2004-08-08 Communion Dedication - Baldwin Christian Church

John 6:51-53

51. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
52. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
53. Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

When God tells us the things "thou shalt not" do, it's because He doesn't want us to suffer. There's a price to pay for sin. He loves you more than anyone else does, and He wants what's best for you; a life of blessing, not of cursing. He sent His only begotten Son so that we might choose to have life, and that we might have it more abundantly. In Luke 18, when Peter said to Jesus, "Lo, we have left all, and followed thee", Jesus replied, "Truly, there is no man that has left his house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting." If your belongings or your family are causing you to stumble, for Jesus' sake depart from these, and He promises to repay you many times over, now and forever.

For you and for me, coming out of this world and all it's entanglements means that we stop walking after the flesh, and we start walking after the Spirit. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:16, "...henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." Jesus gave His life so that whosoever will receive this new life stops living to please themselves, and starts living to please Him. He laid down His life so we would stop evaluating others by what the world thinks about them. This crowd in John chapter 6 could only see Jesus through their eyes of flesh. They only saw Him as a human being, and that was a mistake. He died so that we could become new creatures with a new way of looking at this life, and He died so that we would begin looking at each other in a new way.

The old creature walked after the flesh, so he cannot comprehend the words of Jesus in John 6:53. The old creature sees this communion as just juice and crackers, or to the other carnal extreme, the old creature sees this communion as the actual body and blood of Jesus. As new creatures, you no longer think of communion as flesh and blood, or juice and crackers. Communion is about fellowship; the fellowship we have with each other, and the fellowship together we have with Jesus.

We didn't have the opportunity to know Him in the flesh, but we do have this opportunity now... to honor the memory of what His body accomplished once and for all time, and because of His sacrifice we have the opportunity to be in communion with Him every day when we walk after the things of His Spirit.

He gave us another way to honor Him, and that's to lift up our voices in song and praise.