On the night before He went to the cross, the Lord invited His disciples to join Him in celebrating the Passover feast. He had arranged all the details for this memorable evening in the privacy of a borrowed room, aglow with warm lamplight. At the very outset of the meal, the Lord revealed the yearning of His heart to share this Passover with them before He suffered (Lk. 22:15). But unknown to the disciples at the time, this was a farewell meal in which Christ looked forward to his death and its saving consequences.
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (Jn. 13:1).
Celebrating the Passover was a reminder that God had promised the Israelites that when the destroying angel came down in judgment on the unbelieving Egyptians, He would pass (hover) over every household that had applied the blood to the entrance of their home, sparing those households. Now, the truly perfect Lamb of God was about to be sacrificed for them, demonstrating a measure of love that men had never known. This was the ultimate Passover to which the shadow of all other Passover feasts, offerings, and detailed instructions pointed.
A New Reminder
This was the setting in which the Lord instituted a new feast. Paul would call it “the Lord’s supper” (1 Cor. 11:20); Luke called it “the breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42).
Just as the Passover before it had pointed Israel to the death of the Passover lamb (and, ultimately, to the death of the true Passover Lamb), so, too, the Lord’s Supper points us to the death of the Lord Jesus. The function of the Lord’s supper is to proclaim, or declare, the death of the Lord until He returns (1 Cor. 11:26). The meal points to Christ and speaks of His death in simple terms, a constant reminder to us of God’s willingness to forgive and to receive ruined man.
The emphasis is entirely on the Lord and what He has done for us. As a local gathering of believers meets to remember Him, our thoughts are directed by the Spirit of God to glorify the Son by declaring His beauties through prayer, the reading of Scriptures, and the singing of hymns. The feast is a fresh salvation message each week!
The meal was, and continues to be, a collective gathering around two simple emblems. By eating the bread and drinking the cup, believers are expressing our faith in all that those items signify: His body, in which He came to earth and accomplished all of His Father’s will, and His blood which was shed for us. Everything about the Lord’s supper—its significance, its pictures, its content—reminds us that the prophecies of the suffering Servant of Yahweh who poured out His soul to death and bore the sin of many (see Isa. 53) were completely fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. This is the basis of the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah. Only through the sacrifice of Christ could the Lord cleanse men from their sin and bestow forgiveness and deliverance from the power of sin.
But though the focus of the supper is on the death of Christ, we commune with the Risen Lord. He is the Host who presides over the meeting. The knowledge and sense of His presence make the meeting precious.
Preparation
With such a profoundly important meeting, it is vital that we come prepared in heart. Coming unprepared and out of mere habit is really an insult to the seriousness of the meeting. David stated he would not offer burnt offerings to the Lord with that which had cost him nothing (2 Sam. 24:24).
How do we prepare? To begin with, Paul states that we are to examine ourselves (1 Cor. 11:28-32). This includes our relationship with the Lord, ensuring that we keep short accounts by confessing any known sin. It also includes our relationship with others. All efforts should be made to settle disputes or conflicts with other believers (Mt. 5:23-24). Failure to follow this instruction can lead to judgment such as weakness, sickness, and even death (1 Cor. 11:30).
But beyond that, it is crucial to realize that we can’t prepare merely Sunday morning. We can only truly be ready to remember Him if we have spent the week feeding on His Word, enjoying His presence in prayer, and experiencing His hand in our lives—moment by moment—through witnessing, trials, struggles, and victories (Col. 3:16-17). If we don’t walk with Him day by day, we will not be able to properly worship Him on Sunday.
Having come to know the glorious Passover Lamb ourselves, we are to show our gratitude by living lives that are pleasing to Him. As we gather together with hearts filled with love and devotion for Him, we commune with Him, and He faithfully continues to sustain, protect, and transform us by His Spirit into His own image.
The believer’s communion with the Lord is a continuous, daily experience, but there are high points in the relationship, special moments of intimacy, and one of these is gathering for the Lord’s supper. Our attitude towards that meeting and our behavior in it say a lot about the health and state of our local church.
Remember Me
The Lord’s simple request is that we celebrate the Lord’s supper in remembrance of Him (1 Cor. 11:24f). As we gather together to break bread, it is a privilege to take that little while to stop thinking about ourselves, our concerns, and this world, and, instead think simply of Him. To this end, before a man ever opens his mouth to speak at this blessed meeting, he should consider whether what he is about to say is in keeping with our Lord’s request. There are valid times and places to talk about ourselves, the needs of others, the work of the assembly, and so on. But the Lord’s supper is a time to briefly put those thoughts aside and simply remember Him. As we do so, we can’t help but be taken up in worship.
A. W. Tozer defined worship as:
“a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder…It is delightful to worship God but it is also a humbling thing; and the man who has not been humbled in the presence of God will never be a worshiper of God at all. There’s an awesomeness about God which is missing in our day altogether; there’s little sense of admiring awe in the church of Christ these days…That we are to feel something in our heart that we didn’t have before we were converted; that we’re going to express it in some way and it’s going to be a humbling but a most enjoyable sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the Presence of that most ancient Mystery.”1
True worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him (Jn. 4:23).
Endnote
1 A.W. Tozer, Worship: The Missing Jewel (Christian Publications, 1996), pp. 8-9.