Communion ServiceScripture: Matthew 26:26-30

I. A. On this most solemn occasion in the life of our Lord, He found it possible to be thankful to God. With the agony of the cross in the immediate future, He was able to offer thanks.B. Evidently our Lord had developed the habit of giving thanks in the midst of all things and at all times.C. As we observe the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, we have every reason to be very thankful.

When Jesus Gave Thanks

II. DID OUR LORD OFFER THANKS FOR GOD’S BLESSINGS IN THE PAST?A. As Jesus contemplated dying upon the cross, He offered thanks to God.1. Perhaps He was thanking God for the Father’s provisions in His ministry up to this point.

2. Perhaps He was thanking God for His redemptive purpose from the beginning.3. Perhaps He was thanking God for His controlling purpose and His divine protection of His servants down through the centuries.4. Perhaps He was thanking God for His abiding presence.

B. If our Lord could be thankful to God for the past, it follows that each of us can find many things for which to thank God. He has done much for us.1. We can be thankful for the struggles and the sacrifices of those who are humanly responsible for the great spiritual heritage that we enjoy today.

2. We can be thankful for Jesus, for the prophets and the apostles, for the pioneer missionaries, and for our spiritual forefathers.3. Let us during this service be grateful and thankful for God’s leading in the past.

Ill. DID OUR LORD OFFER THANKS FOR GOD’S PRESENT BLESSINGS?A. We can be certain that our Lord was living and laboring with a conscious awareness of the abiding presence of the Father God. Twice the voice had come from Heaven declaring, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

B. Our Lord had come on a mission that would involve teaching and healing and finally dying upon a cross. He was so very near the completion of His mission that He felt impelled to be thankful unto God because of the joy of personal accomplishment.

C. Let us search for those things in our contemporary experience that can cause us to be thankful to God as we partake of these elements of the Lord’s Supper.1. What would our lives be like if we had never come to know Jesus Christ? Let us take an inventory and evaluate the differences that Christ has made to enrich, to improve, to enlarge our total human experience.

2. Let us be grateful for the friendships and the relationships that have been made possible by His life and His death and His resurrection.

D. As we partake of these elements that symbolize His incarnation in human flesh and His sacrificial death upon the cross, let us be thankful today.

IV. DID OUR LORD OFFER THANKS TO GOD FOR THE FUTURE?A. With the agony awaiting Him in Gethsemane and on Calvary, was our Lord anticipating the joy of returning to the Father? Was this an element in the thanksgiving that He offered to the Father as He held in His hands the symbols of His incarnation and His sacrificial death upon the cross? In the great intercessory prayer recorded in John 17, we hear our Lord saying, “And now I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to thee” (17:11 RSV).

B. Our Lord was thankful for what His life, His teachings, His ministry, His sacrificial and substitutionary death, and His glorious resurrection was going to mean to His followers. The writer of the Book of Hebrews tells us that it was because of “the joy that was set before Him” that He “endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2 RSV)

C. Our Lord was offering thanks because through His coming death upon the cross, it would be possible for the love of God to be revealed to a sinful race

D. As we partake of the bread which symbolizes His flesh, and as we drink the fruit of the vine, symbolizing His sacrificial death upon the cross, let us rejoice and be grateful. Let us be thankful for what this does with reference to our past, our present, and our future.

V. CONCLUSION

A. Our Lord had the habit of being thankful. He gave verbal expression to God and to others of this inward attitude of gratitude.B. As we participate, let us be supremely thankful to Him for what He has done for us in the past, what He is doing in the present, and what He will do in the future.