"The Coming of Our Lord: He Comes" Midweek in Advent2 December 9, 2015 1Corinthians 10:16
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 1Corinthians 10:16 In Advent, we wait. We prepare. Imagine what it was like for the people of God before Christ was born at Bethlehem. They were waiting, they were preparing. Would He really come? When God says He will come you put your hope in that and you trust that He will do it. Perhaps in no way is this more important than in His promise to come to His people. When the Lord comes, He comes with all of His blessings. When the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth he scolded them for turning the Lord’s Supper into their own meal. The Lord is coming to us in His Meal and therefore we ought to be prepared for Him coming to us. He says in 1Corinthians 11:26, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” In the Lord’s Supper Jesus comes right then and there, and He does so because of what He did when He came at Bethlehem, and so we partake of this Meal until He comes again in glory. The Church Year has been designed to help us in our waiting and our preparing. The season of Advent has the coming of our Lord as its emphasis. The point of this is that our entire life as a Christian is one in which we are focused on the coming of our Lord. Because He has come to accomplish salvation He comes to deliver that salvation until He comes again in glory. Last week we focused on the fact that He has come. This evening we explore how He comes. That our Lord comes to us rests on the fact that He has come. He promised to come and He came. He promises to come to us and He does. He came at Bethlehem in order to accomplish salvation at Calvary. However, after He ascended into heaven He did not leave us with simply a salvation that has been accomplished. He left us with means through which we receive that salvation. In these means He delivers the salvation He accomplished directly to us. Remarkably, the way He does that is by coming to us. In 1Corinthians 10:16 Paul says, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” The Lord’s Supper is not simply a memorial meal in which we remember that our Lord gave His body and blood on the cross. He actually comes to us in that bread and that wine. The cup of blessing, is not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread we partake of, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? You cannot participate with something that is not there. In and with that bread is the very body of Christ and in and with that wine is the very blood of Christ. We are joined to His body and blood, in union with them, we participate in them. This is in consonance with the way our Lord comes to His people. God, who is spirit, came to earth in flesh and blood. God was born. He was a baby. He grew and became a man. Blood coursed through His veins. He ascended into heaven bodily. The angels who appeared afterward said to the disciples, “He will come again in the same way you saw Him go.” He remains in the flesh and blood body He took on when He was conceived in the womb of Mary. And as we await the day He will return in glory, He comes to us bodily. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? How in ordinary bread and wine the Lord comes to us in the very body born of the Virgin and offered into death on the cross and in the very blood that kept His body alive and was then shed on the cross? It’s impossible to understand, but He calls for faith, not intellectual comprehension. You are forgiven and saved not because you rationally understand but because you believe that you are a sinner who needs to be saved and that in your Lord you have that salvation. This is why He comes to you, to forgive you. To give you that salvation He accomplished when He came the first time. It’s why He gives you new birth. You were born in sin. In Baptism He gave you birth from above. This birth was a birth of water and the Word. It was not just a symbolic act in which you have a reminder that you have new life in Christ. In your Baptism you were actually born a second time. In Baptism you did not simply have a ritual which points you to forgiveness, you were brought into union with Christ Himself. He gave you new life in your Baptism because He came to you in your Baptism. In writing to the Christians in Rome, the apostle Paul asks in chapter 6, “Do you not know that all of us who have been Baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into His death?” Paul is speaking of Baptism in a similar way that he spoke of Holy Communion. Just as the partaking of the bread and wine is partaking of His body and blood, when we are Baptized, we are Baptized, as he says, into Christ. We are joined with Him, united with Him, one with Him. Notice also, how in speaking of the Lord’s Supper, the connection with Christ is in regard to His body and blood given and shed at the cross, the place where salvation was accomplished. If you are brought into union with Him in that, then you are brought into union with Him in His bringing His salvation to you. It is the same in Baptism. “Do you not know that all of us who have been Baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into His death?” So if we are Baptized into His death, then, Paul goes on to say, “We were buried therefore with Him by Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” He comes to you in Baptism with His death and resurrection, crucifying your sinful flesh and raising you up to new life. As a Baptized child of God, you live as one who is not on your own. Your Lord comes to you. You are Baptized. You hear His Word. Last week we pondered Jesus who is the Word made flesh. As a baptized child of God you hear the Word. You hear it proclaimed. You are forgiven in that Word. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. When you hear the Gospel proclaimed you are not hearing merely information, you are hearing and receiving Christ Himself. He is the eternal Word and God’s Word brings about what it says; it accomplishes the purpose for which it is sent. Here is the purpose: to forgive you. To save you. To give you faith and increase your faith. To strengthen you and keep you in body and soul. The preaching of the Gospel, Holy Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper are the very means through which God does these things. Your Lord comes to you in these means, that is why you are forgiven, saved, and strengthened. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
