We will remember your love
The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20)
Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5:25)
It is a joy to sit with fellow Christians at the beginning of the week in the simple meeting we call the Lord’s Supper. I think of the Saviour at the centre of heaven in all the power and glory of His resurrection. It is humbling to know that He looks down into this world which rejected and crucified Him – to draw His people around Himself, with the love that fills His shepherd’s heart.
When as children we played in the street with our friends after school, my mother would call us to tell us it was teatime. Soon we were all sat down to eat in a family where we were loved. Everything else was left outside. There was a time when the Lord Jesus was left outside. At the Passover, His disciples, so occupied with themselves, argued about who should be the greatest. Even Peter, James and John fell asleep when the Lord needed them to watch with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. But at the Lord’s Supper it is the world that is left outside. And Christ draws us together, in large companies or in the twos and threes, to know we are loved. Each of us is there because the Lord loved us individually. And, like Paul, we can say, “The Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Our lives represent a unique expression of the love of Christ. Paul lived a remarkable life for God: the dying, repentant thief had no time to do anything other than believe in the Lord Jesus. These two saints and all the vast company of the redeemed will only be in heaven because Christ loved us and gave Himself for us. The Lord Jesus affirms His love for us and values the genuine expressions of gratitude and praise which rise from our hearts. Worship in the Bible is often expressed in silent adoration. At the beginning of the Lord’s life on earth, the wise men, overwhelmed by the incarnation when they saw Immanuel, worshipped. Mary of Bethany, towards the end of the Lord’s life on earth, was overwhelmed by the One who is the resurrection and the life, and worshipped. Their worship ascended to heaven, as does ours.
We also sit before the Lord Jesus as members of the Body of Christ, the Church. The Lord explains to us the depth of His love for His Church in a simple picture in Matthew: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:45-46). The cost of our salvation was immense. Now what the Lord Jesus seeks is not perfect expressions or the sweetest, harmonious voices, but the genuine response of love rising from hearts joined together as one to remember and worship our Saviour. When the Lord Jesus gathered His disciples in an upper room over 2000 years ago, He did it with a deep desire (Luke 22:15) and endless love for His own (John 13:1). We should draw near to Him this morning with a deep desire, and love in our hearts, to respond to words the Saviour addresses to each of His sheep and to the one flock: “Remember Me.”
