When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, He made clear that the bread represents His body that was cruelly slain as a sacrifice for His people's sin, and the wine represents His blood shed to execute the New Covenant promise, by which God remembers His people's sins against them no more.
The Lord Jesus often spoke in metaphors that the people misconstrued. In John 6, Jesus spoke in a sustained metaphor of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and some have constructed from that the monstrosity of transubstantiation.
These false teachers completely miss the spiritual imagery Jesus was using, and claim that the bread and wine of the Lord's Table are turned into the literal physical flesh and blood of the Savior.
They then proceed further, asserting that the symbols are transformed into a propitiatory sacrifice, "re-presented" by their so-called "priests" to take away the sin of the worshipers!
But God's Word makes it clear: the bread and wine of the Lord's Table are symbols and pictures of the Lord's body and blood, used to recall His great offering that He made at Calvary as God's Lamb, slain to redeem poor sinners.
In truth, only the actual body and blood of Jesus can save sinners.
The last half of John 6 addresses these matters most clearly. Jesus is being chased after by people whom He had just fed, miraculously, with five loaves and two fishes.
They weren't so interested in Christ's doctrine, as in making Him their king, because He had the power to give them free food.
This is the sort of ruler that all men desire - someone who will give them something of carnal value.
It turns out that they didn't value eternal life at all!
SERMON ACTIVITY
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...
