How highly do you value the Lord supper? Here it is inaugurated right next to the Passover supper. The one replaces the other. Christ is the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. What does it mean to believers? First of all, it is an ordinance of obedience. What is an ordinance? An ordinance is something which is ordained, something which is commanded. There are only two ordinances. The Roman Catholic Church calls them sacraments, which is an entirely wrong thing to do, and has a number of them, but there are only two rites or ceremonies, actually ordained, laid down by Christ. They are Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism, of course, has the symbol of water. It represents two things: it represents cleansing, complete washing from sin, and it represents being buried to the old life and rising to the new. The Lord’s Supper has the symbols of the bread and the wine. These are not sacraments. Sacraments speak of something efficacious. The special blessing or grace coming comes through the ceremony, and is communicated mystically, almost physically. A sacrament must communicate and impart. You get your life and blessing from the enaction of the sacrament. There is nothing like that in Christianity: no magic power flowing through the priest’s cuffs. That is superstition – confusing physical cause and effect with spiritual cause and effect. Ordinances are completely different. As the result of your faith and your heart being engaged in the meaning of the symbols, you are mightily blessed spiritually, but nothing flows to you literally from the bread or the wine, or in any mystical manner. Are you one who loves the Lord, and yet you slip out before the Lord’s Supper? Don't you hear the voice of the Saviour, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’? It is a command that we meet in this way.
It is an ordinance of thanksgiving. The Lord’s Supper is not a funeral. You can’t have a funeral for one who is alive! Christ rose from the dead and he is alive. We don't gather with dismal hearts. ‘How sad we are at the death of the Lord, at the loss of the Lord!’ Of course, there is an element of sadness, because my sin nailed him to that cross, but it isn't a sad occasion. When we sing a hymn before the Lord’s Supper service, whatever it is, we don't sing it as though we are at a funeral with the organ quietened down, singing under our breath! No, this is an ordinance of thanksgiving, friends. What Christ did for us in suffering and dying is amazing to us; it is the most wonderful thing possible. He triumphed, and he bore away our guilt, and rose from the dead, and now he reigns in heaven and we await his appearance.
Then it is also an ordinance of assurance. At the Lord’s Supper I am take in the benefits of Calvary. It is Christ's way of assuring me that he is giving to me and I have received it. It assures my heart, and it makes me more determined to conquer my sin. When I am at the Lord's Supper and I think of Calvary, what has the world got? Why do I ever give way to worldly allurements? You think so much of your gratitude to the cross of Christ and the wonderful thing that Christ has done, that the world is nothing in those moments, and your determination to part with it is never stronger.
It is an ordinance of sanctification. The disciples all asked, ‘Is it I?’ In 1 Corinthians 11:27 Paul says, ‘Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.’ We examine our hearts and we repent before we come. ‘But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup’, as someone who has had a fresh sense of his dependence upon Calvary.
It is an ordinance of commitment. We yield ourselves afresh, utterly, and wholly to the Lord. It's an ordinance of anticipation. In 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul says, verse 26, ‘For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come.’ We are very conscious that every Lord’s Supper service is also looking forward to the time when he comes again. That is an interesting little word there: ‘ye do show the Lord's death’. It is such a mild word, ‘show’. The Greek is ‘proclaim’, make known. In the Lord’s Supper and its symbols we proclaim ‘the Lord's death till he come.’ Who do we proclaim it to? To ourselves. We are the family of God, sitting at the Lord’s Supper, and in taking the elements we are proclaiming all over again the preciousness of the atoning death of Christ our Saviour.
It is of course an ordinance of togetherness. The disciples had that meal with the Lord. The Lord’s Supper brings the converted people of God together. Who is at the Lord’s Supper? Well, we should only come if we have found Christ. If anyone comes to the Lord’s Supper and they cannot say, ‘I have found the Lord; I have believed in him, and given my life to him, then, let them observe, but not participate in the elements. It's for believers.