This coming Lord’s Day the fast becomes the feast. For six months we have not been able to eat and drink the Lord’s Supper, and now we finally get to feast with and upon our Savior. I trust your soul has been famished, longing and even yearning for this covenant meal in the courts of our King, to use the language from Psalm 84:2. It will be rejuvenating to draw up our seats together around the table of our Savior to feed upon Him together by faith.
Jesus has appointed the Lord’s Supper to be observed by His church “until He comes” (I Corinthians 11:26). In eating bread and drinking the fruit of the vine, we remember Jesus and His finished work on the cross, and we proclaim His death to ourselves, to one another, and to the world. It’s easy to make too much of this sacrament, and give it powers it does not possess; this is the error of Romanists. But evangelicals are much more often tempted to make too little of the Lord’s Supper, and disregard it as unnecessary and impotent in the Christian’s life. I believe the Westminster Standards help us to steer clear of both errors.
According to our Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC), the Bible teaches that the Lord’s Supper “is a sacrament of the new testament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine according to the appointment of Christ Jesus, his death is showed forth; and they that worthily communicate feed upon his body and blood, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace; have their union and communion with him confirmed; testify and renew their thankfulness, and engagement to God, and their mutual love and fellowship with each other, as members of the same mystical body” (WLC #168).
Jesus doesn’t advocate cannibalism, so feeding upon His body and blood is of course a spiritual action - by faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit we receive and apply unto ourselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of His death (WLC #170).
To borrow language from the Heidelberg Catechism, the tangible elements of bread and the fruit of the vine assure us “that we are as really partakers of his true body and blood by the operation of the Holy Spirit as we receive by the mouths of our bodies these holy signs in remembrance of him; and that all his sufferings and obedience are as certainly ours, as if we had in our own persons suffered and made satisfaction for our sins to God” (HC #79).
The Lord’s Supper replaced and fulfilled Passover as the sign and seal of our fellowship and communion with God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Passover meal remembered with joy the Exodus, when God rescued His people of old from Egypt (see Exodus 12).
By killing and eating a lamb each year, the Israelites remembered how their ancestors had sacrificed a lamb, and painted its blood on their doorposts and on the beam above their doors. When God passed through the land of Egypt striking down every firstborn male, He passed over the houses covered by the blood.
By introducing a new meal for His covenant people in the middle of the Passover feast, Jesus was saying, “I am the Lamb of God, whose blood protects you from the wrath of God. And I am the firstborn of the Lord, who dies in your place. Those who feed upon Me, spiritually, by faith, have salvation and rescue from even greater taskmasters – sin and Satan and the flesh. Be assured that if you are trusting Me, your sins are forgiven and you have my righteousness reckoned to your account! Be strengthened by my body and blood to grip the gospel even more firmly and to serve God and neighbor with joy.”
As you’ll see here, we are adjusting how we serve the sacrament in light of COVID. But as concerned as we need to be about physical safety as we come back to the Lord’s table, Paul reminds us in I Corinthians 11:27-34 that we should be even more mindful of spiritual safety.
If we eat the bread and drink the cup in an unworthy manner - that is, without preparing and examining ourselves before we sit down at His table, without discerning or recognizing the significance of the members of the body of Christ and the call to sacrifice for one another - then we are in danger of eating and drinking God’s discipline unto ourselves.
So spend time before Sunday morning meditating upon all the glorious themes that converge in the cross (borrowing the words of The Communicant’s Manual by Jacob Jones Janeway): the apostasy of our race—the superiority of the Christian dispensation—the glory of God shining in the face of Christ—the divine person of our Redeemer—his infinite condescension and profound humiliation—his holy life, and painful sufferings and agonizing death—his triumphant resurrection and glorious ascension into heaven—his session at God’s right hand and intercession there—his coming again to judge the world, and consummate the salvation of his people—the all-sufficiency of his atonement and righteousness, and rich and invaluable benefits—his free and boundless love—the evil of sin—and so much more.
And as you return home, remember those members of our congregation who were not able to be physically present with us, and thus were not able to share in this meal that is for the gathered assembly of the saints. Serve them in love; visit them with whatever degree of physical presence and deeds of mercy they might need; pray for them; encourage them with your words.
May the Lord God Almighty be exalted as we remember our Savior’s death, to our growth in faith, hope, and love!