THE GLAD TIDINGS AND THE LORD’S SUPPER
V. E. Wraighte
We referred, dear brethren, in the reading to the last days. John in writing his epistle says, “little children, it is the last hour”. It is. Not that it is coming or it will be, but it is. Someone here may say, ‘Oh, but it has been going on for centuries’. But the Spirit’s mind, beloved brethren, is that it is the last hour. And the evidence of it is that the antichrist is coming, and when John wrote there were many then. I am feeling that the time is short. Any minute the Spirit’s work will be complete. It will be as complete as the work of Christ. But what about you and me? I would love that it should be said of me, and of everyone here today, what the Lord says of this woman, that “she has wrought a good work toward me”. It is in a public setting, it is in a scene of hostility, but what was said of that woman, I would love to be said of everyone here today. It raises the question with us as to whether we really are set for it, and it involves for every one of us committal, full committal to the Person.
In these closing chapters of Matthew we have the last hours of Jesus, and I believe that there is a correspondence between the last hours of the Lord and the church’s history in this last period. What a day it is that we are in! We are not in the pristine beauty of the church, as it was at Pentecost; we are in a broken day. Decline and departure publicly causes us, does it not, continually to be humble about it, to bow our heads with regard to the public breakdown and shame? Yet faith would lay hold of the fact that there is no breakdown with the Lord Jesus, none whatever, no breakdown with the Holy Spirit, no breakdown with the truth. Faith would lay hold of the fact that the Lord will complete the dispensation just as He would have it. But the question is raised as to where you and I stand in relation to it.
Now in reading this scripture I had in mind these two important features that are here, that is, the glad tidings and the Lord’s supper—two features that have been constantly attacked by the enemy. But the Lord has preserved them, and He will preserve them to the end. But the question is as to where we each one stand in relation to it. Are we committed? So publicly the position is that persons “took counsel together in order that they might … kill him”. That was the world then.
That is the world today. We need to face it. As we were saying, there may be, and there is, a veneer that may make it look like the garden of God. Lot thought it was. He dwelt near Sodom. Where is your dwelling? Where is your outlook? It is the world, dear brethren, that crucified our Lord. Spiritually, it is Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11: 8). They “took counsel together in order that they might seize Jesus by subtlety and kill him” (Matthew 26: 4). It needs to be laid hold of in our souls with deep feeling how they treated our Saviour. That is what the world thought of Jesus, and that is what the world thinks of Him today. We get the outward trappings of Christianity, that veneer that we spoke of that looks so nice, and yet they do not want Him. They will have all that makes much of the first order of man, but when it comes to Jesus they do not want Him.
They will not have Him, but I have read of a woman who wanted Him. In the face of hostility, in the face of murder, for that is what it was, she says, ‘I am going to be associated with, and I am going to make much of, that Man whom the world will not have’. We are not even told that she was invited into the house of Simon the leper, but she found a way in. Love will do it. You might say, ‘How do you know?’—Because I have seen it working. Even in the face of indignation from the disciples who you might have thought should have known better, she was not deterred. She has one object in mind, and that is how to make much of Jesus. Is that your outlook? Is that your desire?—just one object in mind—to make much of Jesus. He is to be everything and in all. It does not matter what the world will do or will say. She breaks through those barriers. It must have cost her much. She came with substance, and she was going to put it all, expend it all, upon one Person. It would seem that her whole desire, everything, was bound up with that one glorious Person, Jesus. Now that becomes a challenge to us. Is that so with me at the present moment, that there is one blessed Man before my soul, the One who has done everything for me? So it says that she anointed His head. It is really the King, I suppose. According to Matthew, it is the King in His beauty. She says, in effect, ‘I am going to be controlled and governed here by one Man’.
Now that becomes a test, does it not? Is that so with you? It is a challenge to me as I speak.
Am I going to be controlled by one blessed, glorious Person, Jesus? In every detail of her life this woman acknowledged, I believe, that that one Man was going to control her. So the Lord Jesus said, “In pouring out this ointment on my body, she has done it for my burying” (Matthew 26: 12). That was the way He was going. He went into death for you; He went into death for me. I get the impression that there were no reserves with this woman. There are often many reserves, are there not, with us? but there were no reserves with this woman. But more than that, there were no reserves with Jesus. No reserves! It cost Him His all. Does it always remain with us, the cost that it was to Jesus to save you, to save me? Everyone here, I judge, knows what it is to have received the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
But not only was the gift of the Spirit the result of Jesus’ ascending into heaven, but the Old Testament tells us the rock was smitten that the water might flow. Oh, think of the sufferings of our Saviour, and the way that He went, that such as you and I might not only receive the forgiveness of sins, but might have the gift of the Holy Spirit. What wonderful blessings!
This woman had no reserves. Let there be no reserves with us, dear brethren; let there be no reserves. The Lord Jesus says, “wheresoever these glad tidings may be preached in the whole world, that also which this woman has done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her”. It becomes a test, does it not? Delightful to heaven, I believe, this was. Some can preach, some of us can speak a word, but I believe that the life of this woman was a testimony, a testimony to the fact that she loved Jesus. She was an exemplification of the glad tidings. In our local reading we saw that Samuel was not only given a word to take, with authority in the word, but he was also to take an heifer (see 1 Samuel 16: 2), the suggestion being that he was to be an exemplification of what his ministry was. Now what about it, dear brethren? Is it so with us? I challenge my own soul as I speak to my brethren. Is my testimony such that it is a known fact that I love Jesus, that that Man means everything to me, that He means more than anything else? Think of the value of the testimony of this woman in the sight of heaven. So the Lord Jesus says, “That also which this woman has done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her”.
Now there is not only the testimony, but there is also the Lord’s supper. It is not what we provide. The Lord Jesus provides the Supper. It is His Supper. I think that in effect what the Lord Jesus is saying here is, ‘This woman, and the testimony, need sustaining till I come’. He sees the need in this world that is against every lover of Jesus. It is against them because it is against Him. He provides for the sustenance of such as this woman, and for the continuance of the testimony. So as we know, and as we have been taught, Matthew presents the Supper as involving eating. It is not Luke’s presentation of the Supper as a memorial, so it involves eating and drinking. The Lord Jesus, it says, “having taken the bread and blessed, broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat—this is my body”.
What are your thoughts when you take the loaf on Lord’s day morning? I do not know if everyone here does. It raises a challenge if you do not, but I take it you do, for the moment.
What are your thoughts? This blessed Person Jesus was here, perfectly and absolutely for the will of God. We were reminded of it this morning in the reading in the home. We read later in this chapter, where the Lord Jesus says, “not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26: 39). Are your thoughts such, as you lay hold of that loaf and you eat, that you desire to do the will of God? Oh, that it may be so! that the Spirit of God may engender in our souls and in our affections that we will be such, here to do the will of God. Not just an ordinary occasion is the Supper, not just an occasion that comes round week by week, oh no! It does do so, but far more than that enters into it. The Lord Jesus has in mind that such persons should be sustained until He comes.
And then Jesus takes the cup, “He gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it”. It is the way that we are to be sustained, strengthened and stimulated, dear brethren, as we think of the giving of God in regard to Christ. But then, too, His own giving, in the shedding of His precious blood. It is to strengthen us, to stimulate us, in regard to these things, that there might be full committal, that there might be devotion and attachment with us to the Person, and to the glad tidings, and to the Lord’s supper. We may be few, and we are in the main as we gather together each Lord’s day, and yet the Lord Jesus says here, “many”. How many we do not know, we are not told, and yet our thoughts, as akin to divine thoughts, would expand as we think of the many. Think of the cost on the one hand that it was to our Saviour, to our Lord, and then, whilst having our feet kept in the narrow way, our hearts expand themselves, they are strengthened by the provision that has been made available to us, until He comes.
Well, dear brethren, that is all I had, but may we know what it is to be committed. A sense as we are together of the covenant love of God, the way that He Himself is so committed, would, I believe, stir our hearts, that we might know what it is, like this woman, to have no reserves, and to be committed, devoted, to our Lord Jesus, and to His interests here until He come. May it be so, for His name’s sake.
Address at Newport. Mon.
28 September 1985