Gregory Dickow - Breakthrough Living: The Miracles of Communion
I want to start in First Corinthians, chapter 11:23, and I'm going to read this to you from the English Standard Version of the Bible, and then what I want to do is I want to share with you the Word of God. The Bible says, "Faith comes from hearing and hearing from God's word". So as you hear God's word today, faith is going to rise in your life. Faith is going to grow in your heart. And then, we're going to activate our faith by taking communion together, and experience the benefits or the miracles of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Now, there's a really, before I get to this verse, in First Corinthians 11, I'm just reminded of a verse in Leviticus, chapter 17, verse 11, and it says this: "The life of the flesh is in the blood". The life of the flesh is in the blood. And so if you don't have any blood in your body, you're going to die. Right? The life of the flesh is in the blood are life flows through our blood. The life of the flesh is in the blood. Now, remember that Jesus came to this earth as God in the flesh, right, Emmanuel God with us or God in the flesh. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word became flesh and blood. Right. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
So Jesus is God's flesh. When He came to the Earth, he's God's flesh. And where where does the where does the life of the flesh flow through? The life of the flesh is in the blood. And so when Jesus came to the earth, the only way that Jesus could get God's life into our lives and God's life into this Earth is through shedding his blood. Since the life of the flesh is in the blood, Jesus blood had to be shed so that God's life could flow into our lives and God's life could flow into this earth. Does this make sense? So far so. So Jesus couldn't just come to the Earth and then die some any, any old way. He had his blood had to be shed because by shedding his blood, God's life flowed through his blood. God's healing, God's forgiveness, God's miracle power. So the blood of Jesus is not just a symbol. The blood of Jesus is how the life of God flows into our lives.
So that's why Jesus said, if you want if you want a part of me, you've got to eat my flesh and drink my blood. He was saying, because that's where the life is. That's how we're going to experience the life of God. So when we take communion, we're eating his flesh, we're drinking his blood, we're receiving his life. So whatever his life consists of, when we partake of it in communion, our life begins to partake of what his life is made of. His life is made of love. We're partaking of his love. His life is made of of health. We're partaking of his healing and his health. His life, his life is made up of mercy. We're partaking of his mercy. His life is this flows with blessing. We're partaking of his blessing. Whatever he is, we are partaking of it when we take communion. Does that make sense? So the life of the flesh is in the blood.
So when Jesus blood was shed, God's life was made available to us. And when his blood washed away our sins, his life came into our life and we were born again. And now it's no longer I who live right, Paul said in Galatians two twenty. I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life that I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. So now I'm. I'm living God's life through me. God's life is living through me. So I'm not really it's not it's Christianity. It's not really us living for God as much as us living from God. God lives inside of us in his life is flowing through us.
So when we speak God's word, God's life is flowing out of us. When we pray for the sick, God's healing is flowing out of us. When we when we forgive people, God's forgiveness is flowing out of our out of our lives. You see, God's life is now in us. And every time we take communion, we're we're activating that life. We're plugging in to God's power. And I just I wanted you to see that from a a different point of view than just sort of taking the ritual of communion. I don't want us to take communion as a ritual or just as a religious tradition. But I want you to experience the power that comes through the body and blood of Jesus Christ. So that's why I got you in First Corinthians, chapter 11, verse twenty three four I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it in. He said, this is my body, which is for you.
Now, this is a way this is one of the ways to experience God's break through power in your life is that even in the night that he was betrayed, it was the very night he was being betrayed. And what do we see him doing? Crying and complaining about being betrayed? No whining about being a victim because he's being betrayed? No. What do we see Jesus doing in the night? He's being betrayed. We see him taking the bread and giving God thanks for taking the bread and giving God thanks. This is a great lesson for each of us to learn, is that no matter what is happening in our lives, we should take the bread and give God thanks. We should take communion and give God thanks. We should give God thanks.
Even in the very night we're being betrayed, sometimes your health might betray you. Sometimes a loved one might betray you. Sometimes your mind might betray you. Your emotions might betray you. Your finances might betray you. But what we need to do is no matter what night it is, especially if it's a night where you're being betrayed, especially, it's a night when you're when you're struggling and there's some things that are trying to overwhelm your soul. Give God thanks and take communion. There's something powerful. Sometimes we're just waiting for a life of peace before we sit at the table. But we have to realize that God wants us to have peace in the midst of the storm. He said he'll prepare a table for us in the presence of our enemies. We're waiting for all our enemies to scatter before we have peace.
And God is saying no. He's saying take communion in the presence of your enemies. Eat at the table in the presence of your enemies. Praise God in the presence of your enemies. Praise God for what Jesus did on the cross. Because no matter what your enemy is, no matter what is coming against you, what God has done for you is far greater than what anyone can do against you. God is going to undo or outdo whatever somebody else did, and God is going to undo or outdo whatever you did. God is going to undo or outdo whatever the devil did, because that's how good God is a man. So as we get ready to take communion, Jesus said he said he gave thanks and he broke the bread and he said, This is my body, which is for you to do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way he took the cup and after supper he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
So there he takes the limits off of how often we can do this, because he leaves it up to us as often as you do it, do it in remembrance of him. So when we take communion, we're not supposed to remember our sins. We're supposed to remember him. We're not supposed to remember our pain. We're supposed to remember his healing. We're not supposed to remember our fears of sister. Remember our faith in him. It's in other words, we're supposed to remember what he did on the cross. We're not supposed to focus on what we've done. We're supposed to focus on how he did what we did. Whatever you did, God has out done it and God has overcome it and God has paid the price for it. So we're looking to the cross. Every time we take communion, we're remembering what Jesus did.
That's why I wanted to spend some time teaching you about it, because I don't want you to just do it as a ritual and get nothing out of it. I want you to do it the way God says to, because it's going to release power in your life, because every time people took a meal in the Bible, there was something major that happened. They took a meal in the presence of their enemies and they had peace in the presence of their enemies. Jesus, the Bible says two of his disciples took bread together with Jesus, not recognizing him. And as soon as he broke the bread, they recognized him. They they became aware of his presence. He was with them the whole time, but they became aware of his presence when they took communion.
So Jesus already paid for our sins and paid for our healing and paid to set us free from the curse of the law. But when we take communion, we are we're realizing or we're recognizing what he did. We're activating the power of God that's inside of us and the power of what Jesus did for us on the cross. You see, we have got to get away from religious thinking, which is we just going through the motions. Hey, look, when you said with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, you didn't make him Lord. He already was Lord. What you did when you when you proclaimed him as Lord, you plugged into the power of his salvation because it says if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You were saved. You weren't just praying some religious prayer. You were tapping into the power of salvation the moment you declared Jesus as Lord and you believe that God raised him from the dead, you were plugging into the power. Right.
And so in the same way. And when you come up for prayer, we lay hands on you. You're plugging into God's power. We're not laying hands on you just as a dedication to the law, we're laying hands on you because we expect that if you lay hands on the sick, they shall recover. So we're tapping in or plugging into the power. And in the same way, when we take communion together today, we're not just having a ceremony here. We're not having a ritual here. We are plugging in to God's power and the supply of God's power will flow through that bread and through that cup to the degree that you expect it to.
Let's look at some of the miracles that come through taking communion. And we're going to look at the example for for the next few minutes and then we'll take communion together. We're going to look at the example of Abraham when Abraham comes back from a battle in Genesis 14, the high priest is waiting for him. The high priest's name is Melchizedek. He was without father, without mother, without genealogy. We know that this Melchizedek represents Jesus Christ and Abraham represents us because we're the seed of Abraham. So stick with me for a few moments and watch what happens here in Genesis Chapter 14. If you look at verse 18, we see Melchizedek King of Salem brings out bread and wine. Sounds like a communion service, doesn't it? He brings out the bread in the wine, and he's the king of Salem. He was the priest of God Most High. So this man represents Jesus and notice what he's called king of Salem.
Now, I don't know what you think of when you hear the word Salem, but what I think of when I used to hear the word Salem was a pack of cigarettes. How many know what I'm talking about? But then I then I learned what the Bible actually means by this word. Salem It is the Hebrew word shalom, which means peace, the peace of God, where nothing is missing and nothing is broken. It's having peace with God and it's having the peace of God. So the bread and the first miracle that I want to share with you here, the first miracle of communion, the first miracle that happens when we eat the bread and drink the cup, the bread and the wine.
The first miracle is that we activate God's peace in our lives. We activate God's peace, God's Salem or God's shalom. We activate God's peace in our lives. So peace enters into the scene. The moment we eat the bread and drink the cup, we're releasing God's peace in our lives. So a miracle of peace flow. So if your heart has been disturbed, if your heart has been distressed, if your heart has been discouraged, if you're if you're at unrest and you're lacking peace, we want to go back to the death of Jesus and activate the power of God that he paid for through the cross. How do we activate the power of the cross? We take communion. One of the ways is we take communion. And what happens? The first thing that happens is peace flows like a river.
I know there have been times where I've taken communion in the midst of fear and confusion, in the midst of not being sure what I'm supposed to do, in the midst of things around me and things even in me not being settled. And as soon as I took communion, a peace came over me. What was that? It was the king of peace entering in on the scene. It was me saying, even though I don't feel any peace, I'm going to walk by faith and accept and proclaim that the cross is enough to give me peace. The cross is enough to give me calm. The cross is enough to settle me down. The cross is enough to to to pacify my anger. The cross is enough to to to silence all the voices that are telling me that I'm not going to make it or telling me that God's not with me. I have the peace of knowing that Jesus is the one that brought the bread in the wine. Jesus is the one that is serving me this communion. Jesus is the one that has given me his body and his blood. I'm not making that happen. He already made that happen. I'm simply plugging in to the power that he made happen on the cross peace, the peace of God, the peace of God.
Secondly, notice what happens next is this. Peace flows like a river and God blesses. Melchizedek blesses Abraham and says he blessed him in verse 19 and said, Blessed and I'm from the amplified Bible, says blessed, favored with blessings made, blissful and joyful be Abraham by God, Most High possessor and maker of heaven and earth. Boy, this is a miracle that you ought to cling to. Maybe you grew up depressed. Maybe you are a person who doesn't. It's not easy for you to be happy and to have joy. And it takes a lot for you to really have this sense of of bliss and joy when you know what you should expect. Starting today, when you take communion, you're activating the power God, you're plugging into the power of joy, the power of happiness, the power of God's blessing to make blissful and joyful.
You see those words to make blissful and joyful. How many people in life are searching for bliss? They're searching for happiness. They're searching for joy. They're trying to find it in anything, any one that they can find it in. And he's saying he brings that with him through his body and through his blood. He brings the joy. He brings the bliss. He brings the happiness. He brings the blessing. The second miracle of communion is the miracle of happiness and the blessing of God and the joy and bliss of a relationship with God. God doesn't want us to be walking around like Christianity is a funeral procession. God wants us to be walking around like Christianity is a wedding celebration. It's a wedding between you and the Lord. It's a marriage between you and Jesus.
No matter how great or how average or how bad your marriage may be or the marriage you grew up with at home with your parents or whatever marriage you experienced, no matter what it is good, bad, ugly or great. There's something much better that God has for you than what you're trying to extract from that marriage, and that is the marriage bliss. Of being in communion with Jesus. The bliss and happiness and the joy of being in relationship with him and knowing that Melchizedek, the king of Peace, has come to bring you the bread and the wine and and the miracle of the miracle of that piece in the miracle of this of this happiness and joy is yours. It's yours. He paid for it on the cross. Let's activate it by plug it into the power of it when we take communion.
All right. Number three is found in the next verse in chapter 15, verse one, the next miracle of communion. It says, After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in vision. After what things? What is he talking about here? After these things? After what things? After Abraham and Melchizedek just took communion. After they ate and drank the bread and the wine. After these things, the word of the Lord came to him in a vision. So I want you to see that the next miracle that's going to happen when you take communion is you can expect to receive answers from God. You can expect to receive words from God. You can expect to receive God's vision for your life, God's answers for your life, God's wisdom for your life. The word of the Lord represents his answers. It represents his wisdom. It represents his his his vision and purpose for your life.
And notice what it says. After they took communion, the Word of God came to the right word at the right time, came on the heels of communion. And I want to encourage you as we take the bread and the and the cup today, I want you to expect the answers that you need. Who's got a question that needs an answer? Who's got a knotty problem that needs to be unwound? Who's got something going on in your life where you need a word from God? You need clarity and answer wisdom, direction, vision. God wants to give that to you the moment you take communion. We need this. We need to take communion, look up, expecting peace to flow like a river, expecting the joy and the happiness of God to flow like a river, and expecting answers from heaven to show up in your life.