Dr. Rodney Plunket

       This morning we begin a series of three worship assemblies focused upon the Lord’s Supper.  Much of the material that will comprise my sermons during this series comes from a book by Dr. John Mark Hicks who is Professor of Theology at Lipscomb University.  I was blessed to be with John Mark this week at a meeting in Abilene.  He presented an absolutely brilliant paper at that meeting, and my conversations with him confirmed that he is a sensitive and faithful servant of our Lord.  The book by John Mark that I will be using so extensively is entitled, Come to the Table:  Revisioning the Lord’s Supper.  Our elders are all reading this book, and I commend it to all my brothers and sisters as a way to be drawn more deeply into God’s purpose for our communion meal.  Stop by Broadway’s book table; if this book is not immediately available, David and Ramona will be glad to order it for you.

I want to begin this morning by reading a statement from this book’s second chapter, the chapter on “Covenant Meals.”  John Mark writes,

Throughout the history of God’s redemptive work, God has established fellowship and covenant through sacrifice . . . and has confirmed that fellowship and covenant through eating the sacrifice, a meal. . . .  The “Lord’s supper” is the present stage of this redemptive-historical trajectory of covenant meals.[1]

One page later, John Mark writes,

The altar establishes the covenant and the table celebrates it.  The altar produces reconciliation and the table is the experience of that reconciliation.  By sacrifice God makes a covenant with Israel and then invites them to sit at table in covenantal communion.[2]

These words introduce the two focus points for our worship assembly this morning.  We want to look first at the Bible’s presentation of the altar.  Then we will focus on the table.

The first reference to an altar in the Bible is found in Genesis (Gen) 8:20-21.  There we read:

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.  And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”

This first reference to an altar also illustrates its power.  Noah offers a sacrifice to God, and God responds by making this radical promise to never do what God had just done.  And stop and think about what God is giving up here.  God voluntarily removes from God’s own arsenal this powerful response to human sinfulness.  God longs for the world to be characterized by righteousness.  But human beings keep generating unrighteousness.  Surely one of the easiest ways and best ways to address the problem is to cleanse the planet every so often with a flood.  But Noah, immediately after the flood, offers a sacrifice; and, in response, God says ‘I will never purify the world that way again.’  For God to do that after the Bible’s first reported use of an altar is a clear indication of the power of the altar.

This week’s readings in our Ancient Words/Open Hearts Bible study guide introduced us to a very significant altar in the early life of the nation of Israel.  The altar I mean is the one in Exodus (Ex) 24.  Please look with me at Ex 24:3-8:

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.”  And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.  He rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve pillars, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel.  He sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed oxen as offerings of well-being to the Lord.  Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar.  Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”  Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, “See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

The altar sealed a covenant, a covenant relationship between God and Israel, a relationship based on the fact that Israel had accepted God’s gracious invitation to be a nation chosen by God to be God’s people.  The wonder of what God was offering Israel is made clear in Ex 19:5-6a:

Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.  Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

The covenant relationship that God offered Israel was a relationship through which they would be God’s chosen nation.  The sacrifices on the altar sealed that covenant relationship.  In other words, after the altar the people of Israel were the people of God, chosen and elected by God.  They were now God’s “treasured possession out of all the peoples” in the world.

I hope you noticed all the blood that was shed by the sacrificial animals and “dashed against the altar” and “dashed . . . on the people” in this covenant making process.  That takes us to another of the passages in this week’s Ancient Words/
Open Hearts schedule.  It takes us to the passage that served as our Scripture reading this morning.  In the final verse of that reading, the writer of Hebrews says, “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22).  For the writer of Hebrews and for Christians, the supreme sacrifice, the supreme act of the shedding of blood is the death of Jesus, the Son of God.  The cross is our altar; it is the place where our covenant relationship with the living God was sealed.

Carl Cope, the son of our own Joe and Jerrye Cope, put together a marvelous video presentation that places right before us that powerful altar.  Carl has allowed us to use it, for which I am thankful.  Let’s watch it together.

[Here a video presentation was shown which shows the crucifixion of Jesus with background a cappella music].

As important as the altar is, it is not the end; it is not the goal.  The first three passages in our Ancient Words/Open Hearts Bible study schedule for this week were Gen 31; Ex 24:1-11; and Deuteronomy 27:1-8.  In all three of those passages, we read of sacrifices being followed by meals, by a time at the table.  In fact, the biblical norm is that whatever is sacrificed actually becomes the meal.  The meal was a fellowship meal that powerfully conveyed the unity between those who together shared the meal, and it was also a meal which celebrated what the sacrifice had accomplished.

For example, in the first of the Ancient Words/Open Hearts passages, in Gen 31, a time at a sacrificial altar creates a covenant between Jacob and his father-in-law Laban.  A very short time before this ceremony it looked like the enmity that existed between Jacob and Laban was so strong and so hot that it was going to result in someone being killed in a violent confrontation.  But God inter­vened, and reconciliation and peace were the result.  That reconciliation was affirmed and made permanent by a covenant making ceremony that involved a sacrifice which was followed by a meal.  The sacrifice on the altar sealed the covenant of reconciliation between Jacob and Laban.  The meal celebrated and demonstrated the reality of that covenant.

Now to the second of our passages.  In Ex 24 we have the sacrifices which we have already discussed in our focus upon the altar.  The meal which followed those sacrifices is radical.  Please look with me at Ex 24:9-11, the verses which immediately follow the report of the sacrifices that sealed God’s covenant with Israel:

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel.  Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.  God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they ate and drank.

The norm in Scripture is that no one is allowed to see God and live (Ex 33:20).  It seems that here God wanted to make clear the incredible "specialness" of the covenant that had been created; so God allowed “Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel” to see God and to eat a covenant meal in God’s presence.  Notice.  First we have the altar; the altar is followed by a time at a table on which is served the meal that celebrates what the altar has effected.

For the sake of time, I will not read Deut 27:1-8, the third of this week’s Ancient Words/Open Hearts passage

Next week we will look at Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s supper.  We will see that Jesus’ intention for the Lord’s Supper is the same as the divine purpose for covenant meals found in many passages in the Bible.  The Lord’s supper celebrates and demonstrates the new covenant which Christ forged on His cross-shaped altar.

Brothers and sisters, we have an altar.  That altar is eternally effective.  That altar cleanses all who surrender to the lordship and saving power of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And we have a table, a table on which we celebrate and demonstrate the power of our altar.  As at such tables found throughout God’s redemptive history, our table is a table of fellowship.  We come together as one people saved by that one altar to celebrate and demonstrate what God has done through Jesus Christ.

We want to gather around that table now.  As we do, please pray that God will open doors that will enable us a body of believers to experience more of the power, love, and celebration which God wants to attend this meal.  Would the servers come forward as we prepare to partake of the supper of our Lord?

Response Time:

A little first-grader had a mother with two faces.  One side of her face was very pretty.  The other side was scarred and ugly.  The little boy loved his mother, but he was extremely embarrassed by how she looked.  He never even wanted to know what caused her to be so scarred.

Then came the first school event to which parents were invited.  He invited his mother to come to it with him, but he was very uneasy about it.  After they arrived at the event, he became so embarrassed at everyone seeing how his mother looked that he found a place to hide in a corner of the room.

The mother responded warmly to everyone.  People naturally liked her and felt comfortable around her.  In fact, the teacher felt so comfortable that she asked her how she got her scarred face.

The mother told the teacher about a fire in her son’s room when he was a baby.  Everyone else was too afraid to go in because the fire was so hot and so dangerous.  The mother broke into the room and managed to reach the crib just before a beam fell on top of it.  She managed to cover her son and protect him form harm, but she was knocked unconscious.  The firefighters arrived in time to save the mother and the son, but the woman was scarred for life.  After telling that story to the teacher, the mother said, “This scar will be permanent; but . . . I have never regretted doing what I did.”

The little boy’s hiding place in the classroom happened to be near to where his mother and his teacher were standing when this story was told.  He rushed out of his hiding place with tears running down his cheeks.  He hugged his mother tighter than ever before.  He said, “I love you.  I love you.  I love YOU!”  He took her hand and introduced her to all of his classmates.

Jesus wears scars on his back, his hands, his feet, his side, and possibly his forehead.  If his forehead is scarred, it is from the thorns of the mock crown forced down upon His head.  His back is scarred due to the scourging he received.  His bones were likely laid bare by a beating, a beating from a short whip with sharp objects tied into the ends of the thongs.  Some sentenced persons died during the scourging.  They never made it to the cross.  Jesus did, however, make it to the cross.  His hands and feet received their scars as nails were driven through them and on into the wood of the cross.

Yes, our Lord is scarred, badly scarred.  He is scarred because He forced His way into our world, a world filled by the fire of unrighteousness and impending judgment.  And He took the full heat of that fire upon Himself, as He lay upon that cross-shaped altar.

But God raised Him from the dead and seated Him at God’s right hand.  In so doing, God declared Jesus to be Savior and Lord.  And now that Jesus beckons you to come to Him, to come to Him for salvation and transformation, for forgiveness and new life.

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