Dale Partridge - May 27, 2020


Real Christianity #99： How and Why Should Christians Take Communion


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00:00:00.000 Welcome to Real Christianity, a weekly show designed to help Christians know their Bible,
00:00:04.940 defend their faith, and truly understand what it means to follow Jesus.
00:00:08.980 The premise is simple. The culture is getting louder. The church is getting flashier,
00:00:13.840 but few pastors are teaching on how to live a biblical life.
00:00:17.780 My name is Dale Partridge, along with my incredible wife, Veronica.
00:00:21.160 Join us as we start an important conversation about what it really means to be a Christian.
00:00:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords
00:01:00.000 Welcome to Real Christianity. Today we are talking about how and why should Christians take communion. 0.56
00:01:07.840 I think many people in the church struggle to understand the beauty of communion.
00:01:14.940 And by that I mean I think that most of us, many of us, have a ritualistic view of the Lord's Supper.
00:01:22.280 Meaning that they do it because their church does it.
00:01:24.840 And, you know, they know it's a special time, but they can't really explain the theological
00:01:30.860 importance of it all.
00:01:32.420 So we're going to be discussing that in this episode today.
00:01:35.080 But before we get started, I wanted to mention if you are one of the many families that have
00:01:40.660 found yourself interested in house church or a smaller expression of church, especially
00:01:46.380 in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, we've created a handful of resources.
00:01:54.060 As you guys know that our main ministry, ReLearn.org, is about helping people learn how to do church in the house.
00:02:02.020 We don't have a new or different ecclesiological structure.
00:02:08.240 We are the same church, the same biblical, historical, evangelical church, just in a different expression.
00:02:17.260 We help people plant house churches.
00:02:20.320 And how do you take what you would experience in a traditional church and put that in a home?
00:02:28.140 And that's really what our ministry is focused on.
00:02:31.000 So house church shouldn't be viewed as something radically different in its ecclesiological set.
00:02:37.080 But really, it's just how does that happen?
00:02:39.940 When you're in a building, you kind of are put into what's called a monologue setting, right?
00:02:45.620 is that you have one guy speaking, and you have an audience listening. In a house church,
00:02:52.160 you have more of a dialogue setting, and that just shift in location really creates a different
00:03:00.740 expression of church. But again, a biblical house church would have elders and deacons and still do
00:03:07.000 communion and have church structure and have church discipline and have regularity and
00:03:12.220 commitment and membership and order. And so there's definitely still a structure to what
00:03:19.280 we're talking about. It's just done in a home. If you want to learn more about that, you can
00:03:24.660 always download a free PDF that our ministry has provided. It's called The Basics of Biblical
00:03:30.800 House Church. You can download that at relearnchurch.org forward slash house. You also,
00:03:38.260 So if you're interested in applying to our house church planting school or our training
00:03:45.020 program, we are launching in 2021 at the very beginning, January, 2021.
00:03:51.620 That's at stjustins.org.
00:03:54.560 That's our companion ministry, St. Justin's.
00:03:57.580 That's stjustins, plural, .org.
00:04:01.160 And that's our program for training pastors how to plant a house church.
00:04:07.720 And some people might be pastors before, some people might just be mature Christian believers
00:04:13.280 that are looking to establish a small gathering of a handful of families in their home.
00:04:18.820 And if that's you, we would love to hear from you.
00:04:21.680 You can request more information if you're interested at St. Justin's, or you can start
00:04:27.740 reading some of the basics.
00:04:29.640 We also, our ministry has released a book that you can buy at shop.relearnchurch.org
00:04:35.860 or on Amazon, a book called House Church that talks about some of the doctrines, convictions,
00:04:41.560 and liturgical or order of worship of a house church.
00:04:45.840 And so if you want more information about that, there you go.
00:04:49.800 And hopefully that's helpful for you guys.
00:04:52.260 Let's talk about communion.
00:04:54.220 Let's dive into this discussion here.
00:04:56.980 Most people understand that Jesus instructed his disciples in the ordinance of communion
00:05:04.720 in the upper room shortly before his arrest on his way to the cross. Some people even know
00:05:11.400 that Paul instructed the New Testament churches to partake in communion together in 1 Corinthians
00:05:18.700 chapter 11. I think that's where kind of the average believer goes, yeah, I know that it's
00:05:23.900 in the Gospels. I know that it's in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and that's kind of where most people
00:05:30.320 sit. Beyond that, communion for most is kind of a theological mystery. It's not naturally attached
00:05:39.420 to the common cultural issues that receive lots of editorial attention like marriage, parenting,
00:05:45.860 sin, worry, suffering. Those get lots of books, lots of articles, lots of discussion, lots of
00:05:50.300 sermons. Communion doesn't really have this natural attachment to those kind of more common
00:05:56.440 issues. And so it's kind of left in this high holy theological aura that can often deter the
00:06:05.660 common Christian from inquiring to understand the Lord's Supper at a deeper level. And I think a lot
00:06:12.760 of people in the Protestant church are going, the high holy view of it can feel with a Catholic vibe
00:06:21.420 or an Anglican vibe even.
00:06:24.200 And so, you know, we kind of land on the side of,
00:06:28.740 hey, it's simple, right?
00:06:30.660 It's bread, wine that represents Christ's body and his blood
00:06:33.940 that we eat and drink it in remembrance of Christ's work on the cross
00:06:38.080 and proclaim this in his death and resurrection until his return, right?
00:06:43.440 That's it, right?
00:06:44.680 Well, yes and no.
00:06:48.460 It's definitely that, what we just said,
00:06:50.480 but it's also much more than that.
00:06:54.120 And so the act of communion, I would say, is so theologically dense
00:06:58.000 that books upon books upon books have been written
00:07:01.820 on the topic of the Lord's Supper.
00:07:04.920 Denominations have been created by it.
00:07:07.920 Churches have been split over it.
00:07:10.620 Battles have been fought, physical battles because of it.
00:07:14.620 People have died because they refused to suspend their observance of it.
00:07:19.020 But communion is complex and magnificent when you look down the annals of history.
00:07:28.080 So I thought I'd attempt to just show you a tiny piece of that depth in this episode.
00:07:34.780 For example, let's just pretend that we were at Crater Lake here in Oregon.
00:07:39.440 It's this beautiful, it's like one of the deepest lakes in the world.
00:07:42.580 It's huge.
00:07:43.640 It's inside of a crater of a volcano.
00:07:45.800 Let's just imagine that we're looking at Crater Lake.
00:07:47.700 and then I took you over to the shore of the beach
00:07:51.660 and I invited you over to look at like a small pool,
00:07:55.660 like a 10-foot pool that I dug in the ground
00:07:59.080 where some of the water from Crater Lake flooded into it.
00:08:02.180 That's kind of what I'm doing here, right?
00:08:04.180 There are miles and miles and miles
00:08:06.660 of theological breadth of this topic,
00:08:10.060 but let's just like look at a little pool
00:08:12.640 of this issue over here in the corner
00:08:15.780 and hope that it might illuminate the wonder of communion.
00:08:21.460 So I'm going to jump in with just really three points.
00:08:25.840 The first point I'm going to give probably the most attention
00:08:28.000 because it's probably the leading discussion on the matter of the Lord's Supper.
00:08:34.440 And it's literalism versus symbolism.
00:08:37.360 And so there's a large centuries-long debate.
00:08:41.360 I would say this debate probably started maybe when the Lord, you know, instituted the Lord's Supper all the way till now.
00:08:51.160 So this has been going on for a long time.
00:08:53.220 There's a huge debate over whether communion transforms into the literal body and blood of Jesus or if the bread and wine symbolically represent the body and blood of Jesus.
00:09:07.540 And so the literal interpretation is called transubstantiation.
00:09:11.880 It's a big word, right? Transubstantiation.
00:09:14.860 And it's how the Catholic Church views communion.
00:09:18.740 I've actually seen, not in person, but pictures of stories about nuns who pray over spilt communion wine on the carpet because they really believe it's the literal blood of Jesus.
00:09:34.100 um but additionally you know so that's that's how how literal i'm talking about here um the
00:09:43.540 catholic church also refers to communion um as a sacrament um they would never refer to it as an
00:09:50.720 ordinance how you would generally see that in the protestant church but uh a a sacrament like a
00:09:57.820 means of grace and in comparison to an ordinance, which is really a spiritual act that was delivered
00:10:06.260 by Christ, but symbolic in nature. And I think there's really two of those acts, right? There's
00:10:12.960 baptism and there's the Lord's Supper, where the Catholic Church has several sacraments. I believe
00:10:20.040 there's seven sacraments in the Catholic Church. And so there's some divide over these issues as
00:10:25.820 well. The Protestant Church, that is the group that protested against the Catholic Church,
00:10:32.200 that's why we have the name the Protestant, or the protesting party during the Reformation in
00:10:37.920 the 1500s, they hold to, and I hold to, the symbolic interpretation, and here's why. So just
00:10:46.020 because Jesus said, this is my body and this is my blood, doesn't necessarily mean that this is to
00:10:52.520 be taken literally. I believe Dr. Keith Matheson, he did a really great video from Ligonier,
00:11:00.620 explains this really well. And he does this by holding up his hand and he said,
00:11:05.160 this is my hand, which is a literal statement, right? This is my hand. It's a literal statement.
00:11:10.160 But next he held up a picture of his hand and said, this is my hand. And that's obviously a
00:11:16.520 figurative statement. But, you know, nobody knows just off those specific words of Jesus what he
00:11:25.580 really meant. Was he saying this is my literal body? Was he saying this is a symbolic part of
00:11:32.460 my body? You know, this is the big question. And I think the only way to gain insight into this
00:11:39.920 is to look at the biblical context of when he said it,
00:11:44.920 where he said it, and why he said it.
00:11:47.760 And I think that gives us the answer here.
00:11:50.040 So let's do that for a second.
00:11:52.380 So Jesus initiates this act, the Lord's Supper,
00:11:58.460 during Passover, at the Passover meal,
00:12:02.380 shortly before his arrest and his journey to the cross.
00:12:04.540 Um, Protestant theologians believe Jesus was basically leveraging the Passover night
00:12:12.400 to display how he is the true Passover lamb.
00:12:18.160 I mean, if you guys have read John recently, you know, in John chapter one, verse 29, John
00:12:23.520 the Baptist says this famous line, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of
00:12:28.620 the world. So he's already been declared the Lamb of God in his ministry at this point.
00:12:36.480 And like the spotless lamb's blood that when painted on the doorposts in Egypt in the story
00:12:41.540 of Exodus that freed the Jews from physical death, Jesus is now inaugurating a new Passover-like
00:12:52.260 experience how his blood in this new covenant will free you from eternal death. When we remember
00:13:02.880 this and we then look at the Passover meal that was commanded to be observed again by the Torah,
00:13:09.440 we see that there's a theme and the theme is symbolic and not literal. So I want you guys
00:13:14.900 to kind of put on your Jewish history hats here for a second. Think back to the Passover and 0.86
00:13:19.700 Exodus. Think back to actually the instruction to keep the Passover meal every year. And why did
00:13:28.220 we have to keep that Passover meal? Why did the Jews have to do that? Well, it's because it was 1.00
00:13:33.160 a memorial, right? It was an act of memorial of remembrance. And for example, during the Passover
00:13:40.100 meal, the Jews were to eat salty and bitter herbs as a way to remind them symbolically 0.69
00:13:48.500 of the sweat and slave labor that they were freed from by God and by the blood of the lamb that was
00:13:58.020 posted over the doorpost. The matzah, the unleavened bread that they have during a Passover
00:14:03.980 meal was a reminder of their inability to fully bake bread because they had to leave quickly,
00:14:12.640 their speedy requirement to leave Egypt. And so there's six foods in the Passover meal,
00:14:19.600 and each of them have a symbolic meaning. You can actually Google it and look at their
00:14:24.340 symbolic meanings. But again, they were symbolic and not literal. So God is a God of creating
00:14:32.080 memorial acts, right? There's altars that were built. There's acts, physical activities that
00:14:40.000 give us spiritual truths. Baptism, obviously, is another one of those.
00:14:48.380 But nobody believed that the salty and bitter water was actually sweat, like literally sweat 1.00
00:14:55.140 and tears of the Jews in Egypt. And in the same way, the bread and the cup, in my opinion, 0.99
00:15:01.240 and in the Protestant perspective are not the literal body and blood of Jesus,
00:15:06.520 but there's a symbolic picture of the body and blood that freed us from the slavery of sin.
00:15:14.780 And so Jesus replaced the symbolic Passover meal of the Old Covenant
00:15:20.320 with the ordinance of communion under the New Covenant.
00:15:24.440 He talks about how this is the blood of the New Covenant. 0.58
00:15:28.620 And in the same way, the Jews, again, memorialize that freedom from physical slavery and death through the blood of the Passover lamb, we are to remember and proclaim what God has done for us through Christ in the new covenant, Passover lamb.
00:15:44.160 And so that's why when you look at this exegetically, you break down the history, the context, it makes more sense for this to be a symbolic thing because it aligns with God's character historically.
00:16:00.280 And so that's one part, like a drop in Crater Lake, right?
00:16:06.960 Of just, you can spend lots of time looking over literalism versus symbolism, but there's
00:16:12.060 some really beautiful discussion there.
00:16:14.840 Number two I want to talk about is why bread and why the fruit of the vine?
00:16:20.740 Because it doesn't say wine, it says the fruit of the vine, implying grape juice or implying
00:16:25.980 wine.
00:16:27.300 But why do we need to use these elements, right?
00:16:29.440 I've seen people ask the question, why can't we do communion with, you know, Pop-Tarts and
00:16:34.640 lemonade, right? Or donuts and soda or whatever you want to do. That's a valid question. It might
00:16:41.860 shock you that people ask that, but it's a question that's been asked for sure.
00:16:45.860 I want to talk about why. So God consecrates certain things. He purifies certain things.
00:16:55.100 We can see this in a picture in the tabernacle or the temple of Jerusalem throughout the
00:17:01.340 scriptures, that there were certain things that were used for common use, and there were
00:17:06.000 certain things used for holy use that were set apart, that were consecrated for use inside
00:17:12.680 the temple.
00:17:14.780 You know, when Moses stood before God, the Lord consecrated a portion of the earth and
00:17:20.820 called it holy ground.
00:17:22.000 You remember him saying, take off your shoes for you stand on holy ground.
00:17:26.800 He made a portion holy, special, set apart.
00:17:32.120 In the same way, Jesus consecrated bread, and he does this, he talks about it, he calls
00:17:40.580 himself the bread of life, and we see bread in the picture of feeding the 5,000.
00:17:47.500 We see it, obviously, in the Lord's Supper, breaking bread.
00:17:49.940 Jesus consecrated bread and the fruit of the vine for use during communion.
00:17:59.320 In other words, he set these two specific elements apart and made them holy.
00:18:07.380 And by that, really, he granted these specific elements the ability to fulfill a spiritual purpose that other elements cannot.
00:18:16.700 So there's way more you can discuss about that, but basically recognizing that these things are holy.
00:18:24.240 And if you're partaking in communion, they should be done with bread and with fruit of the vine.
00:18:33.200 Number three, the last point I'm going to make here is really just this beautiful connection between food, freedom, and our spiritual life.
00:18:42.440 God is so good, and you're going to see here in a minute
00:18:45.160 about how he's building in these beautiful parallels in our life
00:18:49.540 to see him more clearly.
00:18:52.420 In Genesis, Satan says to Adam and Eve,
00:18:57.020 in reference to the forbidden fruit, take and eat.
00:19:01.720 And we had, meaning the human race,
00:19:06.740 as Adam being the federal head of the human race,
00:19:09.700 You know, we had invited in by way of disobedience, a spiritual reality to occur by consuming the fruit offered by the enemy.
00:19:22.060 And so just take that picture there of just kind of eating of kind of the enemy's table, if you will.
00:19:29.260 And in the Lord's Supper, we see a reversal of this.
00:19:32.700 instead of consuming the food of sin symbolically,
00:19:38.400 we, being Christians who have been redeemed,
00:19:42.820 get to experience the saving power of God
00:19:44.860 through the consumption of communion.
00:19:48.860 And so before Christ,
00:19:50.480 taken to eat was a phrase in biblical history of condemnation,
00:19:55.720 but now they're actually words of commendation
00:19:58.900 and celebration for the Christian.
00:20:00.320 And so, you know, we as a human race were banished from the Lord's table by sin.
00:20:13.620 We were separated from a holy God.
00:20:16.500 And now, for those who are saved, are invited back to dine with God and each other communally
00:20:26.920 as the body of Christ through the redeeming work of Christ on the cross.
00:20:32.920 And so I just wanted to, again, point a little part of this pool of this beautiful image
00:20:39.820 so that you guys would have a slightly deeper understanding of communion.
00:20:44.920 Years ago, I saved an excerpt from a book titled From Eternity to Here by Frank Viola.
00:20:51.120 and he had a beautiful paragraph
00:20:54.480 that illustrated the spiritual connection
00:20:57.460 between Jesus and food
00:20:58.840 and I want to close this episode with that
00:21:01.940 and then we'll pray
00:21:02.720 he writes
00:21:05.240 according to the Bible
00:21:07.300 Jesus Christ is food 0.61
00:21:09.640 Jesus Christ is drink
00:21:11.760 he is also rest
00:21:13.320 and we are summoned to consume him
00:21:16.140 the strengthening that we derive
00:21:18.340 from eating physical food
00:21:19.920 the invigorating and refreshing that we receive from drinking physical water,
00:21:24.920 the energy and rejuvenation that we receive from physical rest,
00:21:28.740 are God-created portraits of what happens to us spiritually when we consume Christ.
00:21:35.800 If food could speak, it would say,
00:21:38.800 Think about how much you depend on me.
00:21:41.060 You think about me throughout the day.
00:21:43.240 You come to me and partake of me numerous times each day.
00:21:46.840 I am the most important thing in your physical life.
00:21:49.580 You need me to live. You need me to survive. Without me, you will die. I am your enjoyment.
00:21:56.360 I am your sustenance. I am part of you. God put physical food on this earth to show us what Christ
00:22:05.320 means to us spiritually. Every time you sit down to eat, your food screams this one message.
00:22:11.760 I am an image of your Lord. Physical eating furnishes us with physical strength.
00:22:18.120 Spiritual eating furnishes us with spiritual strength.
00:22:21.680 God created physical food to depict his son, the one by whom we live.
00:22:27.280 When we eat physical food, it becomes part of us.
00:22:31.000 When we eat spiritual food, which is Christ, he grows in us,
00:22:35.180 and we become conformed to his glorious image.
00:22:38.760 What a beautiful passage from that book.
00:22:42.180 again, understanding how deep this section of theology,
00:22:49.500 this understanding, the Lord's table, how deep it is.
00:22:53.340 And my hope is that, again, this was just enlightening
00:22:56.440 and encouraging for you guys on your journey
00:22:59.580 to understanding communion.
00:23:02.740 Let's pray.
00:23:03.700 Father, we thank you for your son.
00:23:06.760 Lord, we know that you say in Leviticus
00:23:08.540 that life is in the blood.
00:23:10.780 and Lord, that your son gave up his life, his blood.
00:23:16.040 In our stead, Father, paid the consequences
00:23:18.760 that we might be saved.
00:23:20.680 Father, we thank you for sending your son.
00:23:22.360 We thank you for these beautiful symbolic acts
00:23:26.020 that you give us to memorialize
00:23:28.780 and to remind us of the work
00:23:30.180 that was accomplished on the cross for us.
00:23:32.780 Father, we thank you that you know
00:23:34.560 that we're a forgetful people
00:23:35.780 and that we need these physical acts of memorialization
00:23:39.280 to remind us of these deep truths that are so critical.
00:23:44.620 Father, we love you.
00:23:46.020 We thank you for the work of communion
00:23:47.860 that we've been invited to commune with you.
00:23:51.560 In Jesus' name, amen.
00:23:55.360 Thank you for joining us on this episode of Real Christianity.
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00:24:39.280 Amen.