John Pople - Class 7: Sunday Exhortation

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

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   Good morning, my beloved brothers and sisters and friends in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you're anything like me, you're keen to know why things have to be the way they are. It's not that you necessarily want to rebel or resist rules or instructions, but it's necessary. In fact, if you're going to do something, you get a far greater pleasure or a sense of engagement out of whatever it is you're doing if you have an understanding of why it should be that way.

2. 0:30

   It also allows you to correct errors if you happen to be doing something in slightly the wrong way. If you understand the purpose of what you're doing, you can make corrections where necessary. Here's something that we are going to be doing, which we rightfully hold as very important, in a way central to the beliefs that we share together.

3. 0:49

   We're going to take a little bit of bread and a little bit of wine together. Why? Why do we do that? Now, one possible answer to that is to say, well, the Lord told us to. We have a command. Forsaking not the assembling of ourselves together, and breaking bread in memory of his broken body, and taking wine in memory of his spilt blood.

4. 1:17

   These are commands. And that's true. Is that a good enough answer? Sure, at some level. But I think we can do better. Indeed, I think we should do better. Let me tell you why. Perhaps best by means of a sort of an analogy or a parable. Imagine you go to a house, and there's a father there with his son.

5. 1:39

   A human father, a human son. And you see the son's bedroom. And, uncharacteristically, it's neat and tidy. What a shock. And so you say to the little boy, who's maybe eight or nine years old, how come your bedroom is so tidy? This is great. And he might say, because my father commands it, I have to.

6. 2:03

   He always says I have to clean up. So I clean up. What would the father think of the son? I'm sure there's some level of satisfaction that his words are noted and heeded. But maybe there's a little bit of disappointment that that was the answer that was given. Because we have to remember that when we speak, we're giving answers which essentially relay what we perceive of the character of our father.

7. 2:29

   Maybe not the character of our father, but at least what we perceive of it. You could have asked a boy, how come your room is so neat and tidy? And he says, well, you know, I don't really think much about it. And it usually gets into a bit of a state. But just the other day, my dad asked me to.

8. 2:43

   And so I did. I had an invitation to clean it up, and I took it. I think the father would be a little bit happier. But perhaps the father would be happiest of all if you were to ask the little boy, hey, how come your room is so neat and tidy? And he says, you know what?

9. 2:58

   I know that my father is really happy when it's that way. He's never asked me in the last two years. Because ever since I figured that out, I do it out of desire. It's interesting, isn't it, that in the parable of the sower, when Jesus talks about the good soil, he talks about three levels of productivity that come from the good soil.

10. 3:20

    He says some of the plants in the good soil produce fruit 30-fold, some 60-fold, and some 100-fold. In my mind, whether this is right or wrong to do, I've always kind of understood those as 30-fold. Obedience by command, or obedience because of command. 60-fold, having responded positively to the invitation that we're given.

11. 3:45

    And 100-fold, having correctly perceived the desire of our father, and actually wanting to respond to it in the way that he would like. Why then do we take bread and wine? Because we have a command to. Sure, 30-fold. Because Jesus has sent out wedding invitations. He tells us so in the scripture. And this is a foretaste of that wedding feast supper.

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    60-fold. Or because like the woman in Luke chapter 7, who was at the feet of her master, washing his feet with her tears. Because wild horses wouldn't have dragged her to be anywhere else. Regardless of the dagger looks of the Pharisees, it seems likely, that were all around her. 100-fold. And if we're to have a desire to do this, a genuine desire, it seems important that we have to understand why it is that we have these elements.

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    So I have at least three questions, probably many more. Number one, why bread? Number two, why wine? And number three, this is the most puzzling initially, why two elements? Did it ever strike you? Why do we do all this twice? Is it just for emphasis? Because sometimes repetition has a case of emphasis in scripture.

14. 5:07

    Are we just emphasizing the importance by doing this twice? And if so, why not do it seven times? And even if it is emphasis, why are there two different elements? You see, there's a lot of questions that we can throw out. And so what I'd like to do is consider something of the nature and the character of bread and wine to understand why it is that the Lord would have chosen these elements, not only as reflections of His sacrifice, but also as reflections of the celebration of the unity that we share together.

15. 5:39

    And that's where the last question becomes most bizarre, isn't it? Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. So we remember Him with two elements. We are one body. There is one faith, one hope, one baptism. Yeah, but two elements to celebrate it with. It's counterintuitive. It's not obvious why that should be.

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    So let's have a little think about why that is. The first thing you notice about bread and wine is that they're foodstuffs. We could equally well have gold or silver or some precious stone by which we might remember our Lord, which we might pass around and rub or look at or in some way behold.

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    But we have foodstuffs. And what is the essential characteristic about foodstuffs? You eat them. That's the point. In other words, they touch you on the inside. Did you ever notice that when Jesus made the water into wine at Cana, we always say, yeah, well, wine is better than water. Absolutely. It wasn't drinking water that He transformed.

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    It was washing water that He turned into wine. It was water that only touched people on the outside, only made people clean on the outside. It was deliberately. He actually went to those wash barrels. You weren't supposed to drink out of them. You were supposed to wash your skin in them. And He took those wash stones, effectively, those water pots of stone.

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    And that's where He made the wine. So before Jesus, there was something that could only clean you on the outside. And after the Lord, there was something that powerfully bonded with you from within. In fact, it doesn't just bond with you. Everything you eat actually becomes you. You are what you eat, as it were.

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    There is a chemical assimilation of the molecules of this, of anything you put in your mouth, with your body. It becomes your body. So that seems important and relevant, that Jesus gave us things that were going to change us from within, and that we're actually going to become part of us, physically, literally part of us.

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    Those are some of the elements of bread and wine that He's chosen. Here's another reason that we can consider. Another thing about bread and wine, no matter where you are in the world, they're remarkably common to find. I mean, I realize there are some desert countries where it's probably hard to find anything.

22. 8:09

    But of all the easiest things in the world to find, bread and wine are amongst them. Is that just an accident? Is that a happy coincidence? I think not. Why not? Because you and I suffer from a particular problem. I call it the problem of the quest. Turn with me, if you will, if you have your Bibles with you, to 2 Kings chapter 5.

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    And we're going to meet the commander of the armed forces of the king of Aram, whose name is Naaman. And he's a leper. That tells you something about him already, doesn't it? He's a leper, and he's a commander of the armed forces. This is clearly a very powerful personality, to be a leper in those days, and still to have risen to such a great height, socially.

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    Naaman has leprosy, and his wife's servant girl says, in verse, where are we, 3, if only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria, she refers to Elisha, he would cure him of his leprosy. So Naaman sends a letter to the king, saying, I understand that if I come to you, you can heal me.

25. 9:18

    The king panics, because he thinks, well, of course I can't. You're just trying to pick a fight with me and start a war. And Elisha hears of it. When Elisha, I'm in verse 8 now, the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes. He sent him this message.

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    Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me, and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman went to him. Elisha sends him a messenger. Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored, and you will be cleansed. But Naaman was angry, and said, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the spot, and cure me of my leprosy.

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    Are not Abana and Phapa, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went off in a rage. And Naaman's servants went to him and said, and this answer, I think, is relevant to why we take bread and wine.

28. 10:19

    My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he tells you, wash and be clean?

29. 10:33

    Humans have a great desire to participate in quests. Great literature is made out of quests. You think about the Lord of the Rings trilogy that recently hit the movie screens, but has been in printed form for many, many years. It's sort of the stereotypical quest. There's a band of people that all have special skills by which they can fit together and defend each other, and they come up against all these mythical challenges, enchanted forests and dragons and trolls, and finally they have to destroy this object by flinging it into the volcano, which is hidden away in an inaccessible land.

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    It makes for a great story. Why does it make for a great story? Because we can take pride in their fortitude, their perseverance, and ultimately their victory. And I think God knows that we have that desire, which is a terrible weakness. And so he doesn't ask us to assemble the largest diamond that we could dig out of the mines of South Africa.

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    He doesn't ask us to extract radioactive iridium. He doesn't ask us to find any difficult element because he knows our hearts, and he knows we'd have this terrible disaster of falling into a prideful situation where the great diamond that was found of this ecclesia was slightly bigger than the great diamond that was found of that ecclesia, and it would start to play on our minds, and we'd fall into sin because of it.

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    So he's given us the simplest elements on earth to find so that no glory can reflect on us. And we must take the greatest care, even with these elements, and our presentation of them, our distribution of them, and everything, to ensure that we are honestly working for the glory of Christ and not the glory of ourselves.

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    God is helping us because that is the process of salvation. God helping us as much as we can to give us the simplest things of all by which we can be aided in that way.

34. 12:34

    I think there's a third reason why God has given us bread and wine as a memory of who we need to be as a body together. And that's something to do with the way in which these things are manufactured.

35. 12:52

    How are they manufactured? When you take hold grains of wheat, what do you have to do to make bread? I heard the word crush it. And it's the same for wine, isn't it? What do you have to do with the grapes? You have to crush them. In order to form the uniform substance, each individual grain or grape must be crushed.

36. 13:18

    And we read in that chapter this morning of the crushing of that most individual of grains of all, Peter, who wanted to say, no, no, no, no, these guys might all quit on you, but I won't. No, Peter, no. You won't go on your quest with your sword and charge down after Jesus and deliver him.

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    It isn't going to happen that way. That isn't the process of salvation. That's the process of self-glorification, and that will kill you. And so the Lord had set up a mechanism by which Peter was crushed and by which Judas was crushed. And Peter and Judas were both crushed. But notice again, this is not crushed wheat, and these are not crushed grapes.

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    This is bread, and that is wine. What am I saying that's different? The crushing is not enough alone. Once crushed, you must allow the master baker or the master vintner to cultivate that crushed product. But it must be crushed in the first instance. For example, the Lord Jesus could look at me and say, do you enjoy this, John?

39. 14:32

    Do you enjoy celebrating a part in this community together? And I'd say, sure, it's great. I was privileged enough to be raised in the Sunday school in this community. I was baptized at a relatively early age. I've been treated extremely kindly by my brothers and sisters. I have a great time. This is good.

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    And even then, Jesus may look at me and say, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who works iniquity. He has shown us even by the symbols that he has given us. That if I cannot look on my own heart and see the presence of Leviathan often running rampant and feel crushed because of it, then I am no part of his.

41. 15:19

    But the crushing is not enough. And that's where Judas went wrong. It's not that Judas' remorse was insincere. It's that what was wrong with Judas is that the remorse was the last chapter. And with Peter, it wasn't the last chapter. Peter allowed his Lord to cultivate those elements that had been crushed and make him, prepare him into the final product which was unified in a community that served his Lord.

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    So the need to be crushed and cultivated, therefore, is also essential and is well reflected in these elements that we see. Now so far, everything that we've seen involves in looking at the bread and the wine as basically identical elements. The fact that they're foodstuffs does not discriminate between them. The fact that they're both common, commonly found so that we cannot glory in their discovery does not discriminate between them.

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    The fact that they're both crushed and cultivated does not discriminate between them. Are there any discriminants between the bread and the wine? Why then would we still need two? And one of the differences, I think, comes from the fact that the Lord says, the bread represents my body and the wine or the fruit of the vine represents my blood.

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    Because the blood, that gives them a contrasting feel. Why? Because of one of the principles laid down as early as Genesis chapter 9 in Scripture. And you can look at Genesis chapter 9 which is just when Noah is emerging from the ark after the flood.

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    And you can see that it's in this chapter. Shall we go in at verse 3? Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has blood in it. For the blood I will surely demand an accounting.

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    It's as early as Genesis chapter 9, although it's later in Deuteronomy that you'll actually find the phrase which I use to entitle this exhortation, the blood is the life. Now, at what level that's medically true is absolutely unimportant. There are very, obviously, there are various parts of any animal's body which if you remove the result would be fatal.

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    So you cannot attribute life to any one element scientifically. Nevertheless, God has chosen that one element which is also essential. He said the blood. I will choose that as a symbol of the life. So we are seeing that there is a life-giving element in the wine that isn't necessarily present in the bread.

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    In fact, let's think about this. And this thought only came to me a couple of years ago. You remember that in the Mosaic Law, whenever they were preparing food, and this is partly because of the command of Genesis 9 and because of the commands of the law, whenever they were preparing food or sacrifices, they had to prepare the meat in what's now called the kosher way, which means that all the blood had to be drained out.

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    Every last drop was gone, whether it was used to be splashed on the altar or whatsoever, doesn't matter. Then, the meat then was ready for its service in the Mosaic Covenant. And I guess it never really occurred to me to ask, I wonder why God made them do that. I always figured it was something to do with health reasons which they wouldn't understand scientifically at that time, but would allow to preserve them in a fairly primitive society.

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    Knowing now that the blood is the life and paying attention to that, what's that showing us? What is God teaching about the Mosaic Covenant? I think what he's trying to teach them to get them to see is, no matter what you do in this covenant, there's no life in it. Every animal that you use in this covenant has had the life drained clean out of it.

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    It's a lifeless body. It's still a good covenant. It's perfect. It comes from, it's not perfect, it's flawless. It comes from God. And so they still followed it. But they could not access life within a lifeless covenant. And I think that's why God made them drain all the blood out, because the blood was the life.

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    And he wanted them to see, this isn't going to work for salvation. We need an injection of life. So what does Jesus say when he comes along? Look at Luke chapter 22. He says, and you know the words by heart, he says, this is the new covenant in bread and wine. No, he doesn't.

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    This is the new covenant in my body. No. This is the new covenant in my blood. And if the blood is the life, he's saying, look at this. For hundreds, thousands of years, you've celebrated the Mosaic covenant. There was no life in it. They were all lifeless bodies, every drop drained out. And so I think what we can see in this covenant, and this is partly what God wants us to see, is there is a lifeless body.

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    And they had that in Moses' day. And we have that today. This body here has no life in it, except that which Jesus gives it. And Jesus says, this is the new covenant in my blood. And so now we have an idea that whilst we are still in this mortal dispensation trapped in lifeless bodies, there is an injection of life from Jesus Christ.

55. 21:13

    So you have Mosaic covenant, first covenant, new covenant in my blood. By extension, therefore, what do you think will happen in the kingdom? kingdom? You might say, I've heard Jesus promise that we will share bread and wine together with him in the kingdom. That's what I used to think. It still puzzled me.

56. 21:39

    Why are we celebrating his death, even with his resurrection, with or without? Why would we celebrate his sacrifice in the kingdom? I praise God that through his grace, I can have the confidence to say, I too, in humility still, would expect to be in the kingdom of God. And I'll be immortal. And you'll be immortal.

57. 22:03

    And Jesus will be immortal. And we immortals are going to sit around and celebrate a sacrifice of Jesus' death? What a bizarre thing to do. I don't think we are going to do that. After Jesus takes the bread with his disciples in Luke's gospel, and you can check the others, he says, I will celebrate this Passover with you again.

58. 22:26

    He doesn't specifically mention the bread. But when they take the wine together, he says, I tell you the truth, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. Here is my suggestion to you. Do not trust me. Examine your scriptures, whether or not these things be so.

59. 22:51

    Mosaic covenant, lifeless bodies. New covenant, in my blood, says Jesus. Two elements, kingdom age. I suggest to you that in the kingdom age, it will be just the wine that we celebrate. As a wonderful example played out over thousands of years of how life has swallowed up death. And the death element has now disappeared.

60. 23:22

    And seeing it that way allows us to understand why bread and wine exist together today. We are in a schizophrenic state. Read Romans 7. I want to do this. Oh no, I've done that. Oh, I'm doing this. No, I need to do that. Death, life, death, life. Paul says, it's almost comedy, but he means it heart-rendingly seriously.

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    Just to stay alive, I have to die every day. And he means what he says. There is the contradiction. There is the constant stress of the disciples' life as sin keeps pulling. And I think this helps us maintain the fact that there really is a duality to our existence. Not that sin is acceptable before God, it is not.

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    But it's present before God as long as we are in these frames. And I think that helps us understand the pattern that God is working, our salvation in a global sense, to take the lifeless bodies of the Mosaic Covenant and gradually introduce life until all the dead element is gone and we celebrate only the wine with Jesus in the kingdom.

63. 24:26

    Have a look in your Bibles, have a look in the Gospels and see whether that's what you see there, because that is what I would suggest to you is going on. Another thing we see in the Gospels, and we should pay close attention to Jesus' language, is that he makes a discrimination between the cup and the fruit of the vine, the contents of the cup.

64. 24:46

    If then, the blood is the life, and this is the life, what does that make the cup? The life's container, I suppose, or, as a cup is always used, the means, and there's nothing in this cup, the means by which the life is poured out. And so that gives the cup a very negative connotation in Jesus' language, and indeed it does.

65. 25:13

    when he's in Gethsemane, that's the thing, that is the word that he uses, please take this away. Please, my father, if it be possible, let this cup, i.e. this protocol by which my life is poured out, don't do that. Let's do something else. Nevertheless, in the end he exceeds, not my will, but yours be done.

66. 25:37

    I think that's why he refers to the cup as that negative connotation. But that allows us something of a beautiful connotation this morning. The cup is still the means by which the life is poured out. But it's not poured out on the floor. It's not poured out on the ground and wasted. Where is Jesus' life poured?

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    It's poured inside us. So it's poured out. But that has a very positive ring to it because it's poured in to us. By symbol at least. we adopt Jesus' life directly within us. And that's another reason, I think, why we celebrate the bread and the wine together. And I think finally, I just want to share a couple of thoughts about why we should do this at all.

68. 26:32

    we are working towards a sense of completion. But that completion, we're working towards a state, as we've seen, where life ends up swallowing up death and we end up with a living state, not a dead state. But never lose sight of the focus of why that is. It's not for my benefit that I will be given an immortal body.

69. 26:54

    It's not so that I can run across the desert at lightning speed, or swim through the sea, or access all parts of the natural creation, and enjoy their sights and sensations together. It's not about me. It's about praising God. Why then do I need an immortal frame to praise God? Because I cannot praise God properly in this body.

70. 27:20

    Even if I try to pray to God, I can pray to God for 60, maybe 90 seconds, before some idiotic carnal thought comes blasting into my brain with its blaring cacophony, some irrelevant trivia, or worse, some grotesque carnal thing. I cannot praise God as I should, as I am trapped in this frame.

71. 27:44

    And therefore, God is working His plan of salvation for His glory, so that I can praise Him as I should. So that I can praise Him as He should be praised. And in all things, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, let us praise His name. Praise Him.