Due to COVID-19 and disruption to international mail service
we have temporally suspended our ‘Free Print Book service’.
we have temporally suspended our ‘Free Print Book service’.
In the light of this situation we are not able to mail you the books at this time.
Pray that this pandemic will end soon and the resumption of the postal service.
Pray that this pandemic will end soon and the resumption of the postal service.
Subject 21 : The Gospel According to MARK
[Chapter 14-3] Eat the Flesh and Drink the Blood (Mark 14:22-24 , John 6:53-58)
(Mark 14:22-24)
“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ Then He took the cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said to them, ‘This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many.’”
(John 6:53-58)
“Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.’”
This morning we are going to hold the Communion Service before we finish the discipleship training camp. Did you all sleep well last night? Let’s do some light exercise. Stand up please, hold your hands and stretch yourself. Please do not stretch excessively. We had a very starry sky last night. The stars were shining so bright as if they wanted us to stay up all night.
Take, Eat, and Drink
There are a few things the Lord practiced for us before He ascended back to Heaven. One of them was to perform the Holy Communion. When Jesus was on earth around the Passover, He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” Then He took the cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said to them, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many” (Mark 14:24). Through the Last Supper, Jesus taught us about the true salvation, the love of the Truth, and the righteousness of God; and He told us to commemorate His saving grace by performing the Holy Communion while we, the believers of the righteousness, are preaching the gospel on earth.
Here the blood of the new covenant refers to God’s promises and fulfillment as it is written in the book of Leviticus and in Genesis chapter three and four, “I will send you the Messiah. The descendent of a woman will take your sins away and die on the Cross to save you.” In the days of New Testament Jesus came to this earth and was baptized and died on the Cross to take away our sins. The covenant of salvation that God made in the Old Testament era was fulfilled through the death of Jesus and His resurrection. God’s covenant to save the mankind was about to be fulfilled through His one and only Son, Jesus our Lord, and Jesus reminded us of God’s covenant from the Old Testament at the Last Supper. Brothers and sisters, the covenant of salvation and God’s true love for all human were revealed as such.
God saved us from all the sins of the world. He granted us His righteousness. As the Lord commanded us to perform the Holy Communion, this is what we should remember before we take the bread and the wine. We need to believe and remember that our Lord gave His body and His blood to us, remitted all our sins and saved us from all the sins of the world. In this way we are sharing with the world the good news of God’s salvation of all mankind. I pray that your faith in this truth will go with action.
In John 6:53 Jesus said to us, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” He continued in verses 54 and 55, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” Our Lord told us to eat His flesh.
The Lord told us that we must eat the flesh and drink the blood from the Son of Man. Then how can we eat His flesh and drink His blood? Jesus said this very naturally even though it can raise questions. But this Word is basically about the root of our faith. This means that we need to have belief that Jesus in His earthly body was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, gave His body and blood on the Cross, by which all mankind was saved. Without this belief, there is no way to eat the flesh and blood of Jesus.
In John 6:55 Jesus said, “For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” These words imply that He was baptized and took away our sins so that we may have eternal life as well as God’s righteousness and become His very own children permanently. By believing this, we know that our sins were remitted away and we were saved by Jesus. We eat the flesh of Jesus by believing strongly that He took all our sins and made us sinless souls. Again, to eat the flesh of Jesus and to drink His blood is to believe that the Lord was baptized and shed His blood on the Cross to save us. This is the most important Truth of Christianity.
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, died on the Cross, rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven. Right before His ascension, He asked His disciples to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In short, there are two ceremonies that are entrusted to God’s Church: Baptismal service is one thing the Lord asks of His Church, and the second is Holy Communion.
In this sense, the Lord’s Supper is so meaningful. The Lord’s Supper implies His true will and sacrifice that He redeemed our sins and led us to eternal life. This is what Holy Communion is all about. Therefore, performing Holy Communion we should have faith that the baptism of Jesus and His blood on the Cross saved us, and we should feel grateful for this. You should not treat Holy Communion as one of the annual church events or think less of it than we really should. We need to have faith that Jesus was baptized to take all our sins away.
Do you admit that you and I were doomed to commit sins our whole lifetime and to go to hell as the result of these sins? Yes, we were. Even with a little more pondering over this everyone will agree to this. We are mere weak humans who sin against our own wills and die helplessly as a result. How can we not tearfully thank Jesus who came to this earth to save us from our sin, adopt us as God’s children through His sacrifice, where He was baptized and crucified for you and me? You and I, who have a lot to thankful for, should be deeply rooted in this faith with a grateful heart.
We always commit sin. According to God’s Word, the wages of sin is death (Roman 6:23). Those who do not know they are sinning, and cannot admit that they would end up in hell as the result of their sins, need to search within themselves and think over their filthy natures. Then they need to believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. When we look at ourselves in front of God, we are all doomed to die and go to hell because of our sins. To save such helpless people, to adopt us as God’s children and to make us whole, our Lord was baptized, crucified and shed His blood. This is truly deep and great love. So how can we not thank Him for this? We should thank God for His righteousness and His love.
God the almighty, who created the universe and man, still gave up His glory and came down to this earth to awaken and save such sinful and weak people like us. That is Jesus. ‘Jesus’ means ‘Savior’. He is the very Savior of all mankind. What made Him lead us to everlasting life from sins, condemnation, and hell was His baptism and blood at the Cross. The Holy Communion for us is to commemorate this.
“My Flesh Is Food Indeed,” Said Jesus
If we do not believe in the fact that the baptism of Jesus covered our sins, we will never receive the remission of our sins. We have received the remission of sins by faith. Our sins are remitted through faith only. God did not consult with us the sinners, but took pity on us and saved us by being baptized, and by carrying all these sins, and by being crucified on the Cross for us. He did all this righteous work out of His own volition.
Jesus also said, “My blood is drink indeed.” You have had a drink, don’t you? My throat gets really thirsty and dry whenever I have some tasty bread from the market. Then I drink some soda and that gets rid of my thirst and the dryness in my mouth. Even the soda we drink refreshes us so well, how much more precious is the blood of Jesus, which saves us all?
Jesus was baptized, whipped, torn and was covered with wounds to atone for all our sins. The Scriptures write that He was wounded for our transgressions, and He was bruised for our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5). He was smitten and pierced by nails, and He shed all His blood from His heart because He had taken on all our sins through His baptism. This was done solely to save our lives. By His stripes we are healed; and Jesus was baptized and died for all our sins that we commit mentally and physically throughout our lives. In other words, we were saved through our Lord’s eternal sacrifice.
Therefore, His blood is drink indeed. When we drink His blood by faith, it refreshes us. If someone volunteers to take away all your sins and take the penalty you are about to receive, wouldn’t you feel so grateful and relieved? Wouldn’t you feel so relieved? Yes, you would. It is a matter of your heart’s condition. The heart reveals one’s character. Your heart will be relieved. The Lord saved us like this and He wanted us to remember it through Holy Communion.
We have shared God’s Word for the last week, and some of you have listened to the gospel of the water and the Spirit in the gospel class. Brothers and sisters, do you all believe in the gospel? Yes! Did you receive the remission of sins by faith? Yes! Do you have the righteousness of God now? Yes! No matter how insufficient we are, we do not carry any of our sins anymore. Is this right? Yes! It is this belief that we can honor at Holy Communion. The Lord says, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:56).
It Is Very Crucial to Eat the Flesh of Jesus by Faith
Today’s Christians do not eat the flesh of Jesus but only drink His blood. Jesus lived thirty-three years on this earth in a human body to save us. His public life, His last three years on earth, was full of pain. While He was preaching the gospel, He went through all kinds of insults and sufferings by His own creatures. He was even slapped in His face and persecuted by His very own people. Jesus Christ has saved all of us by taking all our sins away through His baptism and by shedding His blood on the Cross. But most Christians are talking only about His blood only without eating the flesh of Jesus even as they say they believe what Jesus has done for them. This is not different from dancing in front of a golden calf and saying the golden calf led them out of Egypt and helped them prosper. It is like the gentile barbarian’s bloody sacrifice of animals.
As such, if you emphasize only the blood of Jesus on the Cross, it shows that you do not believe in the salvation of Jesus properly. If you do not know or believe that Jesus took all our sins away, but talk only about the blood on the Cross, it is same as offering sacrifice to idols.
Jesus said only those who eat His flesh and drink His blood can remain in Him. This means He was baptized to take all our sins away for our salvation. The almighty God loved us, took pity on us, and led us to salvation. This is not something we decided on and wanted for ourselves.
The Creator God who said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), came to this world in the flesh of man to save all humanity from their sins. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). God did everything relating to our salvation with His might. Power to remit our heavy sins away is found in Him only. God created the universe and made us His adopted children. God created the spiritual world, gave Satan a free will and allowed him to tempt and test us. He made His omnipotence known to us and made every sinner of the world to be saved in a fair and just manner. God saved us like this.
Whoever wants to eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood has to have faith in His baptism. Because He took all our sins through the baptism He received and died on the Cross. This is how we have received salvation. He made us sinless and clean-hearted. Dear fellow believers, do you or don’t you have sins in this faith? No!
It is written, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:57-58). Do you eat bread? We eat bread and drink wine at our communion so that we may live forever by feeding on Jesus. It is problematic if you only drink wine without eating bread. Holy Communion is one way of remembering, reviewing and confessing our faith in God’s inexpressible love that saved all of us.
If I were given limitless time, I would be happy to praise the Lord the whole time. Our Lord God is the One who saved us. We should honor this until He returns. There are some churches that have communion every Sunday. Our Church is usually too busy to do this. We perform communion twice a year. The Holy Communion is a very important ritual but doing it more frequently does not increase the importance. However, it is extremely important to do it right when we do it. What matters more than anything else is our heart’s attitude in participating in the Lord’s Supper.
I am afraid we were so busy this morning preparing for Holy Communion that we did it carelessly. We did not keep the regular order of the ritual. We should have been more faithful in our role during this ritual and kept the order. It was an understandable mistake because we don’t perform the communion as often as we should. But we still need to be careful and do our best in such an important event as Holy Communion. Are we not all gentlemen? Worship is supposed to be orderly. My excuse is I was in a hurry. Holy Communion was supposed to start at seven, but Pastor Choi who was in charge of this morning’s prayer meeting did not finish his sermon until seven o’clock. So when I came up to the pulpit it was too late and was against my will; and as a result I was little nervous and lost my cool. No matter what is going on, we should have faith in the salvation of Jesus through Holy Communion. I hope your time of worship was full of faith and thanks.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus saved us through both His baptism and His blood on the Cross. We believe in this. So we commemorate this through Holy Communion by faith. We will keep having Holy Communion to commemorate the salvation of Jesus. Preaching the gospel is saving lives, and we celebrate this through communion. I believe Jesus saved us through His baptism and His crucifixion. Do you also believe this?
I give thinks to our Lord Jesus for saving us with both His baptism and blood. Halleluiah!
This sermon is also available in ebook format. Click on the book cover below.
Copyright © 2021 by The New Life Mission