The Lord’s Day is a feast day, not a fast day, and this is because God gave Himself to us in the Lord’s Supper to be eaten on His day.

No matter what sort of trial we are facing, what sort of fast the Lord has us in, it’s broken up by this meal. This is because feasting, fellowship, joy, consolation, victory and rest are normative in the Christian life. Conflict, affliction, doubt, trial and sorrow are temporary. God blesses us in and through them, but they are overcome.

This is God’s immovable feast, kicking off every week, given to fill you up, God’s people, with love, assurance and strength. Receive that here from Him, and fill this day full of rest, food, and fellowship. This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

By minimizing God’s work in the Church, we often disregard His invitations.

If you agree to go to lunch at someone’s house, and they prepare the place and the meal, you don’t cancel unless something important comes up. If you value that person and stand by your own word, you don’t bag out, especially if you know they went to great effort to prepare. Continue reading →

Many times God’s fulfillment seems like less than His foreshadowing. Jesus is the greater Moses, the prophet with all wisdom and true counsel for God’s people, and yet said nothing officially for three decades. He never write a book, and much of what He said was unintelligible at the time He said it to own His apostles. We don’t even know what His voice sounded like. This was the Word of God, the man who taught with true authority.

When the King of the Universe, the only-begotten and royal Son of God came into the world, He was born in an obscure place. The only pomp and circumstance was performed to shepherds keeping their flocks at night. They and a few wise men were most of few who found out. No red carpet, no room at the inn. This is the Son of David, the greater Solomon, the King of kings. Continue reading →

“The celebration of the Lord’s Supper,” said Chrysostom, early church pastor in Constantinople, “is the commemoration of the greatest blessing that ever the world enjoyed” (quoted in Watson, The Mystery of the Lord’s Supper).

God meets in countless places with innumerable gifts and kindnesses. We have food, family, friends, work, rest, leisure, all the comforts of hearth and home, freedoms in our nation and opportunities more than we can count to love of the bless others. No gift is to be minimized or taken for granted.

But every week without fail God offers this gift of Himself. We remember Jesus’ body broken and his blood shed, what it cost Him to save us and therefore to be able to receive Him and all that means—abundant life—forevermore.

This is not a bare commemoration, but one that takes us further up and further in. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Cor. 11:26). Jesus is reigning until every enemy is made His footstool, the last one being death, and so this proclamation, communing in the Lord’s Supper, is an invitation to believe and eat, believe and drink. So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

The Lord’s Table is an oasis of love and freedom. God shows His love for us by feeding us body and soul. He assures our hearts that He will always do this, day after day with our daily bread. But we won’t just be sustained, our hearts will be made made glad by His wine.

This is also a token of our freedom because we’re free to drink. God sets the Table with dangerous stuff because He has sent the Spirit of self-control and wisdom into our hearts. Many Christians emphasize the freedom not to drink, and that is certainly wise in many contexts, but not every context. This freedom Jesus gives us equips us to live godly and mature lives, walking with the Spirit and defeating the flesh.

We’re sent from here to love the Lord and our neighbor the way we would be loved, the way God has just loved us. He feeds us in fellowship; He gives Himself to us to enjoy. Receive Him and give yourselves to others the same way.

From the very beginning of the church, Christians gathered on the Lord’s Day to celebrate Jesus’ victorious resurrection. Luke writes in Acts 2, “day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people” (vv46-47).

One historian notes, “From that time, and throughout most of its history, the Christian church has seen in communion its normal and highest act of worship. . . . The most remarkable characteristic of those early communion services was that they were celebrations. The tone was one of joy and gratitude, rather than sorrow and repentance” (Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, p. 108).

We confess our sins early the in the service, God speaks to us through the preached Word, and He offers us the right hand of fellowship in a striking way in communion. We are His companions, literally the ones who have bread together, and the right hand means commitment, friendship, and solidarity. We are seated in heaven with Jesus permanently at God’s right hand where there are pleasures forevermore. We taste those pleasures now as we take His hand and offes ours back to Him and to one another.

One of the earliest church fathers to write in Latin was Tertullian, and he used the word sacramentum to refer to baptism and communion. The sacramentum was the oath a Roman soldier took when he joined the military.

Soldiers sign up once for service, and so do Christians—our baptism doesn’t wash off. So why have another sacrament? Why take communion, bread and wine, every week? Because soldiers and citizens continue to pledge allegiance. Husbands and wives repeat their love and enjoy their commitment. We are fickle and we need it, and God would nourish, strengthen and bless us in fellowship with Him every week. Continue reading →

The Lord’s Supper is a feast for many. One time when Jesus entered Capernaum a Roman soldier, a centurion, came and pleaded with him to heal his servant. Jesus agreed to come heal him, but the centurion said no, he wasn’t worthy, and Jesus could just speak the word. He understood this because he too had authority and servants that would do what he said.

Jesus was astonished by this and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 8:10-11). Continue reading →

Communion is a sign and seal of God’s covenant with us. This is often how God works in covenants.

Abraham had faith in God and was already justified, but God gave him the covenant of circumcision, which Paul says is “a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised” (Rom. 4:11).

The faith, the righteousness preceded the sign and seal. It’s this way in family covenants also. At a wedding, the bride and groom take an oath, that’s a covenant, which is signified by rings and sealed in their sexual union.

If communion is only a sign and seal, then why do it? Most importantly, God said to show the covenant this way. Abraham’s faith needed expression, and God wanted to give him a way to pass it on to his children. They were in covenant now, too. James says our faith is seen by what we do.

But second, the sign and seal are means of renewing the covenant. We don’t renew it because it wears out, but because we wear out if we don’t. Husbands and wives renew their love and enjoy their marriage covenant. Calvin said God gave “his church another sacrament, that is, a spiritual banquet, where in Christ attests himself to be the life-giving bread, upon which our souls feed unto true and blessed immortality.”

We are marked and fed here again by Christ’s love.

One of the ways Christians have gotten themselves into trouble at the Lord’s Supper is by thinking wrongly about the elements, the bread and the wine. Jesus didn’t say “This is my body, broken for you” so that we could ignore what He is doing and instead wonder “How are the bread particles undergoing molecular transformation into Jesus’ body?” Continue reading →