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Confessing Our Faith – Praise That God Sent His Son

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For the past few months, on weeks we take the Lord’s Supper together, we’ve been using statements of our faith that unite us as we gather around the Lord’s table together.  This coming Lord’s Day, we’ll be using this confession entitled Praise That God Sent His Son from Coram Deo Church in Omaha, NE:

We praise you, O God,
for sending your Son, Jesus,
to be King of kings.
We rejoice that he has triumphed
over all the powers of this world
and governs the nations in justice and righteousness.
We celebrate the victory He won
by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
By your Spirit, claim our complete loyalty;
Establish Christ’s rule in every land and in every heart.
Accept our worship as we offer our lives
in the service of His kingdom.
He is Lord forever and ever. Amen.

Weekend Preview – Ordinances and John

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This weekend we are anticipating a full day at Crestview on 2/28.  We will be opening our service with some baptisms.  We’ll also sing, hear some insight for our upcoming study of John’s Gospel and come to the Lord’s Supper table together.  I hope it’s a rich time of fellowship and worship for you.  Plan to join us as 10:15AM or by our live stream.

Lord’s Supper As Thanksgiving

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Our church took the Lord’s Supper together yesterday, 11/24/13.  Taking the Lord’s Supper always seemed like a meaningless add-on in worship to me growing up.  I knew it meant something serious spiritually speaking, but couldn’t make the connection to why that rhythm was needed and I feel I’m just getting to a point where I’m starting to understand it.

Having the Lord’s Supper during the week of Thanksgiving is terrific.  Some traditions call the Lord’s Supper or Communion the Eucharist, which means to give thanks.  This thought originated as Jesus took the bread and gave thanks, then broke it for the disciples.   When we come to the Lord’s Supper table together, we should come thankful for all that is ours in the Gospel.  Because Jesus gave His life and blood for me, I know forgiveness, grace, hope and am set apart to worship forever.

This week as you gather with your family to give thanks think of the work of Jesus Christ, sinless Godman, who came to earth to seek and save the lost.  He came for us and that is something for which we can be forever grateful.

What Are You Thinking About During Lord’s Supper?

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This was a provocative question Justin Taylor asked recently and he provided a helpful answer from J.I. Packer:

I don’t think we can ever say too much about the importance of an active exercise of mind and heart at the communion service. . . .

Holy Communion demands us of private preparation of heart before the Lord before we come to the table. We need to prepare ourselves for fellowship with Jesus Christ the Lord, who meets us in this ceremony. We should think of him both as the host of the communion table and as enthroned on the true Mount Zion referred to in Hebrews 12, the city of the living God where the glorified saints and the angels are.

The Lord from his throne catches us up by his Spirit and brings us into fellowship with himself there in glory. He certainly comes down to meet us here, but he then catches us up into fellowship with him and the great host of others who are eternally worshipping him there.

We are also to learn the divinely intended discipline of drawing assurance from the sacrament. We should be saying in our hearts, ‘as sure as I see and touch and taste this bread and this wine, so sure it is that Jesus Christ is not a fancy but a fact, that he is for real, and that he offers himself to be my Saviour, my Bread of Life, and my Guide to glory. He has left me this rite, this gesture, this token, this ritual action as a guarantee of this grace; He instituted it, and it is a sign of life-giving union with him, and I’m taking part in it, and thus I know that I am his and he is mine forever.’ That is the assurance that we should be drawing from our sharing in the Lord’s Supper every time we come to the table.

And then we must realize something of our togetherness in Christ with the rest of the congregation. . . . [We should reject the] strange perverse idea . . . that the Lord’s Supper is a flight of the alone to the Alone: it is my communion I come to make, not our communion in which I come to share. You can’t imagine a more radical denial of the Gospel than that.

The communion table must bring to us a deeper realization of our fellowship together. If I go into a church for a communion service where not too many folk are present, to me it is a matter of conscience to sit beside someone. This togetherness is part of what is involved in sharing in eucharistic worship in a way that edifies.

—J. I. Packer, “The Gospel and the Lord’s Supper,” in Serving the People of God, vol. 2 of Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 49-50.

I don’t know what you think about while the elements are being distributed, but tomorrow, as we take this as a church, let’s practice looking to Jesus and see if this really doesn’t enter us into communion with Him.

Weekend Recap – Baptism/Lord’s Supper

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Recapping yesterday, we had a great AM Celebrating the Gospel, observing baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I don’t know about you, but hearing testimony of God’s Work to save some was very encouraging. And then, capping that off by coming together to the Lord’s table was a great blessing.

Then, in the evening, we had a great time of Corporate Prayer, specifically using Psalm 30 in our prayers for mission trips/teams, college students, and pregnancies.

I hope as we move into this week that you are encouraged because of the amazing message of the Gospel.

More on prep for Lord’s Supper…

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I thought Kevin DeYoung’s post on Tears and the Table is another helpful consideration in our preparation to come together at the Lord’s table this coming Lord’s Day. Here’s the quote from the Heidelberg Catechism that is so helpful…

Question 75 asks, “How does the Lord’s Supper remind you and assure you that you share in Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross and in all his gifts?” Here’s the answer:

In this way: Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat this broken break and to drink this cup. With this command he gave this promise: First, as surely as I see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken for me and the cup given to me, so surely his body was offered and broken for me and his blood poured out for me on the cross. Second, as surely as I receive from the hand of the one who serves, and taste with my mouth the bread and cup of the Lord, given me as sure signs of Christ’s body and blood, so surely he nourishes and refreshes my soul for eternal life with his crucified body and poured-out blood.

Lord’s Supper This Sunday AM

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Yes, this Sunday AM we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. If you get a chance, work through the following links to get a good, Cross-centered focus working as we come to the table together.

Prayer for Lord’s Supper from Valley of Vision

From Matthew Henry’s Method for Prayer: Prayers For the Lord’s Supper (In Preparation for the Lord’s Supper, In the Celebrating of the Lord’s Supper, and After Celebrating the Lord’s Supper)