| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 25 |
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Jesus asked His disciples to eat in remembrance of Him. We are very forgetful creatures. One of the exhortations of the Psalmist is to his own soul, in the One Hundred and Third Psalm, that he should not forget God’s benefits. But that is the very thing we are quickest to do. We do not appreciate the true value of the monuments or memorials in keeping alive the memory of past deeds or great events. We do not know how much of our vivid thought of Christ’s death we owe to the Lord’s Supper, which is observed so often. The chief reason Christ gave it to His Church was that we might never forget His love, His sufferings, His death for us. One morning a young man, an Englishman, at that time living in Philadelphia and attending the same church of which I was pastor, came into my study, and drawing from his pocket a letter, opened it, showing me, in among the folds, some pressed flowers. “These are from my mother’s grave in England,” he said. Then, with exceeding tenderness, he spoke of his mother, her sweet life, her love, her thoughtfulness, her trust in Christ, her beautiful death. The letter he held was from his sister at home, and she had plucked these flowers from the grave of the precious mother and sent them across the sea to him. No wonder they recalled afresh all her sweet life. In the communion service we have flowers from the grave of Christ, and they bring back to us all the tender recollections, helping us to think anew of His love and its great sacrifice for us.
After breaking the bread, Jesus gave the cup, with the explanation, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The Lord’s Supper is a silent sermon, telling to the world that Christ died and that we are his followers. It is not a proclaiming of our own goodness, that we are better that others. In taking our place at Christ’s table, we say to all men that we are sinners, that Christ died for us, and that our sole dependence is upon the merits of His blood. Some people shrink from a public confession as if it were a setting of themselves before the world as better than others, as if it were a heralding of their religion. But it is not a “profession of religion” that we make when we unite with the Church and come to the Lord’s table, but a “confession of Christ.” There is a great difference in these two phrases. Here it is a proclaiming, not of our own goodness, that we make at the communion, but of the death of Christ. We honour Christ, we humble ourselves, for we put ourselves behind the death, the cross of Christ, and hide there. We are not seen at all — it is Christ’s death for sinners that is seen.
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