Luciano Subirá - A CEIA DO SENHOR | FD#41 – Transcript

00:00Well, today's topic is the Lord's Supper. Since I was a child, I heard this was one of Jesus' two ordinances, the Supper and Baptism. And I believe we need to understand more than just practical guidelines for procedure. Actually, I want to start by noting that you may attend a church that has different practical details. The most important thing here isn't to try to

00:27change how churches often end up having different ways of practicing the same principles. But what I want to do is try to shed some light by being guided and the reason behind it. So let's go. The Supper is an institution of the Lord Jesus.

00:44The apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, makes the following declaration in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, starting from verse 23. Through 26, we read, For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me, right?

01:09Do this, in older translations, de ye, is an imperative, obviously showing us this is an ordinance. Do this in remembrance of me, in the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Obviously, I didn't read the whole text.

01:39There are more details that Paul addresses, but to start, I believe this is sufficient. So I want to begin first with the definition of what the Supper is. That is our first point, defining what the Supper is. So, first of all, it is an ordinance of Jesus, a command that our Lord gave us, when he says, Do this, do this. As we saw once more, whenever you do this. So, he established a command and, obviously,

02:09expected us to obey. And this made the Supper be labeled not only as an ordinance of Jesus, but it obviously became part of Christian practice, the way the saints recognize both the death of Jesus, a past event, and also announce his coming. The second thing we can highlight is that this Supper is a memorial act, besides being an ordinance of Christ, a memorial act.

02:37Jesus makes the symbolic nature clear by saying, Do this in remembrance of me. Jesus is saying, The reason I am instituting the Supper, the reason I am commanding this to you, is because I want you to remember what I did for you.

02:55In this memorial act, I like to say it is a recollection of both the past aspect of what he did for us on the cross, the remission of sins, right? As well as making us look to the future. Because the Bible says that when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. The elements, therefore, the fruit of the vine, the bread, or figurative, they are not literal. The Roman Church, for

03:21example, teaches the doctrine of transubstantiation that the elements transform at the time of communion. We do not believe in that at all. On the other hand, we need to understand that, although the elements are symbolic, the communion with the body, the communion with the blood of Christ, that is true on a spiritual plane. Because there are two extremes, one is the doctrine of transubstantiation, saying that the elements transform. The other is saying that it is all

03:50so figurative as if there were nothing spiritual happening. No, communion with the body and blood happens on a spiritual plane, the benefits of access to them, without the symbolic elements necessarily needing to be transformed. That is why the experience is an act of remembrance and not a continuous renewal of our Lord's flesh and blood. Thirdly, often in Western culture,

04:15we do not see this. We can highlight that it is a covenant ritual. Easterners, the ancient peoples, placed great value on covenants, they respected them. And when Jesus institutes exactly the bread and the wine as the elements of the supper, I can understand that he knew exactly what he was doing. Because for them, the Jews, just like the other ancient peoples, bread and wine were part of a blood covenant ritual,

04:45the highest level of covenant one could establish with another. An example of this is when in the Old Testament we see Abraham going to meet Melchizedek or vice versa. And when the two meet and Abraham gives him tithes of everything, the best part of the spoils, the Bible says that Melchizedek comes to meet him bringing bread and wine.

05:08Some believe, no, that this practice wasn't so widely used by everyone, right? But in fact, even before there was clarity of understanding, right, of what Jesus would institute, we have both a figure like Melchizedek who figures Christ and his new priesthood, and we also see this as part, right, of a ritual that ancient peoples knew.

05:31And Jesus is saying that we must remember not only what he did, but the covenant established with us. We can still highlight in fourth place that the supper had become for, ah, the disciples of Jesus a moment not only of communion with the body and blood of Christ, the benefits on the spiritual plane, but it was also a time of fellowship among the brothers.

05:53Jude chapter 12 makes mention of the agapes or the so-called love feasts. It was a moment where the people gathered to eat, to have fellowship, to be together. And it is interesting to observe that when we look at the subject being addressed by Paul, he begins in verse 17, 1 Corinthians 11, saying, But in this that I now prescribe, I cannot praise you, because you come together not for the better, but for the worse, because, first of all, I am informed that, when you gather,

06:22there are divisions among you. And I partly believe that this is true, and he says, it is even necessary that there be parties among you so that those who are approved may also become known among you, when therefore you gather in the same place, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. For when you eat, each one takes his own supper beforehand, while one goes hungry, another gets drunk. Paul was talking about excesses, right? If he is talking about one being

06:48hungry, it wasn't just this participation in something so small and symbolic that we have today, both in the bread and in the cup, right? If he is talking about people who got drunk, obviously he is also talking about people who drank a lot of wine. So you and I need to understand that the context was a supper, it was a meal indeed. When Jesus instituted the supper, he was celebrating the Passover supper. And they didn't just take a sliver of bread and a little

07:14cup, a tiny chalice. It is in the middle of a meal that it was instituted and it began to be practiced. We have historical indications within these communion feasts. It was also a time, right, of relationship between the brothers. But in verse 22 he says, Do you not have houses where you can eat and drink, or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What can I say to you? Should I praise you? In this

07:40I certainly cannot praise you. Quote. So he shows that the way they were doing it was wrong, especially regarding this perspective of communion, of sharing all the food, of dividing it, of doing it together. And we can highlight in fifth place that the supper is an act of spiritual consequences. In the Epistle to the Corinthians it is clear, right, that the supper has two types of spiritual consequences, blessing or curse.

08:06In 1 Corinthians, in chapter 10, verse 16, Paul speaks of the cup of blessing which we bless. He doesn't just say that the cup is blessed, he said it is the cup of blessing, right? It didn't receive a blessing, the cup, it carries, it manifests, it releases a blessing. But, on the other hand, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, starting from verse 27, when the apostle Paul begins to speak about the correct way to participate in the supper and says, Therefore, whoever eats

08:35the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Let each one examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Quote. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and not a few sleep. He says, For if we would judge ourselves, and this is the purpose of self-examination, we would not be judged, judged by whom, by God. But when we are judged,

09:02we are disciplined by the Lord, that we may not be condemned along with the world. Therefore, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, hunger here in the sense of not being able to wait for everyone to arrive, let him eat at home, so that you do not come together for judgment. And the rest I will set in order when I come.

09:23I read up to verse 34. What can we understand and presume from this guidance? That whoever eats and drinks without discerning the body and blood of the Lord, eats judgment to himself. Then he speaks of people, right, who were dying prematurely, right?

09:43He speaks of people who were weak, sick, and not a few, translating many who were already sleeping, a synonym for dying, people who died prematurely. So, we know that the supper is an act of spiritual consequences. If, you know, it is experienced and participated in the right way, it brings the release of blessings. If we participate in it in the wrong way,

10:08we can be judged and experience curses. So, as I said before, although we shouldn't go to the extreme of transubstantiation, we cannot go to the other extreme and say that it is all so merely symbolic that there are no spiritual consequences. Because the Bible makes it clear that these consequences for those who participate in it will, in fact, be experienced, either blessing or curse. The second thing I want to highlight now is who participates in the Lord's Supper.

10:38We have already said that it is both a memorial act and a covenant ritual. As a memorial act, it recalls the established covenant. This does not mean that every time we are establishing a new covenant, but that we recognize the covenant Christ established with us. In fact, it is worth noting that in the Gospels we see Jesus emphasizing this. Paul himself quotes Jesus' statement, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, right? Jesus is highlighting a covenant

11:06that was being established. Therefore, we need to understand that this memorial, this remembrance, is for those who are already in a covenant with Christ, that is, those who have been born again and are in full communion with God, because we saw that no one can participate in the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, right? The Bible is not saying that our lifestyle generates personal dignity, right? In the sense of good works or dedication that generate merit, no,

11:34but the Bible is talking about committed sins that wound this communion, right? And something I like to highlight, if the Supper is precisely to remember the forgiveness and remission of sins, what sense does it make to practice the Lord's Supper while living deliberately in sin? It's a contradiction, right? Some people cannot understand the level of disrespect it is to obey what Jesus commanded, to celebrate the

12:00redemption of sins while doing so in sin. It is almost as if we were telling him, look, it doesn't matter how much this cost you, how much the Lord suffered, we don't care about it at all, to the point of playing around with a subject like this. So, that is why there are spiritual consequences when someone, spiritually speaking, is mocking God. Galatians chapter 6, verses 7 and 8 says, God is not mocked. Other versions say,

12:25God cannot be mocked. Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. He who sows to his flesh will have the flesh reap corruption. And the apostle also says, but whoever sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life, right? Someone who is cultivating a carnal lifestyle in a sinful practice and still goes there to pretend they are celebrating the forgiveness of sins they did not want to turn away from, that is why they will draw judgment upon themselves.