In the sermon titled 'Of the Lord's Supper, 1689 SLBC, Chapter 30, Par. 3,' Colton Neifert examines the role of ministers in the Lord's Supper. He emphasizes that Jesus, as depicted in Matthew 26, appointed ministers to pray and bless the elements of the supper, setting them apart for a holy use. This act of blessing is not about altering the substance of the elements but distinguishing their purpose from common nourishment to spiritual remembrance of Christ. Neifert draws on parallel texts from Luke and Corinthians to highlight the significance of remembering Christ and sharing in His blood and body, which symbolically represents the church. Ministers are tasked with praying over and blessing these elements and then distributing them to the communicants, thereby facilitating a spiritual communion with Christ.

All right, so I was just going to go through this paragraph and look. I think there's two main points that I want to take a look at. So the first is Jesus appointed ministers to pray and bless the elements. So if we look back at Matthew 26, when Christ instituted the Lord's Supper, it says, and as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples. So in that situation there where Christ instituted the Supper, he was their spiritual leader, he was the minister ministering to them, and it says he blessed and broke it.

The parallel text in Luke says he gave thanks, so this wasn't like, you know, some sort of like ritualistic blessing that, you know, altering the substance of the elements. It's a blessing to set them apart for a holy use. So yeah, it says to set them apart from a common to a holy use. The common use of the food obviously is to nourish the body, which it shows in that text in Matthew 26, it says, as they were eating, so they were already eating, and in the middle of them eating, He gave thanks for the bread and the wine, blessing it, and setting it apart for that holy use as it says in the confession and the use that it's describing would be remembering Christ like in Luke 22 it says do this in remembrance of me And then the other aspect of that use is what 1 Corinthians 10, 16, where it says, is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ, and is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ. So I think that's the other part of the use is the sharing in the blood and body of Christ and the body of Christ being the church.

So I guess that's really all I have. Ministers are to pray and bless the elements for a holy use remembering Christ and sharing in his blood and body, and then to give those elements to the communicants.