Oct 7, 2024

The Lord’s Supper: A Proclamation

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The Lord’s Supper is a form of proclamation, a visible dramatization of the gospel message. Today, Sinclair Ferguson expresses the truth conveyed to us as we come to the Lord’s Table.

Transcript

Welcome to Monday’s Things Unseen. If you were with us a few weeks ago, you’ll maybe remember we did a week of podcasts on the subject of baptism. We weren’t focusing on the controversial elements at all—you can do that, at the end of the day, and not benefit from your baptism at all. So, I thought in the same spirit, we should spend another week thinking about the Lord’s Supper.

It’s important for us to do this. We’re baptized once, but we do come to the Lord’s Table frequently—some of us every month, or perhaps even every week, and some of us, probably even more frequently than that. But for all that, I sometimes wonder, if we were all given a 3x5 card after we’d received the Lord’s Supper and were asked to write down what it all meant and what we were thinking about, I suspect we might be surprised by some of the answers. So, what I want us to do this week is to reflect on five things to think about when you come to the Lord’s Supper. And because simplicity is of the essence of the supper, I’m going to focus each day on just one word.

Today’s word is proclamation. Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians 11:26, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death.” Now, I’ve sometimes heard it said that you shouldn’t have the Lord’s Supper without a sermon because of what Paul is teaching here. Well, it’s surely right to have a sermon and exposition of biblical teaching when we come to the table, however short it is. But I’m not at all sure that’s the kind of proclamation Paul is really thinking about here. He’s not saying there needs to be the Lord’s Supper plus a sermon. I think he’s saying that the Lord’s Supper is the sermon. The Lord’s Supper itself is the proclamation.

Well, what does that mean? This, I think: the supper is the gospel in dramatic form. Yes, we need words to interpret what’s happening, but when we understand the biblical teaching on the supper, we realize that it’s actually a visible dramatization of the message of the gospel. The supper itself is a gospel proclamation. The broken bread portrays Christ’s body, sacrificed on the cross for us. The poured-out wine portrays His blood, shed for the forgiveness of our sins. And so, a miniature drama is being enacted at the table.

We might even borrow Paul’s words in Galatians 3:1 and say that here, at the supper, before our eyes, Christ is publicly portrayed as crucified. And then, these symbols of His body and blood are offered to us. We’re invited to receive them, to eat and to drink, and to take them to ourselves, just as the risen Christ is carried to us in the proclamation of the gospel, and offered to us, and we’re urged to receive Him and to feed on Him. And then this happens—or at least in my own view it should happen: following the pattern of the first Lord’s Supper, we then offer each other the bread and the wine. We pass it to the person sitting beside us so that in this drama, each of us receives Christ in the gospel and offers Christ in the gospel by means of these signs.

So here’s something to have fixed in our minds as we are offered the bread and the wine: Jesus is being publicly portrayed before my eyes as crucified, not only in audible words and preaching, or in the words of the liturgy, but in these visible signs. I’m being encouraged to look as well as to listen, to see how much He has loved me and loves me still. And now I have the privilege of feeding on Him as I eat the bread and drink the wine, and then I have the privilege of offering the bread and wine to my neighbor beside me, and perhaps even saying to him or her, “Do this, remembering that Christ died for you, and feed on Him in your heart with thanksgiving.”

That’s really amazing. It’s as though each of us can apply Paul’s words about the supper to what we are doing at the table: “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.” What a wonderful, wonderful privilege we have. But the word proclamation represents only one privilege, and we’ll think about another one tomorrow. I hope you’ll join me on Things Unseen.

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