Introduction: We recently paused in our Exodus notes in order to consider the importance of the Old Testament sacraments, such as circumcision, and their impact on our view of God’s sacraments in the New Testament. We were urged to thank God for the sacraments, which we enjoy and benefit from just as Abraham and Moses did of old. We especially thanked God for the physical nature of these sacraments, which are meant to strengthen our weak faith in the invisible promises of God – by granting us things which we can see and touch! This week we again interrupt our Exodus notes in order to focus on further lessons from the sacraments, in particular the Lord’s Supper, as these lessons are unfolded for us in the Apostle Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. May our partaking of communion be enriched by these notes.
Monday: read 1 Corinthians 11:23. Paul tells us that Communion is not a badge for those we may think possess greater worthiness than ourselves to sit at the Lord’s Table. Rather, it is a promise of blessing for many generations of sinners to whom the invitation to partake is passed on. As Paul says, “I received… what I also pass on to you.” … Passed on to the Corinthian church? If there were any church more deserving of being excluded from the Lord’s Supper, it was the Corinthian church. Paul even declares that some in the Corinthian body had abused the Lord’s Supper in a deadly fashion – see 1 Cor. 11:29-30. Yet, Paul invites them – and us – in all our sense of unworthiness, to receive what the Apostle passes on to us: “This is His Body broken for you.”
Meditate and Pray: Let us thank the Lord Jesus for His generous invitation to sinners to come and “eat, drink in remembrance of Him,” with the words of hymn # 503:
| Out of my bondage, sorrow, and night, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come; Into Thy freedom, gladness, and light, Jesus, I come to Thee; Out of my sickness, into Thy health, Out of my want and into Thy wealth, Out of my sin and into Thyself, Jesus, I come to Thee. |
Out of my shameful failure and loss, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come; Into the glorious gain of Thy cross, Jesus, I come to Thee. Out of earth’s sorrows into Thy balm, Out of life’s storms and into Thy calm, Out of distress to jubilant psalm, Jesus, I come to Thee. |
Tuesday: read 1 Corinthians 11:23-24 (NKJV): Paul passes on to us reminders of Jesus’ saving work via the bread and the cup. But what exactly do these symbols point to? The key word which outlines what we are remembering at Communion is from verse 24 in the New King James Version: “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” To quote James Philip on the brokenness of Jesus’ body as our key to communion:
‘This is my body broken,’ – it was the action, not the element, that was important. The body broken – that is what faith lays hold upon – not the element, but the action. Christ is offering His act upon the Cross to us. He is in effect saying, ‘This is my redemptive work. Take it.’ It is the action of God in Christ that is being offered to us.
Meditate and Pray: Thank Jesus that we can by faith partake of nothing less than the saving benefits of His body and blood offered to us on the Cross – Not His body and blood in the bread and cup, as if by magic these physical elements could be changed, but on Calvary! Thank Him for the real communion which we by faith enjoy with Him in our souls. We can eat with Him by faith to the nourishment of our souls just as really as if we had been with Him in the Upper Room when He instituted this meal, and just as movingly as if we had seen Him die for us on the Tree! Hallelujah! No wonder hymn # 260 declares that we by faith can be in communion with Him in His work to save us:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Wednesday: read 1 Corinthians 11:23-24; 15:3-10 & John 14:18. What Paul passes on is not just an invitation to the Lord’s Table. It is a recounting of the factual, life-changing testimony of those who saw Christ on earth – including Paul himself, to whom the Lord appeared, as to one “abnormally born” (1 Cor. 15:8). The facts, then, by which we are prepared to come to this Supper, are the same life-changing events which transformed the Apostles from a huddled mass of cowardly, Christ-denying humanity into fearless heralds of the Cross of Christ. In other words, there is something in the facts of the Gospel story which give us courage to stand and proclaim to all men, “Jesus died for me.” As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11:26: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
Meditate and Pray: Thank God that He did not leave the Apostles as lone witnesses for the Gospel; nor will He leave us alone before a hostile world. He knows that an orphaned Church will never have the strength to proclaim the Death of His Son. Thank the Father, then, for giving us the Spirit of His Son, who testifies alongside us (John 15:26-27), making the words and deeds of Jesus “live” in our memories just as they did in those who saw the Lord. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18).
Thursday: read 1 Corinthians 11:23-24, Philippians 1:19 and John 16:14-15. For Paul, “passing on” 1 Corinthians 11’s instructions about the Lord’s Table was a matter of life and death. In the words of Philippians 1:19, Paul could not look for his “deliverance” whereby he could rest from his apostolic duties until he had “delivered” the facts about the Lord’s Supper to the Church. No wonder Paul’s letters so often express his burden that the church needs to “receive” the Gospel which he seeks to “deliver”!
But how was Paul able to pass on these words and finally rest from his labors, assured that these instructions about Communion would live on in the Church, guiding her until our day more than 2,000 years later? The answer is the Holy Spirit of our Lord, whose help Paul alludes to in the rest of Philippians 1:19: “by the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ ….”
Meditate and Pray: Thank Jesus that He did not leave the definition or transmission of Gospel Truth in the hands of men like the Apostle Paul. Paul himself was to “pass on” nothing from his own thinking or invention – only what he himself “received” from Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:11-12). Instead, Jesus entrusted the preservation of all essential Gospel doctrine, including the Lord’s Supper, into the faithful Hands of the Holy Spirit. Thank the Holy Spirit for His faithful work of magnifying Christ alone in the Gospel with the words of John 16:13-14: “When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth… He will bring glory to Me by taking from what is Mine and making it known to you.”
Friday: read 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 & Acts 2:23-24. We have seen from this week’s notes that the “tradition” about the Lord’s Supper which Paul passes on to us in 1 Cor. 11:23ff. is a tradition defined, completed and preserved by no one less than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is so much in control of the content of all Gospel instructions, including that of the Lord’s Supper, that He will not entrust the handling of the Gospel to anyone else! Even the Holy Spirit of God, equal with the Father and the Son, is not permitted to “speak on His own” when it comes to the Gospel (see John 16:13), but instead speaks only what the Lord Jesus instructs Him to say! Why does Jesus “own” the Gospel in this way?
The answer surely lies in the fact that Jesus alone was “given over” to betrayal, suffering and death in order to bring the Gospel into being. In terms of 1 Corinthians 11:23, there would be no “passing on” (the Greek verb paradidomi) of Gospel truth if Jesus had not permitted Himself to be “betrayed” (same word) into the hands of sinful men. What a costly Gospel, then, is ours: before it could be written down it had to be lived out to the bitter end! In terms of Acts 2:23, because Jesus was “handed over by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge” into the hands of wicked men, Paul can hand over into our undeserving hands a complete Gospel, speaking of the perfect man Jesus and His perfect suffering, obedience and death in our place. The greatest story ever told has a perfect ending of salvation because Jesus took our place in it!
Meditate and Pray: Thank Jesus for His willingness to be “handed over” into “lawless hands” (NKJV of Acts 2:23) in obedience to the will of His Father. Worship Him as the Risen Savior, who could not be held by death.
Lord Jesus, give us more boldness to live out the proclamation of your death and resurrection in our daily lives. As we sit and feast at your Table of blessing, month after month, year after year, may we see that so much blessing demands nothing less than our whole beings committed to proclaiming the Lord’s death until He comes. Amen.
As Isaac Watts says in the first and last lines of his great hymn:
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.