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Broken for Us
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Bonners Ferry Seventh-day Adventist Church, ID, USA
Delivery: 2011-04-16
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2011-04-17 02:25Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-brokenforus.php
It is referred to and accomplished in a variety of ways: communion, or, the Lord’s Supper, or, Eucharist, or, agape feast. Some understand that in the process its elements to change into something else. What is it, anyway?
One of the most helpful passages concerning communion is 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. Paul has been discussing the Corinthian church, full of division, factions, rebellion, and some sincere hearts as well. They are coming together, supposedly, to be with each other for communion. But they are divided. So much so, that Paul says that they are not actually doing what they think they are.
They are eating separately from each other. Some are eating before others even arrive. They are eating to excess. Others are being excluded. The poor are being humiliated. Paul says that what they are doing, is not the communion, the Lord’s Supper, after all.
What happens when we sit down together and experience communion?
There is a giving of thanks. All present are reminded how thankful we are for God doing something for us that we could not have done for ourselves. Not a man or woman here could save him or herself. But Jesus could. He came down from heaven. He took a humanity as our humanity. He lived in it. He made choices in it. He fought against the distorted inclinations that it came with. He resisted. He chose to do right because it is right. He was the least dangerous man this world ever saw, and the most dangerous. He had to be put to death.
A King of a kingdom not of this world could not be permitted to remain in this world. He must be humilated, tortured, removed at any and all costs. Pilate saw Jesus was innocent, but people having given themselves over to control by demons were relentless. Only removal from this world would do. So they snuffed out the Light.
Jesus’ body was broken for us. He was declared a criminal and nailed to the instrument of destruction. As the nails went in, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.” The bread we eat at communion reminds us that Jesus gave His body for us. He, the innocent, died in place of us, the guilty. Unlike Jesus, each one of us has chosen to sin; at some point we have chosen to be rebels, to go our own way against God’s way. We have spat at the cross, walked over Jesus’ body away from hope and help, and into the beating rasp of sheeting wind, to a place where there is no light. Only death. There we have lingered in the cold. We found ourselves lost. And God came to us and led us back to the light. he gave to us what our transgression had taken from Him. He did it freely. He loved us when we were unlovable.
They hung Him up on the cross to die, hanging naked and without hope. Jesus bled. Always in the Bible blood represented the life of the victim. Now, here was the victim. Jesus’ life had been lived without sinning; there was not a flaw, not a moral failure, chargeable to Him. What His life, and therefore His blood represented, was purity. He was sinless by choice. Yes, this was blood that could seal a covenant. No other man ever lived who had decided so. Jesus was God, of course. But He had come to live the life of a man, to give the obedience not of a God but a man, and this He did through the power of the Holy Spirit.
That blood looked the same through His skin as does ours in our veins. But on Calvary He was pierced and the blood ran out of His body. Red streaks laced vertically across His form and dark blotches dried round the wounds. The wind and the rain and the thunder cracked. Lightning flashed. The sword of justice against our sin struck with fury against a personal Savior, a real man. He had taken our sin to the cross. Now life must be removed. The light must be snuffed.
There He hung. Breathing out. Breathing in. Until at last, humanity had reached its limit. Somehow He summoned the last fraction of strength and said, “Father, into Your hands I give My breath.” He exhaled one last time; He did not breath in again.
Jesus was dead.
Communion is the retelling of the crucixion of Jesus. It is the gathering of those who believe that He was who the Bible claims—who accept that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and that we beheld God come in humanity.
That was the day that God died for me. And you. No one here is somehow exempt, not needing Jesus’ crucifixion. All have sinned and come short of God’s glory. All of us have chosen rebellion and done it intentionally. All chose death and need life. And He is Life.
He did not remain on the cross. Hastily they took down His body and laid it in the tomb. The rock was rolled over the front of the chamber. But after He had died, those in authority became more afraid still of what they had done. They assigned soldiers to guard the tomb so that people would not be able to come and steal His body away, they said. But rather than trying to keep people out, it is probably more true that they were trying to keep Jesus in. The grave could not hold Him. Jesus rose early on the morning of the first day of the week. The soldiers could do nothing. He rose from the dead. He lives. Jesus is alive today. And, He knows about this little meeting in a little church at the edge of somewhere. He knows it all too thoroughly. He knows we are here. He knows every heart here by name.
There is a warning here in Paul about eating and drinking Lord’s supper in unworthy manner. The instructions are to examine yourself, eat, drink, discern the body of the Lord, wait for one another.
The Bible says that when we do this—have communion—we are preaching Jesus’ death until He comes. He is coming back. This is a temporary service. We won’t experience it like this in heaven after Jesus comes. The unworthy manner in which we could take communion today would be to exclude others, to disregard them, view them as unimportant, as excluded, to divide from each other over this or that little reason, and to forget that Jesus died to deal with the sin problem.
For while communion may not be magical, it is a special time. It is not only the remembering of what Christ has done, but a participating in Christ, coming together as His church, remembering His crucifixion, and anticipating, together, His Second Coming. Not only are we not alone because Jesus is for us, but we are not alone because there are fellow believers. We are part of Christ’s body.
What is communion? It is a reminder commanded by Jesus, that we stand in the last days, between the already and the not yet. We stand at the end of the Great Controversy War between good and evil. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are engaged in wrapping things up, finishing off the sin controversy. Their attention is focused here on earth. This is the battlefield. This is where Jesus lived and walked and bled and rose again. His absence is temporary. He has gone, the Bible promises, to prepare a place for us. And having gone to do this, He has promised to return and take us to be with Him. We are to be transformed, truly changed, by Him. He was broken so that He might heal us.
And so, this day, we are in awe of His healing. We are not what we were, nor are we yet what through Christ we shall be. But walking with Jesus, we are on just the road we want to be on. Jesus said “few there be that find it.” Congratulations on finding it. God gave you the gift of opportunity, and you said Yes.
Let’s keep saying it—as a congregation. He was not broken for you, He was broken for us. On that day when He comes, may not one be missing. GCO
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