Whenever we gather in the grace of Christ, there is something we should remember. It is what Jesus Christ did for us. This is the problem: the nature of our flesh ignores what is important because of our extremely partial memory and the matters confronting us. This is why we scarcely remember how important and inspiring the Lord’s accomplishment was. If we continue to ignore this situation, God’s grace will be treated like something common and we will go off-course in our faith.
Our lives at church are instruments which the Lord prepared to protect and guide us to the end. Saving people’s spirits must be done in a delicate and careful way. If we ignore the Lord’s generosity and obsess about the flesh’s desires, this task can fail. Therefore, we should confront the nature of our flesh (which keeps distorting our memories). We should remember what the Lord did and always commemorate it. This is how we maintain order in our lives of faith and securely receive the Lord’s protection and guidance.
The Lord established a method to help us with this: the Lord’s Supper. Every meeting in church should accomplish this, but the Lord’s Supper should particularly be the chance for believers to gather and commemorate His work. In this way, we confirm the tasks we must carry out as members of the church and restore a sense of responsibility for our spirits, for they are fruits produced by the Lord’s sacrifice. Even if we did not do this until now, He gave us another chance - so we should remember the Lord’s will and move on.
While the Lord was awaiting His suffering and celebrating the Passover feast with His disciples, He commanded them to keep ‘the Lord’s Supper’. He took the bread, blessed it and said, “Take it. This is my body.” The Passover bread was meant to commemorate Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, but the Lord emphasized this: what He would do on the cross to redeem sinners, and His body being torn like a sacrifice. With this, He proclaimed that the era of Old Testament was over and the era of New Testament was going to open.
The Lord pointed to the cup and said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” The disciples would have recalled the covenant set by Moses long ago. At the time, God promised that He would be with Israel if they carefully kept the Law, and He made them sprinkle the blood of lambs as a guarantee. But the Lord knew this covenant could not be achieved due to mankind’s corruption, so He established a new covenant. He wanted to redeem mankind’s sin by shedding His blood and forgive those who sought His grace. The Lord established this covenant with all mankind and guaranteed it with His blood.
Therefore, we should remember this whenever we gather as believers: “The Lord died for me!” and “The Lord shed blood on the cross for us!” We are the fruits of His sacrifice. The Lord’s church should not be abandoned. We should also not abandon ourselves. Let’s remember what the Lord did so that the fruits coming from His sacrifice are not harmed. The whole church should commemorate this.
(Lord’s Day Service on January 23, 2022)
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