Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2942
“For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:26.
IT seems to me that the Lord’s Supper should be received by us often. When the Apostle says, in our text, “As often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup,” and our Lord said, in instituting the ordinance, “This do you, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me,” I will not say that their words absolutely teach that we should frequently come to the Communion Table, but I do think they give us a hint that if we act rightly, we shall often observe this Supper of the Lord. Once or twice in the year can hardly be thought to be a sufficiently frequent memorial of one so dear. In the early Church, it is possible that they broke bread every day—the expression, “breaking bread from house to house,” may signify that. From the records preserved in the Acts of the Apostles, it appears that when the saints came together on the first day of the week, they usually broke bread. If there is any rule as to the time for the observance of this ordinance, it surely is every Lord’s day. At any rate, let it be often. Do not, dear Friends absent yourselves long from the Table, but since your Lord has instituted this Supper as a necessary and admirable reminder of His death, take care that you celebrate it often.
This Supper is, according to the verse before our text, to be received by all Christians. “This do you, as often as you drink it.” It is not to the Apostles, nor to a few men who shall dare to call themselves priests, but to the members of the Church at Corinth and, by implication, to the members of all Christian Churches, that the Apostle wrote, “For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” Though it is but half a dozen of the very poorest and most illiterate Christians who meet together to break bread, they are helping to proclaim Christ’s death till He comes. It is the duty and the privilege of all the people of God—not merely of some of them—to observe this ordinance!
It is to be observed by eating and drinking, not by eating alone, as in the Roman Catholic church! “As often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” It is most strange that the Papists should have taken away the cup from the “laity” so-called, since our Lord never said to His disciples concerning the bread, “Eat you all of it,” but, as if He foresaw that this error would arise, He did say concerning the cup, as He presented it to His Apostles, “Drink you all of it.” If you leave out the cup, you have marred the ordinance and, as I shall have to show you presently, you have robbed it of a great part of its meaning. In the Roman Catholic church—Roman Catholic, did I say? Why there is another church, nearer home, that is twin sister to it and is getting very much like it! And there, too, it is taught that looking at the cup does the spectators good. It is not necessary that your should “communicate,” but if they see the “priest” lift the cup, it will do them great good. This is a new way of blessing souls. Salvation used to be by the hearing of the Word, but now, forsooth, it is to be by seeing fine sights! But the Apostle says, “As often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup”—not as often as you look on as spectators, but as often as you actually become partakers in this symbolic feast, “you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.”
You notice that our translators have put this sentence in the indicative, but it is probable that the marginal reading is more correct and that it may be read thus, “As often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, show you the Lord’s death till He comes.” Endeavorto do it—realize that you are doing it—let your feelings be appropriate to the meaning of the ordinance—“show you the Lord’s death till He comes.” As often as true Believers meet together to eat this bread, and drink this cup, they do show, both to themselves and to all who look on, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Just in passing, notice that it is bread that they eat and it is wine that they drink—nothing is said about transubstantiation here! But “as often as you eat this bread”—and it is bread and nothing but bread—“and drink this cup,” which still remains but a cup and its contents just what they were before—“you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.”
This will suffice upon the words of the text. And, now, the doctrine that I want to draw from it is that at all times when we come to the Communion Table, we show or proclaim the death of Christ. That is the great end and objective of the Lord’s Supper—to set forth—to yell out anew—to proclaim afresh the death of our Lord Jesus Christ!
I. First, let us consider HOW THIS ORDINANCE DOES PROCLAIM THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
It is all very simple. There is nothing but bread broken and eaten, and wine poured out and afterwards drunk. How can this proclaim the death of Christ? Well, it does. It has done so ever since it was instituted and there are multitudes of Believers who delight to see that death set forth by it!