THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME

In a scene of great tenderness, the Lord Jesus instituted what we now know as the Lord’s Supper, at the very time that He was being betrayed. In verse 15, He said, ‘with desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer’.

How poignant was the moment. The betrayer had left the Passover table to do Satan’s deed. After travelling with the Messiah for at least three years, Judas was on his way to collect his fee from the religious leaders. The price agreed was the value of a slave gored to death by an ox, Exod. 21. 32; this showed how much Judas truly cared for the Master. In that quiet upper room, the Passover meal ended, Jesus took a loaf of bread and a cup of wine and instituted this remembrance.

He had previously set His face towards Jerusalem, knowing all things that would befall Him there. The One who had guided the hands of the psalmists and prophets as they wrote, knew the intimate details of all the horrors that lay ahead of Him. During that sleepless night, He would face the anguish of the garden, the kiss of a betrayer, an arrest as a common criminal, three civil and three religious trials, Peter’s curses and tears, and these same eleven men turning their backs on Him, forsaking him. Then, on the morrow, He would face unspeakable physical and emotional abuse, and the spiritual agony of the darkness of Golgotha, on a Roman cross. All of these thoughts and emotions, and an eternity more of them, flooded through the Saviour as He broke bread and passed a cup: ‘my body ... given ... my blood ... shed for you’. His command, ‘this do in remembrance of me’.

Two thousand years later, could we have any higher or loftier privilege than being able to obey this tender command? Christendom has devalued this meeting of true worship, and many believers rarely, if ever, get to honour the risen Lord in this way. But the early disciples remembered the Lord the first day of every week, Acts 20. 7. Dear saint, never lose the wonder of this honour, or the incredible value of this privilege. Every Lord’s Day we can obey the words the Lord spoke before He suffered as our highest occupation on this earth.