Because it happens every week, it is easy for the partaking of the Lord’s Supper to become somewhat of a religious ritual and we fail to understand the part it plays in our spiritual growth. The abuse of this feast in Corinth brought dire consequences. “For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep” (1 Cor. 11:30). If one does not remember Jesus and discern His body as he partakes of the bread and cup, he eats and drinks damnation to his soul.
In the New Testament we remember Him, but in the Old Testament they remembered their deliverance from Egyptian bondage. From the time the Sabbath was given until the close of the Old Testament, there was not a weekly assembly, but a time when the Jews, their families, their Gentile neighbors, and even their animals stopped all activity and spent that day thinking about God delivering them from bondage. Tragically, by the time of the New Testament, it had become a day which involved the precise distance one could walk on that day, whether it was sinful to walk through a field of grain and eat the wheat in that field as they walked. It had become a day where one could water his donkey and help his ox get out of a ditch, but the Messiah was forbidden to heal on that day. It was so ritualistic that keeping the rites of that day became a symbol of righteousness!
The failure to keep that day holy by remembering their deliverance from Egypt was a primary reason for the Babylonian captivity that lasted seven decades. God described it this way: “Her priests have violated My law, and have profaned My holy things…and they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them” (Ezek. 22:26). The sabbath was holy and so is the Lord’s supper.
So, what happens to us as we remember, not the sabbath, but the Lord in His feast? Peter described those who were failing to add the “Christian Graces” to their faith when he says, “For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten he was cleansed from his old sins” (2 Pet. 1:9). The Lord’s Supper is a weekly reminder of how He purged us from our sins and delivered us from the bondage of sin. It is a time we examine ourselves as we visit the cross. The Lord wanted Israel to remember deliverance from the bondage of Egypt every week and gave them a memorial day to ensure their spiritual growth. The Lord wants us to remember our deliverance from the bondage of sin every week and has given us a memorial feast to ensure our spiritual growth.
As you eat the bread and drink of the cup, never let it become a ritual. But let it be that time when you commune with Him around His table and visit the cross of our salvation.