Easter Communion
This is a record in the Word of
God which is addressed to the church. Years
and years ago, now, as I had researched out the significance of Holy Communion,
I wrote a little booklet along this whole line and subject that we are gathered
here for tonight. It’s entitled “The
Cross in the Broken Body”. I was a
minister in the church. I had graduated from three seminaries at that time, but
no one had taught me the significance of Holy Communion, just no one. How in the world you can go through all of
this, I don’t know, but we seemed to do it.
And we just seem to be able to go on year after year without really
tapping into any great power and great resources. I used to say to myself in my mind, well why
do we have the bread and why do we have the cup? And I thought, well, I was taught they both
meant the same thing. Naturally when I
began to doubt, I got sort of feeling bad on the inside. I thought well, who am I to doubt what I’d
been taught all along? And I felt a
little bit condemned because I was beginning to doubt. Why would God place two things like this to
do the same job? Why would He give us
the bread and why would give us the cup?
And after I got through that period of condemnation, getting into God’s
Word, it was God’s Word that took the condemnation out of my life. And brought to me the knowledge that I currently
believed this
great record in Corinthians teaches and that record has in the teaching, that
has just blessed hundreds and hundreds of people across the nation.
When
you come to the Holy Communion, where you have the two elements of the bread
and the cup, you’ve got to take it way back in the Bible, to the very beginning
when God instituted the Passover. The
fruitfulness of what we are doing here again tonight will to a marked degree
depend upon whether we are really seeking deliverance from our sicknesses and
the consequences thereof or whether we are looking basically just for an excuse
for sickness. If you and I are not
seeking complete deliverance for our lives, then all we will get is an excuse
for the bondage in which we are engrossed and encased. There are people today, who literally
Christian people, who literally believe that it is God’s Will for them to be
sick. Well, if it’s God Will for them to
be sick, then it has to be God’s Will for them to be full of sin, too. Because we have two elements in the Holy
Communion, we have two elements in the death of Christ,
we have two of them in the Passover.
There are people who not only believe that God is the author of, but
that God is real happy when people get sick because it makes people humble. They believe that God makes a person better
by making him sick. People, God does not
send sickness. God is not the author of sickness, disease or of death. God does not need to send sickness or disease
to prove His people. God has sent His
only begotten son, He’s given us His Word and by His Son, and by His Word that
God proves us whether we believe that Word or whether we reject it.
The Corinthian church as you heard me read was a carnal church. They were born again of God’s spirit, but they had not renewed their minds to the greatness of what God had accomplished in Christ Jesus. There was among that Corinthian group a division, there were heresies, there were different sects among them. This is all indicative of the carnality of a church. Not only was that true, but they were loaded with sickness. Division, strife. It has never been God’s Will for people to be enslaved under the bondage of sin. It has never been God’s Will for people to be enslaved under the bondage of sickness. Sin and sickness are both inaugurated by the devil. And of course most people don’t believe in the devil, but they’re sicker than the devil anyways. That’s right. He is the author of it. And as it says in the Word of God, that Satan is the author of death. God is light, in God there is no darkness. He is light, and for these people who teach that God is the author of sickness, they are entirely illogical in their life. Because the moment they get sick themselves, they go to a doctor. Or if they get a nice headache, they either take aspirin or Bufferin, depending on what TV show they been watching. Sheer logic tells me that if God is the author of sickness, then anybody that would be taking an aspirin would be endeavoring to defeat the Will of God. Logic tells me that if God is the author of sickness, then you ought to praise Him when you’re sick. Not only praise Him for being sick, but you ought to praise Him and thank Him for making you twice as sick as you are because then you would have twice the thanksgiving. So if God puts cancer on you, you are to pray to give you two cancers because you would be twice as much glory to God. I understand that a certain person is out with a film, they were saying that immediately after someone gets saved, God kills his wife. Holy heck, if God is going around killing his wife before she got saved. What does God want to kill her for once He got her saved. But we have been brought up in an environment where the Word of God’s just been hashed to pieces and where the true God has been literally made into Satan. And Satan walks around unscathed and free because we aren’t laying the blame where it belongs.
God told the people in Deuteronomy that as long as they would believe Him and walk on the light of the Word, they would not have any sickness. And the curse of the law was, the breaking of it, the curse was that they’d become sick. And if you’ll read Deuteronomy chapter 28 some time, you will find out that that whole chapter, basically two thirds or more, of the curses that people brought upon themselves by breaking God’s law, is sickness. But in the book of Galatians, in chapter 3, it says that Christ had redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being [having been] made a curse for us: -- Galatians 3: 13a
Christ has redeemed us. Well bless God, if
Christ redeemed us then I am what?
Whether you like it or not, I am still redeemed. Whether the neighbors down the street like
it, I’m still redeemed. Whether the
next-door preacher likes it, I’m still redeemed. Whether old Maggie Muggins,
mugs everybody, I’m still redeemed.
Bless God. That’s right. Christ hath (past tense), people I didn’t do
it for you. He did it for you. And you and I have to come to the place that
we believe that what God said, God meant, and what God wrought in Christ, he
did. Christ hath (past tense) redeemed
(past tense) us from the curse of the law.
So don’t you come around, try to put me under that damnable stuff. I’ve been redeemed. There’s a song like that, remember? I’m redeemed.
Hallelujah. Not by the good works
of man, but by what God wrought in Christ when He raised him from the
dead. Tremendous song. But we lost the Word. We lost the Word. And when the Word isn’t there, there is no
light. We sit in darkness. And God’s people today, they’re born again,
oodles of them, born again of God’s spirit, but they’re in darkness. You know salvation is by grace. You can get saved, glory hallelujah, and walk
a lifetime in defeat. Because just
getting Christ within doesn’t turn you on, it just gets you into heaven. What turns you on is the knowledge of God’s
Word put in your mind and your walk. Your believing. If
the church has been redeemed from sickness and from sin and all that stuff, why
was the Corinthian church so sick? For
the same reason the church is sick today.
Because they didn’t properly discern the Lord’s body. They did not appropriate to themselves what
the Lord did by his body. They appropriated
unto themselves by grace what he did with his blood, namely the remission of
sins. But they never appropriated under
themselves the significance of what Christ did when his body was broken. Why, he said, because of this, there are many
weak among you, many sick, and many who are asleep prematurely. They died before they should have died simply
because they didn’t properly or rightly discern the Lords body. This Corinthian church was a small outfit
compared to a group of Israelites who left
Twenty years people, it says in
Psalm 107 and more specifically in Psalm 105: 37, there was not one feeble knee among
all of the children of
He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person [knee] among their tribes. -- Psalm 105: 37
And there were about three million. Ladies and gentlemen, either God has gotten weaker, maybe God has died, or something has happened in our society and our time which corresponds closely with the record in Corinthians.
I do not believe God has died. I do not believe God has become weaker. For in the book of Malachi, God said He was God and He said, I do not change. God does not change.
I am the Lord, I change not;………….. -- Malachi 3: 6a
If God does not change, you have only one answer left, man must have changed. Not one feeble knee among them and they weren’t even living under the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were living under the law, and yet they could wander in the wilderness under those adverse conditions and not one feeble knee. Class, I am saying to you we have lived so far below par, it’s almost pitiful. Because on every hand, everybody talks us out of what the declaration of the greatness of God’s Word is. Don’t tell me they walked for twenty years without one feeble knee because they were so good. That bunch of Israelites were a bunch of nincompoops half the time. That’s right. Kicking the traces. Doing everything else. Old Moses hotfoots it up on a mountain to get a little message from God written down on two tables of stone and while he’s headed that direction, his brother is headed this direction. Getting himself a little bit of gold and brass and a few other items to build a golden calf with. And yet for twenty years, they wandered in that wilderness without one feeble knee. In the Corinthian church, they were dying prematurely. Many of them were sick and incapacitated. What about our church today? You can have a church of five thousand members and you got 5001 sick. Well, have you ever been with a group of church people who have ever come forth and said well boy, praise the Lord, I’m not sick, I’m healthy, I’m walking with the power of God. You meet them on Monday even after Easter coming down the street tomorrow morning to work and you say well how are you? Well, I don’t know. Sort of had a miserable night. Man, I got a headache or something else. Isn’t it? It’s terrible. You get a church of 250 members and you got 250 of them sick. They used to say to me, they don’t do this so often, at least not to my face because I read them the Word of God as the riot act, I call it. And then I say either put up or shut up. And of course nobody wants to really put up when it comes to the greatness of God’s Word. And they say well, if you don’t get sick, how are you going to die? You know what I used to say to them? Well, how did you get here in the first place? Did you come sick? Most of us came pretty squawky the first time. Wild, and everything else. And it didn’t take but about, I don’t know about how long until you were sucking away at life. Moving in on the territory that belong to you, claiming everything. That’s right. Well bless God if we come packaged up in such perfection, what do we want to go home for sicker than dogs? It just doesn’t make sense.
In the Old Testament, a fellow by the name of Jacob, he decided he had enough of this old life, his old buddies were gone. It all disappeared and he decided well I had enough, I think. Seen enough of life – enjoyed it. Might as well await the Lord’s return. So he got his whole family together, all 13 or 12 or 13 kids – the whole group. He called them all in, he sat down and he said now Reuben, I want you to do this. Issachar, I want you to do this. Joseph, I want you to do this and so on and so forth. Finally, after he’d given them full instruction. It says he pulled up his knees and fell asleep. That’s all.
And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people. – Genesis 49: 33
He just laid down his life, he just gave it up. There wasn’t one feeble knee among them. I may not always manifest the greatness of God’s Word, but I sure believe God’s Word is great. And I’m appropriating it as much as I can and I am walking as great as I can and as great as my believing. This is why this Ministry is exciting. This is why the time in our lives when we could really walk together to try to again show to the world what a Christian believer really ought to be. Well, let me read you this from Exodus. Listen.
And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. -- Exodus 12: 7, 8
Then Moses says in chapter 12, verse 11. This is a tremendous truth:
………………………it is the Lord’s Passover. -- Exodus 12: 11 (last phrase)
As they believed and acted upon God’s Word, they brought to themselves complete deliverance. Nobody could kill those Israelites as long as they believed. Old Pharaoh had the greatest armament, he had the finest army, Air Force, FBI, and everything else and he couldn’t touch them. That’s right. He got a little too much water himself. He drowned. That was the baptist side of the Pharaohs, I guess. These people acted upon God’s Word as it was spoken by a man called Moses.
Now the blood of Jesus Christ was
shed for our sin like the blood of the lamb was the covering for the sins of
the children of
………………For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: -- I Corinthians 5: 7b
In the Old Testament the lamb
represented the Passover. The blood
represented the covering for sins. The
flesh represented the healing of the body.
In Corinthians it says as plain as day, that Christ is our
Passover. Then in Christ, we have what
they had under the law in the lambs.
Furthermore, it says in the Word of God, that Jesus Christ was the lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. And if you trace it all through, you will see
that what was accomplished in Christ has to be more than what was available even
in the lamb for the Passover. And this
year when Jesus Christ died, he being the Passover, died at the very hour, at
the very time that the Passover lamb was being slain in
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. -- I Peter 2: 24
Everything culminated in Christ. When they broke his body, in the breaking of his body, we have the healing of everybody. In the shed blood, we have the remission and the forgiveness of our sins. And the Lord Jesus Christ said exactly that. And the record in Corinthians is exactly that. For the bread Jesus took, he broke it and he said, this is my body. So whatever the body of the lamb represents is whatever Christ represented for Christ was the Lamb of God. Then he said the cup is the new covenant of my blood, or in my blood. It’s of his blood unto the remission of sins. What the blood was in the lamb, the blood of the Lamb of God Jesus Christ is for God’s people. He said to the Corinthian church that they were dying prematurely. Because they had not properly discerned the Lord’s body. And all over our country and all over the world today, people are dying prematurely, Christians, Satan is killing them off prematurely because we as clergymen are not standing up and declaring the greatness of God’s Word and its accuracy. That there are two basic elements in the holy communion. 1) is the broken body - the bread for the healing of our bodies 2) the other is the cup for the remission and for the forgiveness of sins. Now you don’t need this bread, you don’t need that cup as far as being healed, as far as getting remission of sins and forgiveness. I know that. Shoot. Nobody knows that any better than I do. But Jesus Christ said, this do in remembrance. And that’s the only reason we do it. Because it’s the only thing that I see left in the church in a material realm that you can manipulate with your hands and taste and touch. And it’s only in remembrance of what he did. Now I know you can remember it in your mind. That’s good. But he said, this do ye in remembrance of me and since he said it, that settled it for me. If he had said, take a candle in your right hand and throw it on the ground in remembrance of me, I being a Christian would have to do what he says. Healing is not in just eating the bread, or remission of sins is not in just drinking the cup, it’s in the believing. It’s in the believing. Where do you want to go with God? What do you want to do? And you have just as much right to holy communion as anyone else. When you participate and you eat that bread and you believe, that in the eating of that bread, God is going to take care of that physical sickness and are going to walk in the deliverance of the wholeness of God. God will heal you tonight. If you participate, believing, that when you drink this cup, that in the drinking of that cup you have remission of sins and forgiveness of sins, God will not only save you, He will heal you physically and he’ll put you on the road to heaven that all hell cannot stop you from going.
I tell you people we’ve got a Savior that is a Savior. We have a redeemer who is a redeemer. We have a Christ who is a living reality. And he’s made it so simple and so easy for you and for me because it cost him his life. He who knew no sin, the Word of God says, became sin so that you and I might become the righteousness of God in him. I’d call that a wonderful Savior, wouldn’t you? Someone who loved us so much that God gave His only begotten son. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Providing, you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. -- Romans 10: 9,10
Why do we continue to let Satan
talk us out of all the great things which are available to God’s children? We shouldn’t.
For surely in Christ Jesus, we have immensely more than the children of
It’s the promise in His Word, people. If you have never studied or never read this little booklet, you ought to take it home with you and work it in the Word. Whether you agree with it is not important. Its importance is - is it the Word? If it’s the Word, then you and I will have to line up our lives with the Word if we say that we believe God’s Word. And people, you all know that somebody has to come up with something that is more accurate than what we’ve had the last 20 or 30 years. Because our God cannot be weaker. He has to have available what His Word says. And therefore tonight, people, we share with our people on this one night in the year that which the Lord Jesus Christ instituted, in which the apostle Paul in Corinthians by Revelation set in the body of the church. And this we are to do in remembrance. Just remember what Christ did for you. Just do it in remembrance of what he accomplished. Shall we pray?
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