The Communion Table Is a Love Feast: Hold Fast Your Confession

Sermon outline

God loves you and chose you, the same Spirit that raised Christ lives in you, and the healed people standing in front of the church are the reason to hold fast the confession of your faith, because He who promised is faithful.

1. The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you

   Jesus depended wholly on the Holy Spirit to be raised from the dead, and when He ascended He gave that same Spirit to the church at Pentecost. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit it does not matter how deep the waters or how high the mountains are. He tells the people to inform themselves that they are full of the Holy Ghost.

   Illustration: Flies only sit on cold stones.

   “When you're filled with the Holy Spirit, it doesn't matter what happens on the outside.”

   • Romans 8:37
   • Romans 8:11
   • Ephesians 4:8
   • Acts 2:1-4

2. When the Spirit is not moving, go after Him

   Sometimes God does not manifest Himself strongly because He wants to see how hungry you are, privately or as a church. Like David's deer panting for water, He wants you to come after Him. He prays the promises over the people, has them say aloud that they are the redeemed of the Lord, and leads a long time of worship, announcing that this will never be a religious or traditional church.

   “When the Spirit is not moving, we have the power to move the Spirit.”

   • Psalm 42:1
   • Jeremiah 17:5-7
   • Psalm 35:27
   • Galatians 3:13-14
   • Psalm 107:2
   • Psalm 34:19

3. We are in His kingdom now

   Reading the words of Jesus over the bread and the cup, he notes that Jesus stood between two covenants and spoke of drinking it new in His Father's kingdom. That kingdom is not somewhere else: it is the rule and government of God, His way of doing things, and we are in it now, functioning in His love and grace. That is why forgiving is easy when you remember how much you were forgiven.

   Illustration: When he needs to forgive someone he thinks about what a wretched man he was, and how God's grace saved him, loved him and brought him to where he is.

   “If it was not for Christ, where would I be?”

   • Matthew 26:26-29
   • Luke 17:21
   • Colossians 1:13
   • Romans 5:5

4. Communion is a love feast: God loves you

   The emblems are a love feast, because God so loved the world that He gave His Son. Whatever your past, a broken relationship, a parent or spouse or church that did not love you, God loves you, and that is enough. If you are still anxious for the love of man you are still depending on man. Jesus, the great high priest, is interceding for you in your weakness.

   Illustration: He has everyone turn to a neighbour and say, 'You're a very wonderful person', bald head or full of hair, grey hair or black.

   “I don't understand all the things that visit me in life, but God loves me.”

   • John 3:16
   • 1 Peter 4:8
   • Psalm 23:4
   • Hebrews 4:14
   • Romans 8:34
   • 2 Corinthians 5:14

5. I did not call myself, and God planted you here

   He tells how God called him at twenty when he was saved and filled with the Spirit, how church people discouraged the call until he wanted only to sit in church, and how he ran for twenty years into his career and studies until God compelled him. In the same way the people did not call themselves to this church. If you are offended, get over it and stay committed, as you would in a marriage.

   Illustration: As a young man he came home and told Pastor Zubeda he would resign from work and drive Reinhard Bonnke's truck, carrying the tent around.

   “I did not call myself. God called me. He compelled me.”

6. You are important in the economy of God: your workplace is your pulpit

   He brings people forward whose healings the church has witnessed. A man who was carried into the church weighing about thirty kilograms, brought by a workmate, tells in his own words how he ran up the stairs when the pastor told him to and is now well and heavy; others healed include a Bible school teacher after a stroke, two pastors, and a woman who recovered after her sister brought her T-shirt to be prayed over. His point is that the man would never have come if a colleague had not invited him, so every member must speak to people and bring them in. He thanks God for doctors, who fight the same sickness the church fights.

   Illustration: If you are a teacher your pulpit is your classroom; if you fix cars, do plumbing, work in a bank or study on campus, that is your pulpit.

   “You may not be at the pulpit every Sunday, but you know where your pulpit is.”

   • Philippians 3:13-14
   • John 8:44
   • 1 Peter 2:5
   • Galatians 3:28

7. Hold fast the confession of your faith

   He says he will share just one scripture. When it gets tough, when the pressure becomes too much to bear and the enemy comes in like a flood, hold fast your confession, because the Spirit of the Lord will raise a standard and the saints overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. A doctor's diagnosis may be a scientific fact, but Jesus, our high priest, has the truth.

   “If you hold on to God, he's faithful.”

   • Hebrews 10:23
   • Isaiah 59:19
   • Revelation 12:11