The Lord’s Supper
THE LORD’S SUPPER
We have been speaking, dear brethren, in these meetings, of the service of God as flowing out of the Lord’s supper, specially as coming before us, at any rate in a suggestive way, in connection with Gideon and Samson. Gideon was concerned as to there being right moral conditions, and hence he brought a large quantity of unleavened flour, reminding us of what the apostle says in the epistle to the Corinthians, “our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed; so that let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”, 1 Cor 5: 8. He insists in that way that if the Supper is to be taken up, and the service of God is to be entered upon, it requires suitable moral conditions, conditions that befit those who have to do with God and bear His name publicly. The epistles to the Corinthians are occupied with that side of the truth, they are addressed to the assembly of God which is in Corinth; and at the end of chapter 10 of the first epistle we read: “Give no occasion to stumbling, whether to Jews, or Greeks, or the assembly of God”, v 32. That is, if you took account of the population at Corinth, every one who belonged to the city of Corinth was either a Jew or a Greek or he was a member of the assembly of God. And it is a good thing for us to take account of ourselves in that light, dear brethren, as we come together, not that we make any claim to being the assembly of God, for that would be unsuitable in the days of brokenness in which we are; but the faithful cherish divine thoughts, they realise that that is the mind of God for His people in any place, that they should be identifiable as the assembly of God, those with whom, in the place, He can connect His Name. Now that is an important matter, and the Supper is set in that relation, the Supper is set in a public setting to begin with. It becomes the doorway into spiritual and heavenly privilege, but when we come together it is important to realise that we come together in a public setting so that, as has often been said, we take the Supper in the wilderness, not in the land; and therefore it is necessary to pay attention to things which the Spirit of God calls attention to, and hence, this morning, we touched on Jephthah, Gideon presenting what corresponds with the 5th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Jephthah presenting to us what corresponds with the beginning of the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians. That is, the great point in Jephthah’s history is headship, but headship not in the land, not the headship of Christ to the assembly, but headship in the wilderness, on the eastern side of the Jordan. It was in Gilead that Jephthah operated, and that is connected with the beginning of the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, where the apostle says that he would have us know “that the Christ is the head of every man, but woman’s head is the man, and the Christ’s head God”. Now that is something that we should carry in mind, dear brethren, because it affects us in our conduct amongst men, and what men can take account of, and what angels, too, can take account of—let us not forget that, that the angels are taking account of what is going on amongst God’s people on earth. As far as we can trace from scripture, angels have always been interested in divine operations, when the foundations of the earth were laid, the morning stars sang together, and shouted for joy; that is there was some suggestion of creatures of God who were in sympathy with Him in His operations. And we get references to the angels both in the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, and in the 3rd chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, and in the 1st chapter of the 1st epistle of Peter, which things, it says, “angels desire to look into”, v 12. They are interested in the things connected with the saints, they want to look into them; and the principalities and powers in the heavenlies, who are angels, are to learn in the assembly, the all various wisdom of God, that is the 3rd of Ephesians. And here, in the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the woman is enjoined, (of course it is a word to Christian women, because women who are not Christians are not very likely to pay attention to it, though God would honour them if they did), but at any rate, women are addressed to take up a certain attitude, “because of the angels”. And so we are to keep that in mind, that we are under the eye of men and under the eye of angels, and we are that in the capacity of belonging to the assembly of God in a place. Hence God connects His name with His people, and that involves great privilege, but also corresponding responsibility.
And so, the apostle is speaking of this matter of the Supper, it was marked by a good deal of disorder at Corinth, at the time he wrote, and he says, “Have ye not then houses for eating and drinking? or do ye despise the assembly of God ...?” See how he speaks of the assembly of God, he has spoken of it in chapter 1, he has spoken of it in chapter 10, he speaks of it now again in chapter 11, as though he would make the expression ring in our ears, so to speak, that we are to bear in mind this idea of the assembly of God in the particular place where we may be living. And therefore, all our conduct, how we comport ourselves, is to be regulated by that consideration. From another point of view, according to the first epistle to Timothy, we have to regard ourselves always as the house of God; that is where God dwells, and certainly, anyone is entitled, in his own dwelling, to have things according to his taste, and therefore, in the house of God, which is the assembly, God is entitled to have things according to His own prescription. But when it comes to the idea of the assembly of God, it is the same company of course, but it is another point of view, it is that which is in a place publicly as bearing the name of God in that place; and therefore dignity and intelligence should mark it in all that goes on there.
And so the apostle approaches this matter of the Supper, and he says, “I received from the Lord, that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was delivered up, took bread”. I would venture to say, dear brethren, that it is good for us always to keep that in mind as we come to the Supper; that is, we do not start at the point of high privilege, we start at the point that we are in the world where the Lord Jesus was betrayed. It is a good thing to keep that in mind, because it provides a certain stimulus to the affections of the saints. You remember how, on the occasion when the Lord instituted the Supper, there were those among His disciples, according to Luke 22, who were disputing who should be greatest; a sorrowful thing indeed, that such a thing should arise at such a time, but that was the fact, they were disputing who should be greatest. But then the Lord meets it very tenderly, in such a way that you could hardly call it even a rebuke, though there was a rebuke in it, but He meets it very tenderly indeed; and then He says to them, “But ye are they who have persevered with me in my temptations”. That is, He valued them from that standpoint, that in contrast to the world around that was just about to cast Him out, they had been going on with Him. And we can always regard ourselves, and one another, in that light; it helps us greatly when we come together, to take account of things in that light, that we are in the world where Christ has been betrayed, and where He has been crucified and cast out; but there are those, thank God, and it is grace that we should be among them, who are going on with Him, who want to be identified to the end with His holy Name. And so, he says here, “that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was delivered up, took bread, and having given thanks broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you”. How much there is in that, one almost fears to say much about it lest there should be any impression conveyed that one is limiting in any way what we should connect with those words; and that is the very last thing that I would wish to do, in any sense to limit what we are to connect in our minds with these precious words of the Lord Jesus. But here He says, “This is my body, which is for you”. It is not, according to Luke, “which is given for you”, although this is very similar to Luke’s account, or Luke’s account is very similar to this; but here He says, “This is my body, which is for you”, as though all that may be suggested to us by the Spirit, in relation to Christ’s precious body, His own body, is open for us to have in our minds at such a time. There is much of course, that comes into our minds. At certain times we may be reminded by the Spirit of the Hebrew servant, who, it says, came in with his body, as it might read, came in by himself, or with his body; and the Hebrew servant is one who is devoted to his master, and devoted to his wife and children; and determines that he will not go out free, in order that he may retain his hold for ever on his wife and his children, and that they with him should remain for ever in the position of serving his master. How much that opens up to us, dear brethren, when we think of the wondrous incarnation of Christ, and all the thoughts of God that lay behind it, His coming in in manhood, determined to give Himself for the assembly, and as having secured her by that means, to retain her for ever in His own life, and with Himself, in order that she might be held under His hand for the service of His Master, the service of God. How much there is, in this way, for us; but then that is only one suggestion that we may connect with His body. But it cannot help speaking to us of the wondrous fact of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, the more you go on, and the more deeply you touch the precious thoughts of God, the more you realise that the incarnation is that upon which everything hinges; everything revolves round it, so to speaks, and therefore, the glory of the incarnation cannot be exceeded. That we could not come into any benefit from it save by the way of His death, and that the thoughts of God could not be realised save by way of His death, is of course, fully acknowledged; and one is not in any sense minimising the preciousness of the death of Christ, but “This is my body”, He says, “which is for you”. It is a suggestion to us that everything that we may rightly connect, in the Spirit, with the thought of Christ’s body is something that may be before us at such a time as that. And so it says, “This is my body”. He “took bread, and having given thanks broke it”, that of course, is suggestive to us of the deliberateness of His movements in going into death, as He says in another place, no one took His life from Him, He says, “I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it again”, John 10: l8. There is something very glorious about the movements of the Lord Jesus into death, especially as presented to us in the gospel of John, where His enemies come to take Him, and He just says to them, “Whom seek ye?” and they say Jesus of Nazareth, and He says I am He, and they go backward, and fall to the ground. There was a demonstration you see, in that way, that no one took His life from Him. I know that from the point of view of what is public, and man’s responsibility, it says in the scripture that by wicked hands He was crucified and slain. For certainly it was their intention to slay the Lord, and they did in fact slay Him; but they could have had no power at all against Him save He had relinquished Himself into their hands, and when it came to His actual death He delivered up His own Spirit; He was not in that sense killed by men, although publicly He was, and the responsibility for it lies with men; but in actual fact He delivered up His own Spirit, He laid down His own life. And so it says He “broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me”. One might have said also, as was referred to in one of our meetings, that before the bread is broken it reminds us also of all saints, because it says in the scripture, “we, being many, are one loaf, one body; for we all partake of that one loaf”. And that also is a very stimulating thing to remember as we come together to break bread from week to week, that at the beginning we have before us that which speaks to us of all the saints; we are in fact breaking bread in a comparatively small company, but actually you have in your thoughts, and in your hearts’ affections, all the saints, including the many who are not available, but including all those who are available in all the different parts of the world. And as we have the sense of that it lifts us greatly out of the smallness connected with local conditions, and greatly exalts the Lord before our hearts as we take account of Him loved by the saints all over the world. As it says in the book of Malachi, doubtless referring to another day dispensationally, but having a present application, “from the rising of the sun even unto its setting” (that is from east to west) “my name shall be great among the nations”. It is a most stimulating thing to think of the saints all over the world, beginning in New Zealand and Australia, and then coming round to this part of the earth, and finishing in the western coast of America, to think of them in all parts of the world, gathered together to remember the Lord, the same Lord, as it says, “with all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours”. And then He comes to the cup. He says, “In like manner also the cup, after having supped, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me”. Now while there is no doubt that we get what directs our thoughts to Christ’s death in relation to the loaf, there is no question as to that, and His breaking it; there is also a special allusion to the death of Christ in relation to the cup, because it says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”. Now the new covenant in one sense does not apply to the saints of today save as the Lord brings it in here in the Supper; it applies primarily to Israel and Judah in a coming day; we have it formally stated in Jeremiah 31, and in the new covenant there is what God will be to them in a coming day, how He will write His law in their hearts and so on, and their sins and their iniquities He will forgive and remember no more. It speaks of the way God will effect something in them, and deal with their past in a way suited to Himself so that they should be in liberty before Him. Well now in Christianity, that is brought in in its bearing upon us in relation to the cup; and it is intended I think to bring home to our minds and hearts how wondrously the Lord has served us in His death to set us free from all that would otherwise hinder us in moving forward in the service of God. I am sure there are many who do not appreciate as we should appreciate what the import of the death of Christ is; we gladly appropriate it as that by means of which the question of our sins has been met according to God, so that God is able righteously to forgive us our sins, and to give us the Holy Spirit; but death, dear brethren, is death, bear with me for saying such an obvious thing, but it wants to be thought over, because when the Lord died He did not die for Himself, He died for us; and if we commit ourselves to the Lord we appropriate to ourselves all that His death means, and that means that before God all that we were as after the flesh has been terminated in death. When I actually die, if I do die, that is the end of my history as a man here in flesh and blood, and Christ has died for us, and we are entitled, and indeed we are obligated, if we would be true to Christ, we are entitled, and obligated to take to ourselves the import of that precious death. Well that means, dear brethren, that not only has the question of our guilt been met, and God glorified in the meeting of it, but it means that the whole question of our state, our sinful state, as in flesh, has also been dealt with, and that condition has been ended before God, and we are entitled to appropriate that, and how delivering it is. Sometimes you may find yourself occupied with thoughts, consciousness of how failing you are, and so on, and of course if there has been carelessness, and a lack of self-judgment, then the Spirit of God will occupy you with things like that in order that you may come to judge it. But if on the other hand, we are desirous of going on with the Spirit of God, and maintaining self-judgment, then there is nothing so delivering as really to appropriate to ourselves the precious import of the fact that Christ has died. But you might say, Well, if in that sense my history has been ended, what remains? What remains is the work of God in you, and that is something very substantial, and eternal in character, because God has wrought in every one of us if we have affection for Christ, and what He has wrought in us is entirely of Christ, He does not work anything else but what is of Christ; and that means that there is something there that is going through to eternity. You are of an entirely new order, and you are entitled now, in your thoughts, to link on with yourself and with your fellow saints in that light.
Well now, we do not want to overlook the great fact of the love of Christ, because we are to drink into this cup; the Lord tells us to drink of it. It does not say so much about it in this epistle as it does in one of the gospels where He says, “Drink ye all of it”—all are to drink of it. And mind you, dear brethren it does not say ‘sip’, it says “drink”—I am not suggesting anything in a literal sense, but at the same time, it is not a question of a sip, it is a question of a drink; and a drink means that you are satisfying yourself with it, it goes right down into your inwards, so to speak, bringing with it a fresh testimony to our hearts of the reality of the love of Christ. Think what it meant for Christ to enter into the question of judgment and of death, in all that it meant before God, so that we might be for ever set apart from all that we were identified with as in the flesh, our guilt and our state both alike dealt with in that precious way, it is a most effective way of dealing with a situation, and no-one but the Son of God could do it, no-one but the Son of God could enter into death and rise out of it triumphantly; and that only brings home to our hearts more than ever the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the preciousness of the way He has gone in order that He might secure the saints for Himself, and for the pleasure of God. And so we are intended to be renewed in the power and joy of these things every time we break bread on the first day of the week. And then, before we leave that, the apostle touches on the public side of things, where he says, “For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye announce the death of the Lord, until he come”. We were speaking this afternoon of sisters having authority on their heads as a public matter, something that angels can take account of; we were speaking of sisters having regard to the fact that God says that long hair is a glory to them, not something to be got rid of, not something to be tampered with; you remember how Samson fell, his strength lay in that he was a Nazarite, and no razor had come upon his head; and he began to come under the influence of Delilah; and then the third time he began to speak about his hair. You can see, he was getting more and more into danger, getting nearer and nearer to the danger point; he says, if they would weave the locks of my hair, and so on, they would gain the victory over him. And then eventually he capitulates altogether. And so we want to watch the beginnings of things, dear brethren, to see that our minds are governed by the way God regards things, because it is a question of belonging to the assembly of God. And so here the apostle is speaking of what is public, and he says, “as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye announce the death of the Lord, until he come”. It is in that sense a public announcement that the Lord who has a right to the whole scene, for the earth is His, and its fulness, has died here, and as we eat the bread, and drink the cup, we show that we are committed to the fellowship of His death, and we are going to carry on with that until He comes, that there shall be no failure to maintain His rights in public testimony until He comes.
Well now, this passage in Corinthians has dealt with the public side of things, but now we go to John’s gospel, which deals with the spiritual and secret side of things. And it is well that we should know how to take things in order at the Supper. Not that I am wishing to prescribe anything beyond what scripture sets out, but it is well that we should have our thoughts governed by the way that the truth is presented. And so it says that the doors were “shut where the disciples were, through fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and says to them, Peace be to you”. They had doubtless come, having in their minds the message which Mary Magdalene had conveyed to them. The Lord had appeared to her and said to her, “go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. I have no doubt that would be in their minds as they gathered together, but they would not understand all that was involved in it; I can quite see that it would probably wait for Paul’s ministry before they were able to enter into it in its fulness, but it is a most striking thing to me that the very day that the Lord rose from the dead, He should send such a message as that, not waiting till the saints, so to speak, in their spiritual conditions were ready for it; not waiting till Paul as the minister of the assembly had been brought on to the scene, but the moment He was risen from the dead He would send this wonderful message, the fulness of which we are only now beginning to enter into, “go to my brethren”, He says, “and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. And so as we read here in chapter 20, the Lord came in and stood in the midst, and “says to them, Peace be to you. And having said this, he shewed to them his hands and his side”. Now I believe the showing them His hands connects with the thought of the cup. That is to say it is a question of the way He has served in love, I am sure that those who were present must have been greatly affected as He showed them His hands, for those very hands not long before had washed their feet; going round the whole company, not leaving one out, He had gone round the whole company washing their feet, those very hands had done it. So that it would convey to them the way that love had served them; whatever their need was, whatever they needed to be liberated from, that they might enter upon the thoughts of God for them, the Lord had undertaken to serve them with a view to its removal. And that is really what is involved in the cup, that by means of death, and the love of Christ expressed in death, He has set us free from all that would disqualify us, from entering upon our heavenly privilege. The Lord had called them brethren in His message. What constitutes us brethren of Christ, dear brethren? The idea of brethren is that we are kindred to Him. You remember how it says in Hebrews 2: 11, “For both he that sanctifieth and those sanctified are all of one”: that is all of the same origin, or the same order, “for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren”. He is not ashamed to call them brethren, He gives them that status, because they are of the same order and origin as Himself, that links on with what we were speaking of a little while ago, that is, the work of God in us. And that is what is involved in this showing them His side, an allusion no doubt to Genesis 2, where Adam was placed in a deep sleep, and Jehovah took out of his side a rib, and closed up the flesh instead thereof, and of the rib built a woman, and brought her to the man. A type of course, of the assembly. But now think of that, think of this woman, there was nothing in her at all but what had come out of Christ, and yet, there she was, a separate entity, a separate individuality, having her own intelligence, and her own affections, and her own beauty; and yet she was entirely of Adam; there was not anything in her that was not of Adam. Well that is the view that the Lord would have us take, and entitle us to take, as we appropriate to ourselves His love expressed in death in the cup, that sets us free from all else, so that we can identify ourselves in mind and heart with what we are as the result of the work of God in us. And God works nothing in us but what is of Christ. Now it is in the light of that that we can understand such an expression as we have in the Song of Songs that “Thou art all fair, my love; And there is no spot in thee”. You can understand it in the light of that. There is no spot in the work of God; and if that is what the Lord is concentrating on, and His death entitles us to concentrate on it, then we can understand the expression, “Thou art all fair my love; And there is no spot in thee”. And so He showed them His hands and His side; and I would stress, dear brethren, that the thought of brethren in the service as we touch it following on the Supper, really involves the idea of kinship, and kinship means that you are suitable to be united to Christ, you are suitable for it; a man does not marry beneath him ordinarily, bear with the expression, an expression that men use, and that is the idea that if the Lord is going to have the assembly united to Himself, she is wholly suited to Him as being of His own order by the work of God. And so you remember the servant in Genesis 24 worshipped God because he had been guided to the house of his master’s brethren, it is the idea of relationship, kinship. I know that we get in Romans 8 that God has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be firstborn among many brethren; but that is more connected with the thought of sonship; that is what we touch as sons of God, that the pleasure of God is to have Christ firstborn, among many of His own order, and all in sonship, Christ Himself preeminent in it; but the thought of brethren, as we touch it after the Supper, is that being of His own order, we are in every way suitable for union. And suitable, too, to command the affections of Christ so that His love goes out to the assembly, and on her side, she responds to it. And so it says here that He “shewed them His hands and His side”, and then it says, “the disciples rejoiced therefore, having seen the, Lord”. And there the matter is left. We do not get any pattern of how the service is to proceed, that is left, so to speak, in the hands of the Spirit; “the disciples rejoiced therefore, having seen the Lord”. If the Lord is apprehended, then things become left now in His hands as Head, and in the hands of the Spirit, as the power by which we can respond to the impulses of the Head.
And now the Lord goes further, “Jesus said therefore again to them, Peace be to you: as the Father sent me forth, I, also send you”. Now it is no longer the thought of the service of God; it is the thought of the representation of God in the way things are handled in the absence of Christ, “as the Father sent me forth, I also send you. And having said this, he breathed into them, and says to them, Receive the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained”. A wonderful word, a very challenging word to us, dear brethren, because it means that the Lord is reposing confidence in us; He says “whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted to them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained”. What a solemn matter that is that the Lord is reposing confidence in us, we have to be very careful in that way, when we are dealing with matters that arise in the assembly, that we are dealing with them in such a way as will not belie the confidence the Lord reposes in us. He breathed into them His own spirit, as though whatever they handle is to be handled in His spirit. And He puts the remission of sins first, as showing that that is uppermost in His mind; He would have His saints in liberty if it was at all possible to bring them into liberty righteously, He would have them in liberty. And we are to be ready for that, too. On the other hand, there is the solemn possibility of having to retain. But whatever is done, it has to be done in His own spirit. As we were saying, the spirit of Christ does indeed involve in us, in our relations with one another, lowliness and meekness and longsuffering, and many such features; but it also involves faithfulness to God, for the Lord was supremely faithful to God, considering for Him in all things. And therefore, if He breathes His spirit into us, it means that we partake of the spirit of the meek and lowly One, but also partake of the spirit of the One who said, “The zeal of thy house devours me”, John 2: 17. The One who would deal drastically with anything that challenged the rights of His God.
Well that is all I had to say, dear brethren; in the hope that it may be of service to many of us, that we may be enabled to take up the service of God, in a little greater measure of intelligence, and substance, and liberty; that we may be able to fill out our position in the public setting as the assembly of God; and then also to move in liberty into our spiritual privilege under the hand of Christ as Head.
May the Lord help us in it for His Name’s sake.
SHEFFIELD
22nd April 1957
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