Having now treated of what I conceive to be by far the most important point in our subject, I shall proceed to consider, in the second place, the circumstances under which the Lord’s Supper was instituted. These were particularly solemn and touching. The Lord was about to enter into dreadful conflict with all the powers of darkness—to meet all the deadly enmity of man and to drain to the dregs the cup of Jehovah’s righteous wrath against sin. He had a terrible morrow before Him — the most terrible that had ever been encountered by man or angel, yet, notwithstanding all this, we read that on “the same night in which He was betrayed, [He] took bread.” What unselfish love is here! “The same night”— the night of profound sorrow — the night of His agony and bloody sweat — the night of His betrayal by one, His denial by another, and His desertion by all of His disciples — on that very night, the loving heart of Jesus was full of thoughts about His church — on that very night He instituted the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. He appointed the bread to be the emblem of His body broken and the wine to be the emblem of His blood shed, and such they are to us now, as often as we partake of them, for the Word assures us that “as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.”
Now all this, we may say, attaches peculiar importance and sacred solemnity to the Supper of the Lord, and, moreover, gives us some idea of the consequences of eating and drinking unworthily. The voice which the ordinance utters in the circumcised ear is always the same. The bread and the wine are deeply significant symbols, the bruised corn and the pressed grape being both combined to minister strength and gladness to the heart. And not only are they significant in themselves, but they are also to be used in the Lord’s Supper as being the very emblems which the blessed Master Himself ordained on the night previous to His crucifixion, so that faith can behold the Lord Jesus presiding at His own table — can see Him take the bread and the wine and can hear Him say, “Take, eat; this is My body,” and again, of the cup, “Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” In a word, the ordinance leads the soul back to the eventful night already referred to — brings before us all the reality of the cross and passion of the Lamb of God, in which our whole souls can rest and rejoice; it reminds us, in the most impressive manner, of the unselfish love and pure devotedness of Him who, when Calvary was casting its dark shadow across His path and the cup of Jehovah’s righteous wrath against sin, of which He was about to be the bearer, was being filled for Him, could, nevertheless, busy Himself about us and institute a feast which was to be the expression of our connection both with Him and with all the members of His body.
And may we not infer that the Holy Spirit made use of the expression “the same night” for the purpose of remedying the disorders that had arisen in the church at Corinth? Was there not a severe rebuke administered to the selfishness of those who were taking “their own supper,” in the Spirit’s reference to the same night in which the Lord of the feast was betrayed? Doubtless there was. Can selfishness live in the view of the cross? Can thoughts about our own interests or our own gratification be indulged in the presence of Him who sacrificed Himself for us? Surely not. Could we heartlessly and willfully despise the church of God — could we offend or exclude beloved members of the flock of Christ, while gazing on that cross on which the Shepherd of the flock and the Head of the body was crucified? No. Let believers only keep near the cross — let them remember “the same night” — let them keep in mind the broken body and shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and there will soon be an end to heresy, schism and selfishness. If we could only bear in mind that the Lord Himself presides at the table to dispense the bread and wine — if we could hear Him say, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves” — we should be better able to meet all our brethren on the only Christian ground of fellowship which God can own. In a word, the person of Christ is God’s center of union. “I,” said Christ, “if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” Each believer can hear his blessed Master speaking from the cross and saying of his fellow-believers, Behold thy brethren, and, truly, if we could distinctly hear this, we should act, in a measure, as the beloved disciple acted towards the mother of Jesus: Our hearts and our homes would be open to all who have been thus commended to our care. The word is, “Receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.”
There is another point worthy of notice in connection with the circumstances under which the Lord’s Supper was instituted, namely, its connection with the Jewish Passover. “Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed. And He sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover, that we may eat. . . . And when the hour was come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him. And He said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: for I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And He took the cup [that is, the cup of the Passover], and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves: for I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come” (Luke 22:7-187Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed. 8And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover, that we may eat. 9And they said unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare? 10And he said unto them, Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in. 11And ye shall say unto the goodman of the house, The Master saith unto thee, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the passover with my disciples? 12And he shall show you a large upper room furnished: there make ready. 13And they went, and found as he had said unto them: and they made ready the passover. 14And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him. 15And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: 16For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. 17And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves: 18For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. (Luke 22:7‑18)). The Passover was, as we know, the great feast of Israel, first observed on the memorable night of their happy deliverance from the thralldom of Egypt. As to its connection with the Lord’s Supper, it consists in its being the marked type of that of which the Supper is the memorial. The Passover pointed forward to the cross; the Supper points back to it. But Israel was no longer in a fit moral condition to keep the Passover, according to the divine thoughts about it, and the Lord Jesus, on the occasion above referred to, was leading His apostles away altogether from the Jewish element to a new order of things. It was no longer to be a lamb sacrificed, but bread broken and wine drunk in commemoration of a sacrifice once offered, the efficacy of which was to be eternal. Those whose minds are bowed down to Jewish ordinances may still look, in some way or another, for the periodical repetition either of a sacrifice or of something which is to bring them into a place of greater nearness to God.
There are some who think that in the Lord’s Supper the soul makes, or renews, a covenant with God, not knowing that if we were to enter into covenant with God, we should inevitably be ruined, as the only possible issue of a covenant between God and man is the failure of one of the parties (that is, man) and consequent judgment. Thank God, there is no such thing as a covenant with us. The bread and wine, in the Supper, speak a deep and wondrous truth; they tell of the broken body and shed blood of the Lamb of God — the Lamb of God’s own providing. Here the soul can rest with perfect complacency; it is the new testament in the blood of Christ and not a covenant between God and man. Man’s covenant had signally failed, and the Lord Jesus had to allow the cup of the fruit of the vine (the emblem of joy in the earth) to pass Him by. Earth had no joy for Him — Israel had become “the degenerate plant of a strange vine”; wherefore, He had only to say, “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.” A long and dreary season was to pass over Israel, ere her King could take any joy in her moral condition. But during that time, “the church of God” was to “keep the feast” of unleavened bread, in all its moral power and significance, by putting away the “old leaven of malice and wickedness,” as the fruit of fellowship with Him whose blood cleanses from all sin.
However, the fact of the Lord’s Supper having been instituted immediately after the Passover teaches us a very valuable principle of truth: The destinies of the church and of Israel are inseparably linked with the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. True, the church has a higher place, even identification with her risen and glorified Head, yet all rests upon the cross. Yes, it was on the cross that the pure sheaf of corn was bruised and the juices of the living vine pressed forth by the hand of Jehovah Himself to yield strength and gladness to the hearts of His heavenly and earthly people forever. The Prince of Life took from Jehovah’s righteous hand the cup of wrath, the cup of trembling, and drained it to the dregs in order that He might put into the hands of His people the cup of salvation, the cup of God’s ineffable love, that they might drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. The Lord’s Supper expresses all this. There the Lord presides. There the redeemed should meet in holy fellowship and brotherly love, to eat and drink before the Lord. And while they do so, they can look back at their Master’s night of deep sorrow and forward to His day of glory — that “morning without clouds,” when “He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.”