High Privilege – High Price
Feb. 16, 2003
Communion Service
Sunday AM
Verse: 10And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Trans: This morning as we partake in the high privilege of the Lord’s Supper, I would like to take a few minutes to reflect upon the high price required.
Note: As we approach this spiritual meal, it is important we remember the sincerity of the moment. In fact, the Scriptures challenge us to insure that we never partake of this meal in vain or haphazardly.
1 Time of Reflection and Remembrance
Idea: The primary purpose for receiving this meal is to force us to take a personal spiritual inventory to assess our relationship w/ God and man.
Note: There are grave repercussions for ingesting the elements w/out confirming that you are in proper fellowship w/ God and His people.
2 Time of Repentance and Rejoicing (vertical)
Idea: It is a time to get right w/ God – a time to confess any sin and confirm that He alone is on the throne and not someone or something else.
3 Time of Reconciliation and Restitution (horizontal)
Idea: It is a time to go to others to clear the air and to make things right.
4 Time of Recommitment and Rededication
Idea: It is a time to renew your commitment to God and to refocus your life on things above.
Message
A Jesus Qualified Us
Word: hikanoo – to make fit; to make sufficient; to pays ones entry fee.
Idea: We are not qualified on our own efforts, rather we are qualified only through the finished work of Christ on the Cross.
In this instantaneous act that occurs at the point of salvation, we are invited by faith into a spiritual relationship where we have been made participants and partakers of all His blessings and promises reserved for His inheritance.
We have the promise of Heaven, forgiveness, redemption, and of the comforting presence and power of the Holy Spirit b/c through His death He has paid in full our entry fee.
B Jesus Delivered Us
Word: ruomai – to instantaneously draw out or to rescue – to retrieve w/ fervor.
Idea: Those who have received God’s gift of grace by faith have been liberated from the dominion of ignorance, sin, and darkness (from Satan’s rule).
C Jesus Transferred Us
Word: methistemi – to remove or change – in secular literature this word refers to the removing of a person from one country to settle them as colonist and citizen in another country.
Idea: We were lifted out of the citizenship of this earthly sinful world and relocated w/ full citizenship into God’s spiritual Kingdom. Thus, though we live in this world, we are no longer held in it grip. We are strangers passing through to a living hope. We are citizens of God’s Kingdom w/ the responsibility to live as King’s kids in this current fallen order.
D Jesus Redeemed Us
Word: apolutrosis - to deliver or release by payment of a ransom or to free a slave from bondage (to emancipate).
Idea: Jesus has given us complete freedom from the penalty, power, and pain of sin by dying on the cross to pay for our sin. He paid the ransom in full.
Verse: For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance — now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. Hb. 9:15
Word: aphesin – to pardon or to give remission from penalty; to send away.
Idea: B/c of Christ’s finished work on the Cross we have been redeemed. God has sent our sin away so that they will never be found again. As far as the east is from the west… (Ps103:12). Jesus became our scapegoat (Lev. 16:10) taking our sin away and bringing to us redemption through His blood the forgiveness of sin.
Truth: Jesus paid for us in full rescuing us from the rule of evil and removing us from sale by adopting us as children and giving us a new citizenship which qualifies us to share in all of the blessings of the Son including the forgiveness of sin, the promise of abundant and eternal life, and the privilege of representing Him until the day of redemption. His death on our behalf paid in full the price to redeem us. On that basis alone, God forgave our sins, granted us an inheritance, delivered is from the power of darkness, and made us citizens of His eternal kingdom.
