Last week’s sermon looked at the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, in which we saw how the Lord Jesus inaugurated the Lord’s Supper as a slightly different way to recall his death. By recalling the Lord’s death in a different way to the weekly sermon (i.e. by employing ALL our senses, not just our eyes and ears), the gospel will hopefully penetrate our hearts even deeper.
So why is this a good thing? Because we cannot love God enough. Many evangelicals today are great at ‘seeing God more clearly’. We love plumbing the depths of the Bible and delight in learning new things about God. We are also very disciplined in ‘following God more nearly’. Our sermons are replete with application on how we are to fulfil our duty to the God who gave everything for us. However, many evangelicals today are terrible at ‘loving God more nearly’.
If you told the average evangelical that you are ‘deeply and madly in love with Jesus’, they would likely feel uncomfortable. Such discomfort stems from an overreaction to the emotional hype of the Pentecostal movement. In avoiding the emotional excesses of the Pentecostal church, many evangelicals have cut almost ALL emotion from their worship of God. Yet Jesus said we are to love him more dearly than we do our immediate family.
The sole purpose of the Lord’s Supper is to recall (or declare) Jesus’ death; to see the enormous love God has shown us in Christ more clearly. This is to then melt our hearts, so that we cannot help but love Him more dearly. That love is then to lead us to WANT to serve him (i.e WANT to follow him more nearly).
So are you looking forward to having the Lord’s Supper again in a few weeks’ time? I hope so! For the Lord’s Supper is designed to melt our hearts, and draw us close to our Lord.
