, if you don't believe the small thing that I'm telling you, how you will you believe the greater things? And then they wandered off and I think one of the most beautiful parts of this and the reason that we we let that passage go long was Simon Peter's confession at the end, after the

21:45 some of the other disciples had wandered off because they were offended Jesus said, You know, what do you believe? Will you go away as well? And Peter fame famously responded, Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. He didn't say, Yeah, I get it. It makes perfect sense to me. He said, Where else are we going to go? And I think this is a perfect example of proper faith when receiving hard teachings. And this is a hard teaching. We've said in a past episode, there are a few places in scripture where our reason collapses. You have the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ being fully God and fully man. How can there be two 100 percents in one thing? What sort of analogies can you invent to try to explain that?

22:29 And effectively every every anima analogy that men have invented in the past has effectively created some sort of heresy because it's irrational. You know, it's not two boards glued together. It's not two halves in a cup. It's not a mixture. There's no comparison for when Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. It's impossible. It doesn't make sense. And yet that is the essential predicate for the entire Christian faith that this man who was incarnate is also fully God. And so the same is absolutely true when we're looking at communion. When Jesus said they didn't know yet what was going to happen with communion. It wasn't until later at on the last supper when he actually instituted it. So again, this was a this was a teaching moment to explain

23:12 the theology behind it. And as we'll get to in a in a bit, when they received that teaching on the the night he was betrayed, there was no argument. All the all the questions went away because they received it the same way. I don't think they understood it any better. But when he said this is my body given for the forgiveness of your sins, it wasn't out of left field because they'd heard it before. They had heard it here at this moment, the day after the feeding of the five thousand. Whatever questions they may have had, whatever doubts they may have had, he had catechized them. And so when he said it, when it was finally being instituted, they just received it, and they ate and they drank and they

23:49 gave thanks. I think that this is a good point to define a few terms to go over some things that are frequently cleared Confused. Two of the most important terms here are sacrament and sacrifice. It is important to understand the distinction Between these two things, because this is where the Roman error creeps in. Rome wants to turn the sacrament of the altar into a sacrifice, which it is not in the sense that they use it, but I'll define the terms first so that we are on the same page as it were. A sacrament is a ceremony or work in which God presents what the promise of the ceremony offers. For Christians, well as Lutherans we are not going to quibble over the number of the sacraments. We're very explicit in our confessions and elsewhere that we're not going

24:45 to do that. Rome insisted we had to recognize a certain number of sacraments, we said there are most certainly two. We're not going to debate whether there are more. If you want to call marriage a sacrament, have fun. And other things as well. But obviously the two core sacraments on which Christians cannot disagree that these are sacraments would be baptism and the Lord's Supper. And so you cannot call these a work, and the reason you can't call them a work in terms of human beings doing the work is because these are God's work, and so you cannot steal from God. To call baptism or to call the Lord's supper a human work is to say that a human being is doing God's work. Now certainly, God uses the hands, the mouth of the pastor, as

25:37 means to deliver his work, to deliver his blessing, his promises to those who receive them. That does not make them the work of the pastor. They are still God's work. And now a sacrifice, a sacrifice, contrary to a sacrament, is a ceremony or work that we give to God in order to provide him honor. Now notably, there are two kinds of sacrifice, and it is important to know both of them, because one of them is in play here and one is not. with regard to those of us mortals who are partaking of the Eucharist. And so one of those is in fact the Eucharistic sacrifice. This does not merit the forgiveness of sins or reconciliation. It is practiced by those who have already been reconciled. This is so that we may give thanks or return gratitude for

26:30 the forgiveness of sins that has already been received, or for other benefits. The other kind of sacrifice there has been one in the history of the world, that is an atoning sacrifice. That is a work that makes satisfaction for guilt and punishment. Obviously there has been only one, that is Christ's sacrifice, that is the Atonement. And so Rome's error when it comes to the Lord's Supper, is that they believe that each time the priest oversees the Lord's table, oversees the sacrament, he is re-sacrificing Christ. And that's false. Christ's sacrifice was once for all, one atonement. That is why Christ said from the cross, it is finished. This is not something that plays out again on altars across the

27:23 world through all eternity, or at least until the end of the world, once for all, what we are doing is one, in remembrance of Christ, two, receiving the benefits of Christ, and three, giving thanks for those benefits. What we are doing is a Eucharistic sacrifice, it's a sacrifice of praise. All we're doing is using a Greek term for that in essence. And so it's important to keep in mind these moving parts, the difference between a sacrament and a sacrifice. The Lord's Supper is a sacrament. It is God bringing his gifts to us. We in We in turn, after partaking of the sacrament, and in fact in partaking of the sacrament, give a Eucharistic sacrifice, a sacrifice of praise. We are praising God for the gifts He has given us.

28:19 These have to be kept distinct, because we cannot steal from God that which is properly His. We cannot claim to be the one doing His works, because they are His works. There's no good in an atoning sacrifice if it is made by a mere man. The atoning sacrifice required the God man who is Christ. Because, again, as we have said many times before, the debt of sin being infinite required, demanded an infinite atonement, and the only possible infinite atonement is Christ. And so one of the fundamental problems here, if you get the theology wrong, the doctrine wrong, on the sacrament, on the Lord's Supper, is that you are implicitly denied denying the unio personalis, the personal union of God and man in Christ.

29:17 Because many of the arguments, supposed arguments, against the sacramental union, the sacramental presence of Christ, Christ being actually present in the sacrament, in with and under the bread and wine. One of the most common arguments against that is that how can this be? It's a argument based in reason, obviously, and human reason does fail. It has limits. It's the misuse of reason that is at issue here. The difference between reason as magister or master and reason as servant. Reason is a servant you use to understand things. Reason is not the master of the universe that determines what is real. If you look at it top down as reason imposing reality, that's incorrect. That's reason as Magister.

30:12 If you are looking at it instead as reason as one of your interpretive lenses to understand reality, that's reason as minister, reason is servant, that is the correct use of reason. But when you attempt to apply reason as a master to these things, particularly the mysteries of God, you are not going to be able to understand them in that light. You have to understand them from what God has revealed about them, and what God has revealed about them we'll get to in Christ's words and Paul's explanation of those words. But when God speaks, what he says is true, and you simply believe it. You do not have to subject his words to your reason to prove that they are true. And then I would also like to expand on the issue of

31:05 what is a work? Is this faith plus works? And the answer to that, the second question is no. This is not faith plus works, as we have highlighted before, particularly in the baptism episode, but also elsewhere, the Spirit uses means to create faith and to strengthen faith. Baptism is one of the primary means, the word being the other. Of course the word flows through all of this because a sacrament, another way of defining it is simply the word plus an element, the word plus a sign, a physical thing. That is one of the traditional or classical definitions of a sacrament, and so the word is always present, but you have word and baptism to create faith, and then you have word and supper to strengthen faith.

31:56 That is the way that things are supposed to go. That is the way that God has ordained it. And as I've mentioned before, we being spiritual and physical, being spirit and body, will set aside the issue of mind and such matters for now, but the fact that we have these dual natures God reaches out to us where we are and how we are what we are. We have the word which reaches the spirit. Yes, it also reaches the physical ear. But you have also the physical signs. The body can understand the physical signs. The part of you that is physical can understand water, can understand bread, can understand wine. God uses these to strengthen your faith, to reach the totality of who and what you are, not just the Spirit.

32:51 Because you are not a spirit riding around in a meat suit. That's a mischaracterization. You are your body. You are your soul. You are both of those things. And so there's some bit of understanding you can have, if you can grasp that to a certain degree, of the personal union. But to get back to that original point, if you deny that you can have bread and body, wine and blood, simultaneously present. You are tacitly saying that the personal union cannot be possible. And you may think, well, the difference is that the one is God, the one is Christ, and the other is bread. No. Because you have Christ's word saying that it is bread and that it is body, saying that it is wine and that it is blood.

33:42 You also have his word about the personal union in a number of places in Scripture. God does not lie. God always speaks the truth. God always speaking the truth, we have to believe what he has told us. And then to emphasize woe's comment about the right hand of the Father, because this is an issue that comes up constantly in this area, and it is vitally important to understand this, to get this right. because theological and doctrinal errors flow from this left, right, and center. The right hand of the Father is not a physical location. How do we know this? The Father is spirit. The Father does not have a right hand. The right hand of the Father is not a physical location, because again, the Father is not physical.

34:38 Scripture is very clear. Scripture says this in a number of places. The Father and the Spirit, obviously, one would hope that Hope that with the Spirit this is obvious, but the Father and the Spirit being spirit, being not corporeal, do not have right hands, and so their right hands cannot be a physical location. The right hand of the Father is a position of power and authority. When Scripture speaks of the right hand of the Father and Christ being there, think of it as a right hand man, or historically, many kings would have a vizier or equivalent, someone, some minister who was very high ranking, who acted as his right hand, and was called his right hand. That is what scripture is saying when it says Christ is at

35:25 the right hand of the Father, it is a matter of the exaltation of Christ. It is not a matter of a physical occasion. So no, he is not physically limited to some specific small place in heaven. That is not how this works. Also notably heaven, not a physical location. But that's a point for another time. Before we conclude with John 6, I just want to provide a warning to the folks who are still shouting at us. That can't possibly be about the Eucharist. It can't be about communion. I want to reread a small portion. Jesus says, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks on my blood abides in me and I in him. The reason that this is important is that if you say, well,

36:16 that can't possibly be about communion, because that's tying your salvation to a work, any argument along those lines that anyone would make, including some Lutherans, Against John 6 being Eucharistic must necessarily and absolutely apply to baptism now saves you. And see, this is something that astonishes me. There's some folks who agree that baptism can be salvific and they can maybe agree the communion is salvific, but they will sternly argue against John 6 being about the Eucharist, specifically because of this language that Jesus uses that's conditional. Well Well, if baptism now saves you, then it's obvious that if you reject baptism, you're rejecting salvation. And we talked about in the baptism map.

37:04 So it says nothing about someone who's unable to be baptized. You know, it's not a question of rejection. If it's a question of the absence of the opportunity, that is not something that's going to separate you from Christ, because it is faith that saves. And that's crucial in all this. Faith undergirds salvation, period. And there is faith in baptism, and there is faith in communion, and there is faith in the forgiveness of sins, the confession, absolution of sins. Again, this is all God pouring out his gifts to us in all these myriad ways. And so just when you read the text of this, if you're like that can't possibly be because there's this conditional here, try the same let that same logic that you're applying to this to baptism

37:53 so now saves you, and see if baptism survives as a sacrament. What you will find is that it doesn't. If you remove John six as being also about communion, the logic by which you do that is going to nullify baptism. I think that's one of the strongest pieces of evidence that this must be. It's the same type of thing. Another piece of evidence for it is back at the beginning, Jesus directly makes the manna in the desert typologically pointing towards the bread of life, which is him, which is his body. And how do we receive his body? If it's spiritual, if it's by faith, then we're not receiving anything physical. And the type would fall apart. Because they were given manna in the desert. There was actual bread that fell from heaven, physical bread.

38:42 They gathered it up in baskets, and they ate it, and as he said, it sustained them, but they still died. The same is true of all the sacrifices in the Old Testament. Blood was shed, but it always pointed towards what? The actual shedding of Christ's blood on the cross. See this is how the typology in the Old Testament always plays out. You have the smaller version that's a physical object that points toward the final anti-type of the thing, and that is also physical. So it would not be possible if if Jesus is making the comparison between physical manna from heaven and himself as manna from heaven coming from God. That doesn't then become allegorical. He's still talking about his flesh, as he says over and over.

39:28 He gets he gets gratuitous and commutive in the passage where he's talking about his blood being true food, etc. So don't ignore that typology as being a necessary part of this being sacramental catechesis. And I can tell you just from personal experience, there are multiple Baptists I know who, when they read this, they cease to be Baptists because they realized they precluded that view of the sacrament. They realized that they were Lutheran when they actually believed what John VI said about communion. Now, I find it terrifying that there would be then anyone, but especially Lutherans, to come along and say, no, no, no. Well that's not about communion. If it is having this efficacious and beneficial outcome in the faith

40:15 and the souls of men to realize that a false confession needs to be reoriented in a way that is Lutherans, we're like, yes, absolutely, that is correct to then say, well, but not that text, that can't be it. That's judge the tree by its fruit. And when men read John 6 and they become Lutheran, please don't argue with them. Please just don't do that. You know, the same sort of typology incidentally is used by Jesus elsewhere, again pointing physically. We always quote John three sixteen and sometimes seventeen and eighteen, but John three fourteen says, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

40:57 Now it's if you remember that story, they were being they'd been cursed by God, they were being bitten by poisonous snakes and dying. God told Moses to craft a bronze serpent, put it up on a pole. Whoever looked, whoever gazed upon that serpent, would be saved from the poison. He did it, and many of Israel lived. And Jesus himself says in John 3: This is typological of me hanging on the cursed tree of the cross. The bronze serpent was a typological pointer to Christ's sacrifice when he was crucified. Again, there's physical on both ends of that. You will not have typology where the physical version then just sort of falls off into what? It It doesn't just vanish into space. It can't just float away.

41:43 It has to point to something physical. So please you know one of the interesting things about the reason that Luther doesn't necessarily go as hard as we do with this is that John 6 is not necessary for the Lutheran view of the Sacrament of Communion. if John VI were not present, we would still have much the same understanding. And that's part of why he was he just didn't want to fight with the reformed anymore. At the end of his life, he was sick of constantly doing the same battles over and over again. That fact that a man a man would make a concession so as not to have to keep getting beaten about the face and head doesn't mean that it doesn't apply. It just means that sometimes you're gonna if you have the argument

42:32 nailed down elsewhere, you don't need additional evidence. But we have the luxury, you know, like certainly Corey and I have the luxury if no one's yelling at us because you don't have mics, you you're you're yelling, but we can't hear you, so we can just go on and on. When we point to this, it's because it's all it's all what Jesus said. This is by far the richest and most fleshed out, I'm not saying that ironically, version of catechesis. And so as we get into the actual words of institution, just keep in mind the reaction that the apostles had, you know, the disciples and they're gathered in the upper room on Monday, Thursday. There was no arguing. There was no saying, how can this be? There was nothing except for acquiescence because their teacher had already explained

43:17 it to them. And this is something that I think it's an important thing when you're reading the New Testament, particularly when you're reading the Gospels and then move to Acts and beyond. Prior to Pentecost, these twelve men, you know, eleven survived because Judas obviously apostatized and was killed and then replaced. He killed himself, self-murdered. These men went to seminary with God for three years, three and a half years. Jesus taught them every day. They lived together, they ate together morning till night. They They were constantly discussing these things and he was constantly teaching them. in many places it's recorded, Jesus telling them you basically you'll understand later. And they understood later at Pentecost, when they received the gift of

44:03 the Holy Spirit, this teaching, this the catechesis in the seminary education that they received at Christ's feet was unlocked by the Holy Spirit. And so I think one of the things that's I think we kind of just assume today, we kind of read into the text of Acts and beyond, well, the apostles were special and they were inspired by God and we just kind of assume that what they say in Acts and beyond was new revelation from God directly. I think it's a much more natural reading, particularly when you look at what happens, you know, from the end of you know especially the end of Luke to Acts, which is effectively part one and part two of the same book. I wish John came first and then Luke and Acts were bookended.

44:52 Because when you look at that, Peter in particular, you know, Peter's like the Kool-Aid man of theology. he's boisterous and he's enthusiastic and he just crashes through walls and he's like, What's up guys? I'm I'm gonna be the loudest, most confident man in the room, even if he has no idea what he's talking about. And God bless him for it. Because many of his confessions, even when he didn't understand something, he still got enough right. He's like, yeah, that's that is a good model for our faith. And yet what do we see immediately after Pentecost? He's the man who stands up and just unloads this sermon out of nowhere that's beautiful. it's rich, it's it's textural. There's so much theology and scripture that he pulls in.

45:37 And in some cases, it is new teaching. But I think that if you understand that the Holy Spirit unlocked the seminary education that had been locked away behind blinders, it makes a lot more sense where all that stuff came from. And so as these men, as the apostles who had lived with Jesus for three and a half years, as they go on on with the rest of their lives in their ministries, they certainly did receive direct revelation. Paul in particular did not have the benefit. So he was talking to God directly. God communicated with him. Something that does not exist for us today. So I'm not minimizing the fact that they did in some case, you know, John obviously with his revelation, the apocalypse, that was all

46:19 new. That was directly coming from God. That wasn't something the book itself says this was a a direct revelation, it wasn't something that Jesus told him. So they absolutely did in some cases receive new inspired teaching. They were inspired, but much of what they were inspired by was not immediate, but it was uh through their seminary education with Jesus. And so just keep that in mind as as you look at the things that they say in Acts and beyond, and even as the the passages we're about to read on the night of the last supper, and then what Paul says about the same moment, the fact that they just sit sat there and received it faithfully with no argument, they're short, they're brief scenes.

47:03 It's obviously a very short scene that were given. It was an entire night. But the fact that God doesn't say anything about them arguing or grumbling or doubting or anything is a clear indication that they'd heard this before. They'd heard it at the feeding of the five thousand. And so it wasn't new information. It was the fulfillment of what had already been taught. That's exactly how catechesis works in churches today. Almost every church, whatever their views of communion, there's sip typically some form of teaching before communion. That's it's the same thing. You teach and then you deliver. So the disconnection temporally from you know, the feeding of five thousand to later on in the upper room when they actually received first

47:47 communion, the first communion, it makes perfect sense. It's the same model that we have followed ever since. You teach someone what it is, and then you give it to them, just as Jesus did for the apostles. It's been passed on to all of us as well. Before we get into the passages dealing with the words of institution, and we'll really deal with just two of those. They're a couple of parallel ones. We'll mention the parallel ones, but not read them into the episode as it were. I want to address promise and typology. First promise. Promise is a central concept to everything we're discussing here, and indeed to the Christian faith, and the reason for that is how do you receive a promise? Because what is promised here in the Lord's Supper is the forgiveness

48:38 of sins. We'll get into that with the words of institution. What is promised in baptism is forgiveness of sins. But how do you receive a promise? If I promise you that I will do something, the only way that you can receive that promise from me is to believe what I've said. You have to believe that I will do what I have said I will do. It's faith, it's belief, that is how you receive a promise. And so all of these things, the core of the Christian faith, the things we are dealing in here Are promises. You receive those via faith. And so when someone tells you that, oh well, this teaching means there's works, no, it doesn't. This has nothing to do with human works. It has everything to do with Christ's work.

49:33 But it is not a human work that receives the promise. It is faith, and faith is the free gift of God. And so God gives you the capacity, the attribute, the thing that receives the promise, and that is faith. And so there's no work here on your part. It is all from God, because He gives you both the capacity to receive the promise, and then He gives you the promise as well. And the second point I wanted to make is the issue of typology. We've spoken of typology a fair number of times in this podcast, and we will continue to do so. I find it very unfortunate that many modern Christian denominations have essentially jettisoned typology. It's no longer taught, it's no longer used, it's ignored.

50:29 And that is deeply unfortunate because Scripture is incredibly rich, and a great deal of that richness comes from typology, because typology flows from the beginning of Scripture all the way to the end. And just as one example of that, you have the tree of life standing in the New Jerusalem in Revelation, but you also have the tree of life all the way back in Genesis in the garden. But you also have the tree of life in Christ. Christ is the tree of life. It is his flesh that is given for food to the world, to the elect, and it gives us eternal life, it gives us salvation. Now to be clear, that salvation is offered to everyone. Scripture is incredibly clear. Tan cosmon, it is cosmos, the universe, it is all things that

51:23 are redeemed in Christ. It is the elect, and only the elect who benefit from it the difference between the objective and the subjective justification. But typology flows throughout Scripture. You have typology of Christ's sacrifice and of our worship in the Old Testament sacrificial system. You have the typology of Christ as the rock with the rock in the Old Testament, out of whom out of which, depending on your emphasis there flows living water, water of life, that keeps the ancient Israelites alive in the desert. And speaking of flowing waters, I will make one sort of tangential point here right before I get into Matthew. We see both sacraments flowing directly from Christ on Golgotha. When his side is pierced by that spear, what flows out?

52:18 It is water and blood. So what do you have present there? You have his body, you have water, and you have his blood. Well that's baptism and that's the sacrament of the table. That's the Lord's Supper. You have both sacraments, typologically and physically present, there on the cross. But now I'll read from Matthew twenty-six the words of institution. I said I would give the parallel chapters as well, the parallel sections. Those would be Mark 14 and Luke 22, but we'll be reading from Matthew 26 Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it all of you, for

53:12 this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you that I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. There are a few important parts of this that uh we didn't already cover in John six. One he specifically says, This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Now this is crucial because he's saying that communion does something. What does it do? It forgives sins. Again, there's no work here of any man. The work is of God. The deliverance is through means. We receive those means of grace, and they are indeed means of grace. And this is a this is a point where thankfully the

54:03 Reformed, the Lutherans, and the Roman Catholics all agree that communion does deliver the forgiveness of sins. Baptists, the Anabaptists stand alone in rejecting that because they do not understand what sola fide means. They think that anything that any man does can't possibly have anything to do with forgiveness of sins because that would be us taking credit. Jesus, God everywhere says the opposite. There's a whole bunch of stuff where God tells us where he's going to deliver the forgiveness of sins. Baptism now saves you. This blood is poured out for the forgiveness of sins, just as his body was sacrificed for the forgiveness of sins. And again, typologically, that was the essence of the sacrificial system.

54:50 There were blood offerings and there were meat offerings that were typologically pointing forward to the cross, to the final, the ultimate, the the pure, the only sacrifice that actually mattered. Because it says elsewhere in the New Testament that those sacrifices couldn't do anything by themselves. They were an expression of faith. They pointed to Jesus, perfect sacrifice, once and for all time. So So the words of institution when it talks about the forgiveness of sins, it's not simply talking about Jesus' blood was shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins. Remember, this is take eat, this is my body, drink of it all of you, for this is the blood, my blood of the covenant. This is how the forgiveness of sins is delivered, which is

55:40 precisely what Jesus said in John 6. He said, Whoever has true flesh and and drinks true blood is going to receive eternal life. That was the whole point of that. And that's why people got annoyed and they wandered off. Like that can't be. they were confused and they were annoyed because they took it literally. They listened to John 6 literally. He didn't correct them. He didn't say, no, no. It's figurative. If Don't worry about it. It's not actually about blood and body and you know there's nothing gross here. It's okay. He didn't say that at all. He's let him go and asked the disciples, and you know the twelve, what do you think? You can leave too. So So again, this is why it is a sacrament to us

56:24 and really to everyone, except the Baptist. And if you're Baptist and you reject that, I'm we're not trying to pick on you. We're trying to clearly delineate the substantial distinctions among us and the reasons why we're not the same denomination, why until such disputes rooted in scripture are resolved, there can't be complete unanimity on what the faith means. Because this is big ticket stuff. This the remember the the night the words of institution given on the night in which he was betrayed. That was his very last act. Everything else was him being taken in the garden and then executed and rising and it was this was his last act of ministry effectively. Everything after this was leading to his death and resurrection.

57:09 I'm not saying that's not ministry, but this was his last teaching moment. Everything he said afterwards is like look, I'm fulfilling what I came to do, I did it. The other thing I want to point to is that he says I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it with you new in my father's kingdom. For Fruit of the vine is synonymous with wine. It's used in lots of different places in scripture. There's only one thing that it means. It means alcoholic wine, which is itself redundant. There's no such thing as non-alcoholic wine. Now I'm doxxed. I can say I started a distillery. I produced hundreds of thousands of gallons of alcohol. And both as an industry expert and as someone who could do

57:53 this very experiment that you could do in your garage, if you take a pail and you mash up a bunch of grapes and you put a lid on it and you put something on it to kind of seal it in and you it's called a bubbler. You can put something that will kind of make just a one-way passage where you put a little water in it so gases can escape, but nothing can get in, and just let it sit for the weekend. When you come back several days later, it's going to be bubbling. And the reason it's going to be bubbling is that you've now produced alcohol. All you did was squished some grapes through in a bucket and you've produced alcohol. Why? Because there's everywhere in nature, in what certainly, absolutely everywhere in

58:35 nature in Jesus' day, yeast is on everything. Natural yeast is on all the fruit in the universe. It's just there. it's regional. It's specific to different types of plants. It's specific to parts of the country, parts of the world. There's always yeast on stuff. Yeast in the presence of sugar with the right, you know, pH and the right temperatures is going to produce two things. It's going to burp carbon dioxide, which is why you would get bubbles coming out of your little bubbler if you seal this package up. And it's going to excrete ethanol, which is alcohol. This is how God made the universe. It's not like man used some sort of alchemy to begin, you know, demons didn't need to teach anybody how to make alcohol.

59:25 You accidentally get alcohol if you just mishandle fruit. The Mongolians they had fermented yaks milk. they things get alcoholic very easily. Now, the degree of alcohol that's present can vary, but when Jesus says fruit of the vine, he's only talking about one thing. He is talking about real natural wine with alcohol, and not just a little bit either. You know, he's it the the very first miracle that he did at the wedding of Cana produced a huge volume of alcohol. Why? Because it was a party. And what does he say? There's gonna be wine in heaven. Alcohol is part of creation. It is not a part of the fall. It is how God made everything to work. And so it's notable that you know today there are denominations that

1:00:13 reject near their teetotalers either entirely or they simply reject wine in the sacrament, one that is completely in violation of the words of institution. If you are not using wine, you are not having communion. Because God says to use wine. You know, the Trayvon Martin communion with Skittles in the Arizona iced tea, that's the kind of theology that you're employing if you think you can just start substituting stuff. And notably grape juice. People like, oh, we you juice grapes and you can have no alcohol. No, you can't. The reason that grape juice exists today is that a Wesleyan Methodist named Welch denied communion and wanted to produce non-alcoholic wine so that his abolitionist teetotaling Methodist congregation could

1:01:05 practice communion as they thought they were, they were not. It was, it was a it was a farce. But the very existence of pasteurized grapes and grape juice, it's a modern scientific synthetic rejection of scripture. That's the only reason it exists today. It was created for the purpose of denying what God said to do. And so today you go to the story, like you have the wine aisle and you have the juice aisle. And you think, oh, this is all just natural. You know, you can, you know, the it it seems obvious when you're at the grocery store that obviously juice is the natural product and then wine is the special product that you know the bad the bad boys make if they want to make alcohol Alcohol.

1:01:45 It's the other way around. All you get in nature is alcohol. You have to work really hard to actually just make juice that's never gonna grow anything. That is a much more unnatural product. So when Jesus says fruit of the vine, elsewhere he says wine, he's talking about alcohol. Alcohol is not only a gift from God, but it is explicitly commanded of us for the purpose of communion. Even if you don't want to drink it anywhere else, you must drink wine at communion because that's what God instituted. I think one of the one of the disputes that has sort of evolved over time is after the Reformation, when we started everyone started getting really fiddly in introspective with the sacrament, there became this impulse to try to create

1:02:32 the minimum viable communion. What is the smallest set of operant conditions we can have where it's still communion. And I I personally despise this impulse in so many people because it's just do what God said. What does he say? He says, take, eat. Here's Here's what it is. Say this, do this, eat it, receive it. That's it. That is communion. The whole thing is communion. If you don't have wine, you don't have communion. If you consecrate it, and then instead of eating it, you put it in a monstrance and you parade it around. That's not communion either. It you're taking something that God intended for one purpose and saying, I'm not gonna do what you said, I'm gonna do something else. This is one of this is one of the reasons I mentioned

1:03:19 the Reformation episode. The Lutheran confessions in some places refer to the Roman Catholic Mass as the abomination of the Mass. This is one of the reasons, is it when they consecrate the bread and wine, one, you know, in the words of institution, Jesus and Paul both clearly say eat and drink. One of the things that Rome has long done is denied people the if you call it right, they're denied the wine. They're only given the bread. And there's a logical construction there that well, if because the bread is the body, which is true, and the body must necessarily have blood in it. They're already getting blood, so they don't need the wine. That's not what God said to do. why are you trying to logic this?

1:04:03 There's what problem are you trying to solve? Just do what God said to do. And And one of the other abuses that occurs in Rome is that they will consecrate the bread, they will say that it has transubstantiated into Christ's flesh, and then rather than eating it, which is what God said to do, at some point they decided, you know what, we got God. Right here, we got God on a plate. And as I said, they have these monsters. There's monstrances are very fancy presentation cases where they will preserve and parade around the body of Christ, the host, to to adore it. Now not only is this an abuse of what is actually directed in scripture, which says nothing of the sort, but it also is a direct corollary to the events of the Old Testament where you

1:04:55 know we mentioned the bronze serpent that Moses created at God's command. God said, Create this image of a serpent, put it up on a on a wooden pole, everyone who looks upon it will be healed, they will be saved, they won't die from the poison. They did that, they obeyed, and then that bronze serpent shows up later in the Old Testament as a false idol named Nehushtun. They saved the serpent because, like, well, God did this one good thing with it, it's pretty cool. Yeah, we we spent some time on it. We got this. Let's see what else we can do with it. they saved something that God gave for a good purpose, and they started worshipping it. They named it Nehushton, and they worshipped the bronze serpent as an

1:05:41 idol. They took the very thing that God had provided according to his good will as a salvific means of the flesh, not of the soul, and they they they turned it into idolatry. This is exactly what the Roman Catholics do with their corpus christi parades. They were given something for one purpose, they abuse it, they rip it from that purpose, and they parade it around and they worship it. It's Nahishtan worship. it's it's an abomination. And so on one hand, they had the obedience to believe and to do everything up until eating or drinking, where they deny the drinking uh to some just just do what God said. And so I think that's one of the key distinctives when you're looking at some of the variations in different denominational treatments of this

1:06:32 stuff, how closely are you following what God said to do? If he says wine, you're like, no, I don't want wine. No, I you know, I think it's sinful to drink. Well, crucially, not only does God not say that it's sinful to drink alcohol, God commands the drinking of alcohol for the forgiveness of sins. And just as one last aside here, makes me incredibly, incredibly angry when there's someone who's an alcoholic who is told, No, it's okay if you don't drink any wine in communion because I understand that you're forbidden to ever have any alcohol again. One, that's not true. That's not what AA teaches. And even if it were, that would make AA a false cult in opposition to Christianity. And to whatever extent that might be true, it's neither here nor

1:07:21 there, they do a lot of good, but there's also some very weird stuff about it. The simple fact is that if someone else teaches you, you will sin by drinking alcohol when God says this alcohol is for the forgiveness of sins, if you believe the man, you're denying God. You're sinning. You're violating the first and second commandments. You're calling God a liar. God says to do something like no, God, I can't do that. You said it's to forgive my sins. I would sin if I did that. And just as a mathematical question, the amount of alcohol in a small sip cannot possibly raise your blood alcohol whatsoever. So I understand that there are people who struggle with addiction. I have friends who struggle with addiction.

1:08:03 I understand. This one specific case must be the exception. If you sincerely believe that you are going to sin by obeying God, you shouldn't communing anyway. Not until you get straightened out to the fact that God is saying this is for the forgiveness of sins. You must believe that. If you can't believe that, that would be unworthy receiving, which is the next thing we're going to get to. But there's just there's so many of these small variations where we start fiddling with what God said to do when it's so simple, it's so simple. What God did in the upper room on Monday Thursday is as as simple as it could be. It's a meal. Eat the bread, drink the wine, and yes, it must be real bread too.

1:08:50 It doesn't matter if it's leavened or unleavened, but it has to be bread. Can't be potato chips, can't be Skittles, it has to be bread. Why? 'Cause that's what God said. That's it. we don't need to try to reverse engineer it and find the minimum viable communion so that we can get away with getting God's gifts by some other means. That's not Christianity. what what are people doing when they go down that path? It it's not a path of faithfulness. And it inevitably leads to worse consequences. It's not just one small abuse. It will get worse and worse because you can't mess with God's things and call him a liar and come out of it okay. Before we get to additional theology and doctrine here we'll read one

1:09:34 more section of scripture dealing with a number of other issues related to the Lord's Supper, and also recounting again the words of institution, this time the reading is from first Corinthians, first Corinthians eleven. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this 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 until he comes.

1:10:22 Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. This is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. Before we get into the specific matter of what it means to eat and drink in an unworthy manner and the consequences of doing that, I want to highlight one of the words here that often comes up in arguments against understanding the Lord's Supper simply as Christ has presented it to us. And that word is remembrance.

1:11:12 Now I said earlier that one of the points of this sacrament is in fact to remember Christ, and that is simply what scripture teaches here. But we need to know what it means to remember Christ. To remember Christ means something specific in this context. The reason for that is that simply noting historical facts avails nothing that's worth nothing to you. Demons have that knowledge, as scripture points out, and as is pointed out by basically every Christian theologian down through time. Demons have knowledge, it doesn't save them. This comes back to something we have discussed previously. There are three kinds of belief or knowledge that are at issue when we discuss theology. That would be notitia, ascensus and fiducia.

1:12:09 These are just the Latin terms. Two of them you can certainly understand immediately. Noticia is just notice, ascensus is ascent, and fiducia fiduciary trust. Demons have notitia. They know that these things happen. These things happened in the past. Demons also have a sensus. They assent to the fact that these things happened. They don't contest that Christ died on the cross, they don't contest any of the narrative in Scripture, and so demons quite frankly have a better faith than many. But what demons do not have, and what is called for here in remembering Christ, because it's not mere or bare remembrance, it's not notitia, it's not even notitia and as sensus, it is fiducia. It is faith. What is called for is belief in the things that Christ said,

1:13:04 in the things that He promised. That is what Christians have. That is what separates a believer from a demon, or an unbeliever hardly a difference in this case. And so to remember Christ is to remember his benefits, to remember what he has promised, what he has told us, what he has said will happen, what he has said that his supper does, that is what it means to remember Christ. A bare recounting of the facts is not what is in view here, that is not what a Christian does, because a Christian has more than just the belief that the thing happened, assent to the reality of the thing, a Christian has trust in it. And so that is what the word remembrance means. And so a focus by certain groups on the word remembrance as

1:13:52 if that somehow undermines the totality of the teaching or changes what Christ is saying is just an abominable perversion of Scripture it is absolutely false. Calling to remembrance the work of Christ is faith. That is what is demanded of the believer. That is what is demanded for those who would approach the table, and that is part of what it means to approach in a worthy manner, because not to have faith in the reality of this sacrament is to approach the table in an unworthy manner. So that first Corinthians 11 passage is vital for our understanding of the doctrine of communion because in you know just two paragraphs it effectively chops chops up all the different denominations into all the buckets that we fall into today.

1:14:50 Every single dispute is represented in this text. So you have the remembrance argument, as Corey just dispatched. That is the view of some. You know, the Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses say that there's nothing there. It's not a means of grace. It's literally just you do it and you remember Jesus and thanks for you know thanks for being Jesus. They're not that well, some of them are that sacrilegious fan, frankly. that's how the Arizona Iced tea and Skittles happened in the first place. It was it was that sort of view that if it's just, you know, remembering God, who cares? why would you need wine? It's how it's how Baptists can be teetotalers, 'cause all bets are off. Like it's just if you're just remembering God, if that's the

1:15:37 important part, then doing what he said doesn't matter. Because frankly, if you do what God says, that makes you acting in earning your salvation and so you can't be Christian, right? Well, no, that's not we've said that's not how any of this works. You do what God says because he says to do it. No one no Christian thinks that doing stuff is gonna save you. I mean that's again that that was one of the divisions at the initial spark of the Reformation. You had the issues with indulgences and with pilgrimages and these other requirements that Rome said this is gonna earn you time off in purgatory. You can do this stuff and you're gonna earn some portion of your salvation, even if it's not the eternal part, you're like

1:16:16 you're still gonna be stuck in kind of baby hell for a while. This'll help out. Part of the Reformation was a rejection saying that's contrary to all of Scripture. you're conflating works with justification. That's never permissible. And yet, once we get on the other side of that justification argument, there's still many places where individual denominations still try to bring that notion back into attack more things that are frankly just basic parts of Christian doctrine. So remembrance is right out. You know, eating the bread and drinking the cup, again, that that's something that Rome for a long time either restricted or forbade, or at least didn't offer to to the laity, so called. You also have the very interesting thing that I think it's it's

1:17:09 worth reading that passage in Corinthians beginning with verse 23. Just read through it and note, pay attention to the nouns. Because what you will find is that when Paul is writing this, when the Holy Spirit is inspiring him to write this, I'm not attributing this argument to Paul, this is God, he uses bread and wine and cup and blood interchangeably. He just bounces between them. Why? Because it's the same thing. And this is one of the other crucial distinctions among the various denominations. When the Reformation occurred, there was already a strong push for rationalism that existed within Rome. The age of reason was dawning. People were trying to be more rational about things. You have Thomism, you have this vein of we need to make

1:18:00 sure we do the math on this thing right. And so the reason that Rome ended up with the view of transubstantiation, which effectively says that when the bread and wine are consecrated, they effectively cease to be the bread and wine and they become the body and blood, and it's only the accidents that are remaining. So you it still looks like bread and wine, but that's not really the case. The reformed take the same logical position. They simply go in the other direction. They say that it can only be one of these things at a time. And obviously it's still bread and wine, which it is. It's obviously bread and wine. And Paul's words say that. He says bread, wine. Jesus says bread, wine. There's no doubt in scripture that that is completely

1:18:49 true. The problem is that if you believe that the only thing that bread and wine can possibly be is bread and wine, well it gets back to the argument about the about the hypostatic union. This is the reason that Lutherans refer to this as the sacramental union, that it is both simultaneously, and we don't know how. We don't take the Catholic position of saying, well, it it's not bread and wine. It it's much more important for it to be the body and blood, which is true. Without the body and blood, there's no point. They're completely right about that. What they're wrong about is the rational conclusion that, well, we absolutely believe this Christ's body and blood, and therefore the bread and wine

1:19:29 have to be gone, all but completely gone. And there's they're rational philosophical trash arguments to try to substantiate how that's okay. The Roman Catholics and the Reformed agree it can only be one or the other. The problem is that God says it's both. So eat the bread, drink the cup. Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body drinks judgment on himself. Which is it? is it the body or is it the bread? Yes. It's both. How? We don't know. That that's that's it. We have the same response to these texts that Peter had to the whole scene in John 6. His response when Jesus like, do you wander off? Do you not believe this? Like, Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

1:20:15 That is the Christian confession. God, I don't know what's going on, but I believe you anyway. You said it, I believe it, and try to understand. Like as we said, catechesis teaching around these things is important. Jesus spent time teaching. The church has always spent time teaching these things, and teaching before communion, because the other part of this passage is that there were people who died. They were killed by unworthy reception. And this goes to one of the errors and the crucial distinction between the Lutheran position and what our confessions call the sacramentarian position, which is effectively the reformed position today. And that is that they will say, and you'll you'll find this

1:20:58 in in much reform, particularly some of the Presbyterians, sound just like Lutherans up to the very end. They will say that there's a real presence. And if you don't press, you will think that we're in agreement. But when you do press, when you ask the right questions and you narrow it down, what comes out is that there is no body and blood in your mouth. That's a crucial distinction. That's what makes it a sacrament. That's what makes it complete. That's what makes it the anti-type to the pipe type of the bread of the manna in the desert. Because if it's not actually Christ's body going in your mouth, though you're not receiving what God promised. And when we talk when Paul talks about discerning the body,

1:21:43 eating and drinking judgment on himself, he means it. And so the the crucial distinction in the the sacramentary and reform position is that it is a spiritual mode of presence. They will say that they believe it, and I God bless them for it. I'm glad that they take it seriously. Thank you so much for not being Baptist, because that is a far worse error. However, the problem with this is that it also denies part of this passage because in order for the sacramentarian view that there is a physical oral reception of only bread and wine, and then we spiritually ascend to the right hand of God, where we receive his body and blood in a spiritual sense, in a heavenly sense. The problem with that is that that requires faith.

1:22:34 And what is said here in Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 11 is that there are people who hate unworthily. And God makes clear what that they're guilty of the body and blood because they ate in an unworthy manner by not examining themselves and discerning the body and blood. This is this is crucial because if the reform to correct. And you can have communion and it's all faith based and it's all spiritual. There's no possibility for anyone to die, because if you don't have faith, you cannot spiritually ascend to heaven to receive Christ's body and blood there. The only way that that mode of thought can work is if the damned, if those without faith, can also ascend to heaven to receive Christ's body and blood, and then they're killed for it.

1:23:24 They're killed by it. that necessarily makes no sense. There's no possible ascent into heaven spiritually for those unbelievers. And it is unbelief that's being described there. When you're guilty concerning the body and blood of Christ, because you don't discern it, it's a rejection of God. It's calling him a liar. It's saying that what you said is not true. And so the reason for the Lutheran position, it's literalist and it's mysterious. It's like, I don't know. I know this far and I know no further. And as we've said before, for me personally, that's always been enough. I don't feel the need to concern myself with trying to figure out the mechanisms and the math and the scales of all these

1:24:08 things. When God says it, if I don't understand, like, okay, there's something I don't understand, add it to the list. I have a very long list of things I don't understand. And particularly when we're looking at things that are necessarily spiritual, they're necessarily supernatural. They're outside of the material world. That's what we're talking about here. And remember, that's that's the crux of this. Because it is outside of the material world, all bets are off. You can't rationally figure out that which is inherently irrational because it's outside of creation. This is something different that God is doing in a special way. And so this one passage when you look at all the various pieces of it, all the all the denominations are going to fall

1:24:53 into their various buckets on one side or the other of these disputes. And I believe with a with a clean conscience that the only possible synthesis of this this passage and the other passages is a Lutheran one, that it is truly Christ's body and blood, physically present. We don't know how. And again, this is not one of the early episodes we did on the clarity of scripture. We go into this detail some more. We did about an hour specifically talking about this one debate around physical versus real because it blew up on Twitter nearly a year ago. There was a false teacher effectively spreading reform positions and pretending that they were Lutheran and causing Lutherans to abandon the Lutheran faith.

1:25:34 Not that there's a difference in faith, but there's clearly a difference in belief and in practice. It's important to get this stuff right, and it's important to know clearly where the lines are because we all fall on one side or another. And if you hold a position contrary to what we're saying, you need to have an argument that stands up to effectively dismantling the one that we have. And I've I've read them. We're not we're not giving you a fair shake here today by reading off clearly all the other affirmative positions for what everyone else believes. Because we believe genuinely that there's no possibility for them to exist in totality with the very plain words of scripture. Again, there's there's a tremendous amount in the book of Concord that

1:26:17 does deals with these debates in all directions. Deals with Roman Catholics, deals with the Reformed, deals with Deals with the Anabaptists at great length. We're not referring to those confessions, not because they're not good arguments, but because it's important to look at what God said, just as they did. They've made very good arguments in that confessional document. The argument The arguments are also from Scripture. And so I suppose that the reformed listeners have expected the following phrase from two Lutherans since starting this episode, so I won't disappoint you, is means is. And I would be remiss if I did not mention the Marburg colloquy in which Luther and Zwingli discussed the issue.

1:27:01 It would probably be too charitable to say attempted to come to terms. But famously, at that debate, Luther carved into the table, we don't know if he carved it facing himself or upside down facing Tswingli, I happen to believe the latter is more likely. But he carved into the table hook est corpus meum, which is simply the Latin for this is my body. And that really is the simplicity of the Lutheran position. We take Christ at his words. When some will contend that they have a literal understanding of Scripture, I find a great deal of irony in that those who most vehemently insist they interpret Scripture literally never interpret the sacraments literally. They always reject at least at least almost always reject baptism and

1:27:56 the Lord's Supper as being what Scripture very clearly says that they are. When Christ says, This is my body, this is my blood, well that's what he means. He said it, he means it. Christ most certainly knew the word for symbol or symbolizes, represents, or is an allegory of whatever term you want to use, he did not use those words. He said, This is my body, and that is why that is the teaching that Lutherans affirm now of course you've undoubtedly heard arguments related to other parts of scripture parables, where Christ taught I am the vine or I am the door or any various things like that, a number of different parables. I want to highlight a grammar point here, and grammar is not nitpicky grammar matters because grammar determines the meaning of the words you

1:28:57 are using. The order of the words matters, the words you choose matters. All of these things contribute to the actual meaning that you intend and that will be taken away from what you have said. And so I want to highlight Christ says, I am the vine. He does not say I am a vine. There's a difference there, a very important difference, and yes, Greek can also distinguish between the definite and indefinite articles. So when Christ says I am the vine, he is in fact the vine. Now is he a literal vine? No, that's not what that is saying. It is saying that he is the vine, literal in the sense of being, yes, it's a metaphorical vine, and yes it does make sense to say something is literally metaphorically true.

1:29:54 If on the other hand he had said I am a vine, that would have been him declaring that he is in fact a literal physical vine. In which case perhaps we have to raise Lewis's trilemma. He also does not say I am a door. He says I am the door, and he is in fact the door, because he is the only passage through which we can get to God. He is the only way to salvation. So he is, in fact, the door. So the contentions around those parables, those parabolic sayings Do not in any way argue against taking literally what Christ says about the bread and the wine in the supper. And so I want to read just four quick paragraphs here from the Lutheran confessions that state the Lutheran position on the Lord's Supper,

1:30:49 that state very clearly what we believe. These are from the epitome of the formula of Concord. We believe, teach, and confess that in the Holy Supper Christ's body and blood are truly and essentially present, and that they are truly distributed and received with the bread and wine. We believe, teach, and confess that the words of Christ Testament are not to be understood in any other way than the way they read, according to the letter. So the bread does not signify Christ's absent body, and the wine his absent blood, but because of the sacramental union, the bread and wine are truly Christ's body and blood. Now about the consecration we believe, teach, and confess that no work of man or recitation of the minister produces this presence of Christ's

1:31:37 body and blood in the Holy Supper. Instead, this presence is to be credited only and alone to the almighty power of our Volus. the Lord Jesus Christ. At the same time, we also believe, teach, and confess unanimously that in the use of the Holy Supper the words of Christ's institution should in no way be left out. Instead they should be publicly recited, as it is written in first Corinthians ten sixteen, the cup of blessing that we bless, and so forth. This blessing occurs through the reciting of Christ's words. And so those four paragraphs give a very brief statement of exactly what it is that Lutherans believe. Of course they're just a restatement of Scripture. We believe literally what the words of Scripture say, and it may

1:32:28 seem like we mentioned that or repeat that ad nauseum, but it is simply the case. In fact it is one thing that annoys many about Lutherans. We are simply going to insist on what the words of the book say. Because they're the word of God, that's why we believe them. We don't believe them because we happen to like the book. We believe them because having been given faith, we believe the Word of God. We believe that what is contained in Scripture is true, because it is the inspired Word of God. And so when God says, This is my body, we say, Yes. But he also says, This bread is my body. Okay, he said two things there. He said this is bread, we believe him. He said the bread is his body, we still believe him.

1:33:17 We do not have to understand, we do not have to subject it to human reason in order to believe it, because the ground of all truth said it. And if God says it, it's true. It's very easy to believe this. You can simply affirm the truth of it. You don't have to work out the philosophical minutiae, in fact you cannot do so. But you don't have to do so. This again comes back to something we've previously discussed. You don't believe the things in Scripture because you believe the things in Scripture. Let me clarify what I mean. You believe the things in Scripture, because having been given faith, you believe God is the author of Scripture, and God being God who does not lie, who cannot lie, you believe that His Word is

1:34:11 true. Many reverse the order of operations there. They'll say, I believe Scripture, and therefore I believe in God. No. You believe God, therefore you believe in Scripture. It is the exact opposite way. Now, if you're arguing with someone who is an unbeliever, who is an atheist, yes, you can use secular reasoning to prove things in Scripture are true. You can use archaeology, history, etc. in order to prove scripture to tear down some of the barriers to that person hearing the Word of God and believing. But as a believer, you believe the Word of God is true because you believe that God is the one who inspired it. And just to emphasize, to go back to Wo's point about the difference between the Romans and the Reformed, conveniently both start with R.

1:35:11 But the big difference between them as has been used many times before the example the illustration of falling off a horse the Romans fall off the right side of the horse. It's not that they take it too literally, it's that they ignore part of it, subject it to reason, and say well it must simply be his body, it can't be bread at the same time, so they fall off the right side of the horse. For many of them I am willing to concede they are trying to believe what God says. But the problem is they aren't believing what God actually said. You have to look at what he said. This bread, it's bread, is my body, it's his body, it's both. The reformed on the other hand, also subjecting the words of God

1:35:58 to reason, fall off the left side of the horse, and say, Well, it's bread, it tastes like bread. When I eat it, it feels like bread. It has all of the accidents of bread. It must be bread. And yes, I'll hint there at the underlying philosophy. It's not really the point of this episode, but it is why we have some of these distinctions between the Romans and the Reformed, but so they fall off the left side of the horse and say It's bread. My senses all report that it is bread, I have to find some other explanation for God's words. Lutherans don't have this problem because God says it's bread, I eat it. It tastes like bread. Okay, it's bread. God says it's its body. If God says it's his body, I just believe it.

1:36:44 So the Lutheran position is very simple. It is purely a matter of faith, of course, because you have to believe this in faith. You can't eat the bread and know with your senses that Christ is present. And the only reason he's present is because of his word, as I just read from the Book of Concord, that's what Lutherans affirm, he is present because of his word, and we know he is present because of his word, and so all of it flows from faith. And then I suppose I should address at least briefly the reformed contention that comes up throughout discussions of the differences between Lutherans and Reformed. And that is this is again a difference in the application of reason, as should be unsurprising.

1:37:36 The reformed will assert finitum non capax infiniti, which simply means the finite is not capable of the infinite. We will avoid getting into some of the theological weeds as it were here, so the communicatio and such will leave aside to some degree, but the gist of the reformed position, the central contention, is that Christ cannot be physically omnipresent according to his humanity. Because the communication of the divine attributes is impossible in its fullness with regard to the human nature, because the human nature is finite. I believe that is a fair statement of what the Reformed believe. The Lutheran contention, and, quite frankly, to be blunt, the contention of

1:38:37 Scripture, is that the fullness of deity dwells bodily in Christ. That's just a quote from Scripture. That's a verse. And so when Scripture says that, that necessarily means something, and so the personal union of God and man in Christ, is indivisible, inseparable. Where the divinity of Christ is present, the humanity of Christ is present, because Christ is an indivisible person, having assumed the humanity into himself. And so the humanity of Christ has and exercises the divine attributes of Christ. It does not have them in itself by its nature, because we do not teach that there is a mixing of the natures in the person of Christ. We went over this previously in other episodes. But Christ, even according to his humanity, is omnipresent, because of that

1:39:40 communication of the divine attributes, omnipresence being properly an attribute of the divinity. But But because of the communication of attributes, being an attribute of the person, the person being the totality of Christ, fully God, fully man. And so the argument that the finite is not capable of the infinite is simply refuted by Scripture and refuted by not terribly complicated theology. Yes, a little bit, but not not horribly so. A simpler version of that argument that I think everyone will be immediately able to grasp, quite fully. To refute the idea that the finite is not capable of the infinite in this particular way, whatever it is in specifically the reform mean. The refutation is merry.

1:40:39 And the reason for that is simple. Mary bore in her womb for nine months the infinite God. Could there be other than th the person of Christ himself, but this is even a more visceral and easier to grasp illustration of the principle, really. Could there be any more clear example of the finite holding, containing, being capable of the infinite, than Mary having Christ in her womb? I don't think there is. And so if Mary could have the Infinite God in her womb, then the Finite is most certainly capable of the Infinite, and the only way to reject that would be to reject the personal union, which would be rank heresy. I think everything that you just said is really boiled down by going back to a portion of the middle of that passage from

1:41:41 John six. Jesus says again, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the mana in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If any one eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? That's really the whole argument. Because while these things will often boil down to well, what does the text say, which is always a good question, is Corey was dealing with right there at the end, the underlying question is can God do it?

1:42:27 And they have first answered no God can't, and therefore they must find in a text some other version that lets God not being able to do something be in accord with scripture. Because if you simply believe what scripture says, you don't you don't have the problem. And you don't have to worry about John 6 being Eucharistic because it's all just it's all just figurative language. Well that's the same problem that the Jews had. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Well exactly the same way that Jesus had done the day before With the feeding of the five thousand. Five loaves and two fishes turned into twelve baskets of leftovers after probably twenty thousand people had eaten. That's how God can do it.

1:43:12 God works miracles. He works material miracles in the world. And we don't have to worry about it. His very demonstration of power, which is given incidentally by their demand, they said, give us a sign. They were constantly demanding signs for him to back up his teaching, and so sometimes he did. And the sign that he gave them on that day, he didn't cause, you know, a dove to appear, he didn't cause the clouds to part. What did he do? He took a small amount, a finite amount, and created in that day effectively an infinite amount. There was such a superabundance that there was more than they could have possibly eaten. That's how God does it. Is that an answer? No. It's it doesn't explain anything beyond just believing God and say,

1:43:58 okay, he delivered. If he can feed 20,000 people with you know a basket full of food, I think I think he can deliver on this promise too. And what does he say? He says, My I am the bread of life. I will give for the life of the world. It's my flesh. it's the same thing. Communion is vital because it delivers the forgiveness of sins. Again, this wasn't, you know, the miracle that Jesus performed with the food was just to feed their bellies. But the very next day, all the teaching was this is not about feeding your bellies because we skipped, you know, a few verses at the beginning of that where they were they were demanding a bread king, like look, this this guy can do miracles, he can food feed everybody, put him in charge, no one will ever go

1:44:42 hungry again. I want this guy to be my king. He's like, No, that's not why I'm here. your fathers were fed in the desert and they still died, even though the food they were giving was miraculous. This food that I'm giving you is a an even greater miracle. Those who will eat this food will never die. And yet what does he say even then? Jesus said a little while later, Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks on my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. So note that he's talking both about eternal life and about corporeal death. The only reason that a man would need to be raised up on the last day was that he died. So this medicine of immortality, this eternal life that's being given by

1:45:26 his flesh, by the bread, is not it's not the tree of life from the garden where a man lives forever. This is delivering forgiveness of sins, which is how God delivers the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. See, forgiveness of sins, which is delivered through faith, underpins all of this. It's why it's not a memorial meal, it's a sacrament. It's delivering an actual means of grace. God's doing something here. And what he's doing is one of the most important things that he's ever done. He's taking the sacrifice on the cross once for all, and he's delivering it materially in our mouths. As we said and we emphasized for two hours in the baptism episode, it's for our comfort.

1:46:11 When we receive the body and blood of Christ in our mouth, we know that God is delivering on his promises. Because yes, we have faith and we trust in God, and God knows we need more. He knows we need comfort, we need reassurance. He pours out more than we actually need because he's giving us everything everything we could possibly need or want. And so when the sacraments are given to us, not us doing them, but God giving them, he's delivering forgiveness, he's delivering faith, he's strengthening faith, and he's ensuring that no one has any reason to doubt. As we said in the baptism episode, even if there's a day where you doubt how hard you believe, how well you believe, how strong your faith is, if the only anchor that you have on

1:46:55 that day is your confidence in your baptism, that's still it's an anchor. It's holding you fast to the cross. The forgiveness of sins delivered in communion is the same thing. In the beautiful distinction between baptism the sacrament in the sacrament of the altar is that this is something that's given for us weekly. Jesus says do this as often you eat as you drink of it in remembrance of me. It's to be a regular meal. It's not to be infrequent. It should really be every week. And frankly, if you can do it more often, that's good. If you do it less often, it's not that, oh well, you went beneath the threshold, so you can't be saved now. It's not like some drug dosage because again, as we said in

1:47:37 the baptism episode and we'll save repeatedly because it's so vital. It is finished means that all of your sins are already paid for. The fact that you have faith to believe that means that all of your sins are paid for and delivered to you through faith in eternity. Your name is written in the book of life. Your name is tied to God's name in your baptism and He gives you forgiveness of sins in the blood and in the body through bread and wine, so that there's never any doubt, there's no room for doubt, even if you doubt yourself, even if you're having a really bad day, all these things that God pours out through the sacraments particularly eliminate the possibility for man to think, well, I

1:48:22 don't know, maybe maybe I'm out, maybe this this is just I don't feel it anymore. I don't know if I can trust in God. Well, if you can at least trust in his promises, you can work your way back. He will work you back. He's using these to to hang on to you. And sometimes it's necessary. You know, this these this food, this medicine that's given to us preserves our faith and our health in God. And sometimes it's also a lifeline. But if we're being sustained regularly in the body and in the the word, we have more than we need. And so God keeps us safe. He keeps our faith preserved. And the reason that the sacraments are so important to Lutherans and should be important to everyone, we believe as Lutheran doctrine presents it,

1:49:06 is that all of the other variations will sow doubt to some degree, some much more than others. There's we're not saying they're all equally incorrect. Some are a little bit off, some are very terribly off. But anytime you're giving up on any of God's promises, you're missing out. And that's that's the point. It's not it's not about winning this argument, it's not about changing minds or having you know more a higher score on the board. It's about making sure that all these things that God says are really important and these things that deliver immortality take it. It's a free gift. It's freely given. Just as our faith is freely given. All this stuff is poured out. And we need to just receive it in thanksgiving and in gladness

1:49:50 and in faith and in taking it seriously, not not being dismissive of it. You know, when we're warned that we should examine ourselves before communing, we should take that seriously. it's something that I think if if some of the people who are causing problems in the world today inside the church actually reflected sincerely on the controversies that they've stirred up and the injury that they've done, they would repent before they communed, which is the goal. The goal is to instill repentance in us, for us to turn away from all of our wickedness. We're we all crucify Christ every day with our evil actions. And yet once for all it was paid. And when this stuff is given to us in scripture and it's

1:50:36 given to us in physical means in the sacraments, it's to reassure us that God is going to keep every promise he's ever made. Because ultimately that is the only thing that we can actually count on. You can't count on the sun rising, you can't count on your family liking you, you can't count on your heart not stopping, but you can count on God. And when you count on that, the rest of those things, while they're still concerns, they can't they can't be worries. You can't worry when you have your faith rooted in all of God's promises. Everything else is it's highly desirable, it's nice to have, but it's no longer critical. You don't have to have the stuff. You have to have God's promises, and He gives those for free.

1:51:20 And so we will close out this episode with three quotes: one from the large catechism, one from what was effectively Luther's last will and testament, as he intended it at any rate, and then one other quote, and then a little bit about the history, just some quick tidbits from the history of the beliefs of the church with regard to the Lord's Supper. And so first from the large catechism. Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me. In the same way also he took the cup after supper, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, Drink

1:52:14 of it all of you, this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, this do as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. Here also we do not wish to enter into controversy and fight with the defamers and blasphemers of this sacrament, but to learn first, as we did with baptism, what is of the greatest importance. The chief point is God's word and ordinance or command, for the sacrament has not been invented nor introduced by any man, without anyone's counsel and deliberation it has been instituted by Christ. The Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Creed keep their nature and worth, even if you never keep, pray, or believe them. So also this honorable sacrament remains undisturbed.

1:53:01 Nothing is withdrawn or taken from it, even though we use it and administer it unworthily. Do you think God cares about what we do or believe, as though on that account he should allow his ordnance to be changed? Why in all worldly matters everything stays the way God is created and ordered it, no matter how we employ or use it? This point must always be taught, for by it the chatter of nearly all the fanatical spirits can be repelled, for they regard the sacraments unlike God's Word, as something that we do. Now what is the sacrament of the altar? Answer It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in and under the bread and wine, which we Christians are commanded by Christ's word to eat and to drink.

1:53:47 Just as we have said that baptism is not simple water, so here also we say that though the sacrament is bread and wine, it is not mere bread and wine, such as are ordinarily served at the table. But this is bread and wine included in and connected with God's Word. It is the Word I say that makes and sets this sacrament apart. So it is not mere bread and wine, but is and is called Christ's body and blood. For For it is said, when the word is joined to the element or natural substance, it becomes a sacrament. This saying of Saint Augustine is so properly and so well put that he has scarcely said anything better. The word must make a sacrament out of the element, or else it remains a mere element.

1:54:32 Now it is not the word or ordinance of a prince or emperor, but it is the word of the grand majesty, at whose feet all creatures should fall and affirm it as he says, and accept it with all reverence, fear, and humility. With this word you can strengthen your conscience and say, If a hundred thousand devils, together with all fanatics should rush forward crying, How can bread and wine be Christ's body and blood? And such I know that all spirits and scholars together are not as wise as is the divine majesty in his little finger. Now here stands Christ's word: take, eat, this is my body, drink of it all of you, this is my blood of the New Testament, and so on. Here we stop to watch those who will call themselves his masters,

1:55:19 and make the matter different from what He has spoken. It is true indeed, that if you take away the word, or regard the sacrament without the words, you have nothing but mere bread and wine. But if the words remain with them, as they shall and must, then by virtue of the words, it is truly Christ's body and blood. What Christ's lips say and speak, so it is he can never lie, or deceive. The second quote is from Luther's Confession Concerning Christ's Supper. This one was effectively what Luther intended as his last will and testament, and you'll note that he concerned himself not with the disposition of his estate or any such matters, although they handled as well elsewhere. He concerned himself with the Lord's supper.

1:56:12 That was how centrally important this was to the reformer. I see that schisms and errors are increasing proportionately with the passage of time, and that there is no end to the rage and fury of Satan. Hence, lest any persons during my lifetime or after my death appeal to me, or misuse my writings to confirm their error, as the Sacramentarian and Baptist fanatics are already beginning to do. I desire with this treatise to confess my faith before God and all the world point by point. I am determined to abide by it until my death and so help me God, in this faith to depart from this world, and to appear before the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, if any one shall say after my death, if Luther were

1:57:02 living now he would teach and hold this or that article differently, for he did not consider it sufficiently, etc. Let me say once and for all that by the grace of God I have most diligently traced all these articles through the scriptures, have examined them again and again in the light thereof, and have wanted to defend all of them as certainly as I have now defended the sacrament of the altar. I am not drunk or irresponsible, I know what I am saying, and I well realize what this will mean for me before the last judgment, at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let no one make this out to be a joke or idle talk. I am in dead earnest, since by the grace of God I have learned to know a great deal about Satan.

1:57:46 If he can twist and pervert the word of God in the scriptures, what will he not be able to do with my or someone else's words? In the same way, I also say and confess that in the sacrament of the altar, the true body and blood of Christ are orally eaten and drunk in the bread and wine, even if the priests who distribute them, or those who receive them do not believe or otherwise misuse the sacrament, it does not rest on man's belief or unbelief, but on the word and ordinance of God, unless they first change God's word and ordinance and misinterpret them as the enemies of the sacrament do at the present time. They indeed have only bread and wine, for they do not also have the words and instituted ordinance of God, but have perverted and

1:58:32 changed it according to their own imagination. And for the third quote The amazing thing, meanwhile, is that of all the fathers, as many as you can name, not one has ever spoken about the sacrament as these fanatics do. None of them uses such an expression as, it is simply bread and wine, or Christ's body and blood are not present. Yet since this subject is so frequently discussed by them, them, it is impossible that they should not at some time have let slip such an expression as, it is simply bread, or not that the body of Christ is physically present, or the like. Since they are greatly concerned not to mislead the people, actually they simply proceed to speak as if no one doubted that Christ's body

1:59:17 and blood are present. Certainly, among so many fathers and so many writings, a negative argument should have turned up at least once, as happens in other articles, but actually they all stand uniformly and consistently on the affirmative side. That quote is speaking of the Church Fathers, and in the Church Fathers, you will not find a denial of the real present, of the real presence, of the sacramental union. You will find affirmation after affirmation after affirmation of this teaching. And so to close out I will end with a bit of the history of this with regard to the early church, this ties into the fact that you will not find a different teaching on this subject in the Church Fathers, because this is the unanimous voice of the historic church.

2:00:17 During the Roman persecution, the particularly heinous parts of the Roman persecution of the early Christians, of the early church, one of the charges, one of the common charges, was a charge of cannibalism. And that charge was levelled against Christians because of the teaching on the Lord's Supper. Now, you may think, well they would still say that because of the words even if no. They were given the opportunity to recant or to explain what they meant before they were sentenced to death typically thrown to the lions, although other punishments were also used depending on the emperor and the one passing judgment. If they had simply said No we believe in a spiritual presence, echoing the reformed, or if they had simply said, No, this is

2:01:09 merely a memorial for Christ, echoing the Baptists, they would not have been executed for what they believed. Those in the early church who were subjected to persecution on account of Christ, on account of the teaching regarding the Lord's supper, were willing to go to the lions, were willing to die, rather than to affirm that any of the various false teachings that are today held by many traditions, many denominations. All they had to do was say, No, it's a spiritual presence, no it's a memorial, and they would not have been sentenced to death. Because if they had said that, they would have been just another mystery cult. The Roman Empire had plenty of those, those were normal. If you want to be weird in the corner, that's fine, you

2:01:58 do that. It was the charge of cannibalism and the insistence of the early Christians that no, we consume the body and blood of our Saviour in this sacrament. That is what sentenced them to death. and they were willing to die for it. Because when you are called upon to affirm scriptural truth, when you are called upon to affirm right doctrine, even if failing to do so, even if denying those truths would save your life, you are required, and in fact you are probably more required in the case where your life is in jeopardy. You are required to affirm the truth and to die for your faith. That is what it means to suffer persecution gladly. It is when you are persecuted specifically for your faith that you

2:02:52 stand up and declare the truth and suffer the consequences. It is not in regards to the left hand kingdom, in regard to politics and secular issues, that is a separate matter, and we have discussed that previously and will certainly get into it more in future episodes, but when it comes to the truth of the faith, when it comes to the Word of God, we are to affirm the truth, whatever the consequences may be. And that is what the early Christian Church did, when faced with the option of either deny the real presence, deny the sacramental union, that presence of Christ in the supper, in, with and under the bread and wine, deny it or die, they chose to die. Because that is how important the Lord's Supper is.

2:03:42 Because, as stated before, there are two sacraments in the Christian religion, two core sacraments. Again, we will not argue, quibble over whether or not there are some other sacramental things or sacraments, but there is baptism and there is the Lord's Supper Proper. Baptism is the ordinary means in the sense of traditional or proper. It is the ordinary means by which one enters into the family of God. One enters into that covenant, one is given faith and salvation, and the Lord's supper is how that is strengthened, it is how you are kept in the faith. And of course both must be with the word, for a sacrament is a pairing together of an element and the word. These are the means of grace, these are the things instituted by

2:04:31 God for the salvation of your soul. And so they are worth defending even unto death.