LS-15-What Mean Ye By This Service?
What Mean Ye By This Service?
What mean ye by this service?--Exodus 12:26. When the passover was instituted by God for His people Israel, its permanency in the religious life of the nation was indicated. "Ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever." But its meaning would not be clear to succeeding generations without explanation. When the very natural question came from the children, "What mean ye by this service?" their parents were to say: "It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover," and they were to tell the story of the great redemption wrought by the Lord in Egypt.
What mean ye by this service? our children inevitably ask, as they gather with us on the Lord’s day to partake of the Lord’s Supper. We may make the meaning clear by reference to the names which the people of God have used and still use for this feast.
Sometimes the Lord’s Supper is called the eucharist. We do not often use that name ourselves, but many Christian people do. It is a name which means thanksgiving, and those who use the word really call this feast "The Thanksgiving." We may well think of it in that way. We follow the example of our Lord, and give thanks for the bread and wine, and when we partake of them it is an act which expresses our gratitude to the Lord Jesus, who died on the cross for us.
Some Christian people call the Supper a sacrament. Now, that, too, is an interesting word. It means, first of all, something sacred, such as an oath by which a soldier bound himself to serve his country, or a vow that a person might take to follow Jesus. The word also came to mean something that was mysterious and Divine. So when the Lord’s Supper is called a sacrament we are led to think of the very sacred union which exists between Christ and His people, and of the sacred pledge we gave Him when we became His disciples. But those two names are not Bible names, and we do not often use them in our meetings. The apostle Paul speaks of the communion of the body and blood of Christ, when he is explaining the meaning of the bread and the wine. This word means a sharing together. When we partake of the bread and the wine in memory of our Saviour, we share with one another in the great blessings that come to us through Jesus Christ. There is a deeper and richer meaning too, for we share with Jesus Himself a loving intimacy and fellowship such as people enjoy with their best friends.
Perhaps the best name for this feast is that which is given by the apostle in 1 Corinthians 11:20 --"The Lord’s Supper." Jesus met with His disciples at the passover Supper, and there He took the bread and the wine, and gave them to His disciples, saying, Do this in remembrance of Me. Because the Lord Himself instituted this Supper, because it is observed in memory of His death, and because it is a place where He still meets with His disciples in spirit, it is the Lord’s Supper.