Transubstantiation

Chapter 30 of our Confession, paragraph 6, tells us that doctrine, which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ's body and blood, commonly called transubstantiation, by consecration of a priest or by any other way is repugnant, not only or not to Scripture alone, but even to common sense and reason. It overthroweth the nature of the ordinance and hath been and is the cause of manifold superstitions, yea, of gross idolatries. It might be my favorite paragraph in the Confession.

This is a good one. So let me sum it up for you. The doctrine which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ's body and blood called transubstantiation. The Roman Catholic Church, and probably some others out there, but this particularly the Roman Catholic Church, has taught and still teaches today that at their mass, that the priest who serves the Eucharist, they call it, or communion, they call it, actually changes the bread and the wine into the substance of Jesus Christ.

If you argue with a Catholic about this, they will dance around it any number of different ways. and it's a little difficult to pinpoint it sometimes. But what our confession is saying is that the idea that this happens is repugnant. That means that it's so wretched that simply hearing of it should almost make you want to vomit. It is a filthy, disgusting practice and in a world of amazingly gross immorality that we are confronted by every single day, we can become somewhat desensitized to the gross idolatries that are still all around us.

And we can even get to the point where we think to ourselves, well, maybe Catholics aren't so bad because, well, at least they agree with us on this thing or that thing or they voted the right way or things like that. But our confession says that this is repugnant not only to Scripture, which is very clear that this is a figurative language when Jesus says this is my body and this is my blood and we talked about that last week and from paragraph 5 But it says even to common sense and reason And I find that to be an abundantly interesting way to say things, because we are taught sometimes that faith is counter to common sense or reason. that's really what most non-believers will tell you is that your faith is actually avoiding reasoning and what I'm here to tell you in our confession is that our faith is actually the only reasonable thing that exists because it's what's true but it's hard to say something's counter to reason when it's within religious meaning because there is some faith involved and people seem to make that distinction. But the verse that the confession has listed here is Acts 3.21.

And that's the footnote next to where it says, repugnant to Scripture alone. And it says, Whom heaven and earth, they're talking about Jesus, whom heaven and earth must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of its holy prophets long ago. It's indicated here in Acts 3 that Jesus Christ has gone into heaven.

He's not here. He's not here as a body. He even told his disciples, it's good for you that I go. it's important that he left because then the Holy Spirit would come in and dwell us so he's not here in the bread and wine in any transubstantiation sense in Luke 24 verse 6 one of the other verses that our confession listed the angels speaking to the women after Jesus' resurrection say, He is not here, but has risen.

And then in verse 39 of the same chapter, the other verse referenced, Jesus says, See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. So there is against reason, reason, and this is why it's repugnant to common sense and reason, it may not be obvious to you, because Jesus Christ is human because He really became a man and took on flesh and because we know that humans are not God created beings are not God they cannot be omnipresent.

In fact, you cannot be in more than one place at one time, let alone omnipresent. If you're here, you're not there. If you're in heaven, you're not here. If you're at home, you're not here. We all get that when we talk about one another. hey where's Easton today if I said that nobody would say well he's standing right in front of you just seeing if he's listening he is he listens well actually so when we know that a human being can only be in one place at one time we defy common sense and reason by pretending that Jesus is somehow transubstantiated in the elements of communion and that is what our confession is writing against and then they finish by saying it overthrows the nature of the ordinance the nature of the ordinance being that it's spiritual but it has been the cause of manifold superstitions and gross idolatries and it wouldn't take you long to find some of those on YouTube probably but people end up worshipping these elements these elements that we believe we set apart for a holy use and are very important to our worship.

And we believe it's necessary to do it. We do it every single week. If you didn't notice, we do communion every week. And some of you may not realize that most churches don't. We do it for a reason. It's important.

But you need to understand we don't worship these cups of wine or the bread. We don't need a gold cup to put it in. We don't hold it up and worship it or idolize it. these are just the elements God gave us to participate in worship that point us to the one that we really do worship, Jesus Christ, who came into the world and suffered and died for sinners.

It's Jesus Christ whose body was torn and whose body hung on the cross, who was punished by God for the sins of his people. It's Jesus Christ's body that really did die. He didn't pretend to die. He didn't go into a deep sleep. He died. He gave his life for his bride.

And he was buried. And they didn't bury a spirit. They buried his body. And then Jesus Christ's body, when his spirit reentered, it came alive. And he exited the tomb. And he eventually ascended into heaven.

And if you believe that, you can be forgiven of all your sins. and a spirit of God that enters into a piece of dead flesh makes it alive and that is the picture that Jesus gives us of your own salvation Dead people can be made alive if God Spirit is willing And so I call on you today whether you're going to partake of communion or not to consider this salvation. Some of you need to consider it right now. A lot of you heard that last week Wesley had an accident.

And it was the kind of accident that he could have died. And nobody here is exempt from those same things. You know, 150,000 or 175,000 people died today. Well, we all went about our business and we ate our breakfast and we fought over Cheerios or whatever it was sometimes with our brother or sister. And some of you husbands and wives had a little spat and you haven't even worked it out yet.

And you're coming to the communion table and Jesus says to work that stuff out before you worship him. and you went about your day but you know what there's over 100,000 people who are now planning to bury a loved one that many of whom didn't know that was going to happen today and those people don't have another chance to believe the gospel they either believed it or they didn't where a tree falls there it lies and so you today have a choice to make will I follow Jesus will I believe that when he died on the cross his body suffered in place of mine and when he rose again he rose again so that God could look at me as justified so that God could look at me as holy and pure even though I'm not and God offers that to you right now so you call on him you can pray in your head you can pray out loud you can come up and talk to somebody you can talk to us at dinner you ask the Lord if he will forgive you not because of anything you've done but only by his grace through his son Jesus Christ and those of you who have already believed this reconsider it right now the reason why you walk in sin once in a while is because you're not thinking about the fact that you're such a sinner that God had to crush his own son you're taking your own sin lightly and you're forgetting that if you were the only sinner in the whole world and you'd only committed one what we'll call little tiny sin he still would have had to crush his son for you because it's of infinite proportions our sin against God because he's holy and we're not and so you consider those things and when you come to the table what you do though is you get excited because you've been forgiven and I want you to take it seriously and be solemn but I want you to celebrate that you're going to walk out of here today and if you're the one that walked in front of a bus or whatever analogy for you're going to die today that you're just going to go straight to be with your Lord even though you don't deserve it and so we celebrate the supper the way he's told us and so that's the exhortation today so I'm going to invite Jason to come up and do the physical passing out of the elements and explaining that