DUTIES FOLLOWING THE
LORD’S SUPPER
by George Swinnock, an
edited excerpt from
chapter 20 of “The Christian Man’s Calling,” in Works 1.212–22
I shall speak to your duty after the Supper, which consists mainly in these two
things, thankfulness and faithfulness.
Thankfulness
After such a banquet as this, you may well give thanks. The Jews at their
Passover did sing the hundred and thirteenth Psalm, with the five following
psalms, which they called the great Hallelujah. A Christian should in
everything and at all times give thanks, but at a sacrament the great
Hallelujah must be sung; then God must have great thanks, then we must with our
“souls bless the Lord, and with all within us praise his holy name.” O reader,
call upon yourself, as Barak and Deborah did, “Awake, awake, Deborah: awake,
awake, utter a song:… Barak, and lead captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam”
(Judg 5:12). “Awake, my love; awake, my joy; utter a song.” “A feast is made
for laughter, and wine rejoiceth the heart of man” (cf. Eccl 10:19). Friend, is
not this a rare treat? Where is your cheerful face? Is not here good wine, a
cup of nectar indeed, the blood of the Son of God? What mirth, what music have
you to this banquet of wines?
It will be an excellent conclusion of this ordinance to rejoice in the Lord. O
let your “soul… magnify the Lord, and [your] spirit rejoice in God [your]
Saviour” (Lk 1:46–47).
The cup in the sacrament was called the Eucharistical cup, or “the cup of
blessing” (1 Cor 10:16) let it be so to you. Let your heart and mouth say,
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
[who] hath visited and redeemed his people” (Lk 1:68).
Can you think of that infinite love which God manifested to your soul without
David’s return, “What shall I render unto the LORD for all his benefits?” (Ps
116:12). His heart was so set upon your salvation, His love was so great to
your soul, that He delighted in the very death of His Son because it tended to
your good. “It pleased the LORD to bruise him” (Isa 53:10); or as Junius reads
it, “He was exceedingly delighted” in it. Surely the mind of God was infinitely
set upon the recovery of lost sinners, in that,—whereas other parents, whose
love to their children in comparison of His to Christ is but as a drop to the
ocean, follow their children to their graves with many tears, especially when
they die violent deaths,—He delighted exceedingly in the barbarous death of His
only Son, in the bleeding of the head, because it tended to the health and
eternal welfare of the members.
Friend, “what manner of love hath the Father loved thee with?” (cf. 1 Jn 3:1).
He gave His own Son to be apprehended, that you might escape; His own Son to be
condemned, that you might be acquitted; His own Son to be whipped and wounded,
that you might be cured and healed; yea, His own Son to die a shameful cursed
death, that you might live a glorious blessed life forever. “Glory to God in
the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Lk 2:14)! Alas, how
unworthy are you of this inestimable mercy! You are by nature a child of wrath
as well as others, and had been now wallowing in sin with the worst in the
world, if free grace had not renewed you; no, you had been roaring in hell at
this hour if free grace had not reprieved you. Your conscience will tell you
that you do not deserve the bread, which springs out of the earth, and yet you
are fed with the bread which came down from heaven. O infinite love! May not
you well say with Mephibosheth to David, “What is thy servant, that thou
shouldst look upon such a dead dog as I am?… For all of my father’s house were
but dead men before my lord the king: yet didst thou set thy servant among them
that did eat at thine own table” (2 Sam 9:9; 19:28). Lord, I was a lost, dead,
damned sinner before Thee, liable to the unquenchable fire, and yet Thou has
been pleased to set me among them that eat at Thine own Table, and feed on
Thine own Son. Oh, what is Thy servant, that Thou should take notice of such a
dead dog as I am?
Look abroad in the world, and you may see others refused when you are chosen,
others passed by when you are called, others polluted when you are sanctified,
others put off with common gifts when you have special grace, others fed with
the scraps of ordinary bounty, when you have the finest of the flour, even the
fruits of saving mercy. As Elkanah gave to Peninnah, and to all her sons and
daughters, portions, “But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion: for he loved
Hannah” (1 Sam 1:5); so God gives others outward portions, some of the good
things of this life; but to you, O Christian, He gives a Benjamin’s mess,—His
image, His Spirit, His Son, Himself,—a worthy portion, a goodly heritage,
because He loves you.
Others have a little meat, and drink, and wages, but you have the inheritance;
others, like Jehoshaphat’s younger sons, have some cities, some small matters
given them; but you, like the first-born, have the kingdom, the crown of glory;
others feed on bare elements, you have the sacrament; others stand without
doors, and you are admitted into the presence chamber; others must fry
eternally in hell flames, and you must enjoy fullness of joy for evermore. O
give thanks unto the Lord for he is good, for His mercy endures forever; to Him
that chose you before the foundation of the world, for His mercy endures
forever; to Him that called you by the Word of His grace, for His mercy endures
forever; to Him that gave His only Son to die for your sins, for His mercy
endures forever; to Him that entered into a covenant of grace with you, for His
mercy endures forever; to Him that have provided for you an exceeding and
eternal weight of glory, for His mercy endures forever. “O give thanks unto the
LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever” (Ps 107:1).
Remember the poor on that day. God’s bounty to you in spirituals may well
provoke your mercy to others in carnals. The Jews at their Passover released a
prisoner, in remembrance of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage. Surely at
the Lord’s Supper, when your heart is warmed with God’s compassion to you, your
hand should be enlarged in contribution to the poor, in remembrance of your
redemption out of slavery to sin and Satan. The primitive Christians had their
collections for the poor (1 Cor 16:1), and the Lord’s Supper (Acts 20:7), both
on a day, on the first day of the week, because the saints, like the wall being
then heated by the sun, should reflect that heat on others. Your cup runs over,
O let others drink with you; your charity may make your coffer lighter, but it
will make your crown heavier. It was a notable expression of one, who having
given much away, was like to want, and asked what she would do: I repent not of
my charity, for what I have lost in one world I have gained in another.
Faithfulness
The sacrament is a strong engagement to sanctity. At the Lord’s Supper you take
a new oath of allegiance to the King of saints, whereby every wilful iniquity
after it becomes perjury. The Greek word for an oath comes from a word, which
signifies a hedge, to show that an oath should keep men in, and prevent their
wandering out of the field of God’s Word. It is the character of a harlot to
“[forget] the covenant of her God” (Prov 2:17). I know that the devil will come
to sit with you after Supper. Flies love to settle on the sweetest perfumes.
When Israel had “[drunk] of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that
Rock was Christ” (1 Cor 10:4), then Amalek sought them. When Jesus Christ had
received the sacrament of baptism, then the devil pursued Him with His fierce
assaults. When you have been at the Table, expect the tempter. That subtle
thief will hear of the new treasure of grace, which is brought into your house,
your heart, and will use all his policy and power to rob you of it. Your care
must be by stronger bolts and locks than ordinary, by greater diligence and
watchfulness than before, to secure it.
Surely, reader, if you did but find the Saviour in the sacrament, you cannot
but fear sin after the sacrament. You have seen what sin cost Christ. Did you
not at the Table see the Lord Jesus hanging on the cross? Did you not thus
bespeak your soul:—Look, O my soul, who hangs there! Alas! it is your dearest
Redeemer. See His bloody head, bloody hands, bloody back, belly, His body all
over bloody; but, oh, His bleeding soul! Do you not hear His lamentation? “My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1; Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34). What
did you think is the cause of all this? Ah, it is your sins which is the source
of all these sorrows. And can you join with them, or love those lusts that hate
the Lord? Can you wound Him whom God has wounded, and crucify the Lord Jesus
afresh? Have not your Saviour suffered enough already? Oh, here is a medicine,
instead of all, to kill those diseases of your soul. It is said of the soldiers
of Pompey, that though he could not keep them in the camp by any persuasion,
yet when Pompey threw himself upon the ground and told them, “If you will go,
you shall trample upon your general,”—then (says Plutarch, in the life of
Pompey) they were overcome. Truly, if nothing will dissuade you from sin, yet
this consideration, that it is a trampling upon your blessed Saviour, should
prevail with you. Though you should be marching never so furiously, yet (as
Joab’s soldiers, when they saw the dead body of Amasa, stayed their march, and
stood still [2 Sam 20]) when you see the mangled, wounded, pierced, crucified
body of your Saviour, you should stop and proceed no further.
How many arguments may you find in this ordinance to be close in your
obedience! The greatness of Christ’s love calls for graciousness in your life.
“The love of Christ constraineth” (2 Cor 5:14). Other motives may persuade,
but this compels. If deliverance from the yoke of Pharaoh were such
a bond to obedience, what is deliverance from sin, and wrath, and hell? May not
you, reader, say with the Jews, after such a deliverance as this, “Should [I]
again break thy commandments,… wouldst not thou be angry with [me] till thou
hast consumed [me]?” (Ezra 9:14).
Friend, has God wiped off the old score? and will you run again in debt? Did
Christ speak peace to you at the Table? and will you turn again to folly? O
reader, when you are tempted to sin, say with the spouse, “I have washed my
feet; how shall I defile them?” (Song 5:3). I have washed my soul, how shall I
pollute it with sin? I have given myself wholly to God before angels and men,
and “how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against [my] God” (Gen
39:9), against my Saviour, against my covenant? There is a beast, some write,
which, if she be feeding, and does but turn her head about, forgets what she
was doing. Oh, do not you, after you have fed on the bread of life, forget what
you were doing; but as at the sacrament you have remembered Christ’s death, so
do it after by dying to sin all the days of your life. Oh, do not use this
ordinance, as papists do the pope’s indulgences, to purchase a new license to
sin. Judas went from the Supper to betray his Master. Absalom, as arrant a
dissembler as he was, pretended to hate such ingratitude. “If this thy kindness
to thy friend?” says he to Hushai; “why wentest thou not with thy friend?” (2
Sam 16:17). When you are, by any sinister carriage, departing from Christ, give
conscience leave to ask you, “Is this your kindness to your friend? Ah, why do
you leave Him, and serve Him thus? Your sins will be more sinful, because God
is more merciful to you than to others.” “The children of Israel… have only
done evil… from their youth” (Jer 32:30). As if there had been no sinners in
the world but they: their privileges being greater than others, their
provocations were more grievous. The unkindness of a friend has much of an
enemy in it. David was not much troubled at Shimei’s railing; but Absalom’s
rebellion pierced his very soul. “My son that came out of my bowels hath lifted
up his hands against me” (cf. 2 Sam 16:11). Will you give your Saviour cause to
complain, “He that did eat bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me”
(cf. Ps 41:9)? He that did eat at my Table, no, eat of my flesh and drink of my
blood, he has lift up his heart, and his hand, and his heel against me. It was
an aggravation of Saul’s fall; he fell “as though he had not been anointed” (2
Sam 1:21). And it will be a sad aggravation of your fall, if you should sin as
if you had not been at a sacrament.
It is reported of an elephant, that being fallen down, and by reason of the
inflexibleness of his legs, unable to rise, a forester came by and helped him
up, with which kindness the elephant was so taken, that he followed the man up
and down, did him much service, and never left him till his dying day. Reader,
the moral is plain: you were fallen, and never able to rise of yourself. The
Lord Jesus Christ forsook His Father in heaven, and His mother on earth,
suffered unconceivable sorrows, to help you up. What love should you have to
Him? What service should you do for Him? You cannot do less, since He has
“redeemed you out of the hands of thine enemies” (cf. Pss 106:10; 136:24), than
“serve him in holiness and righteousness all thy days” (Lk 1:74–75). As the hop
in its growing follows the course of the sun from east to west, and will rather
break than do otherwise, so should you, in all your actions, follow the course
of the Sun of Righteousness, and rather die than deny Him.
When Moses came from the mount, where he had been conversing with God, his face
shone (Ex 34:30). When you go from the Table where you have had sweet communion
with your God, the face of your conversation must shine so with holiness that
others may take notice of it.
It is said of the high priest and elders, that observing the language and
carriage of Peter and John, “they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them,
that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). So your words should be so
gracious, and your works so exemplary after a sacrament, that all those with
whom you have to do, may marvel and take knowledge that you have been with
Jesus; that at the Table you did sup with Christ, and Christ with you.
Concluding Wishes
The Lord’s Supper being one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian
religion, a lively representation of my dearest Saviour’s bleeding passion and
blessed affection, and a real taste of that eternal banquet which I shall
hereafter eat of in my Father’s house at His own Table, I wish in general that
I may never distaste the person of my best Friend by abusing His picture; that
I may not go to the Lord’s Table as swine to their trough, in my sin and
pollution, but may receive those holy elements into a clean heart. Oh that my
lamp might be flaming, and my vessel filled with oil, whenever I go to meet the
Bridegroom!
I wish, in particular, that my soul may be so thoroughly affected with Christ’s
special presence at this sacred ordinance, that I may both prepare for it, and
proceed at it with all possible seriousness and diligence. Oh let me never be
so unworthy and impudent as to defile that holy feast before the author’s face.
I wish that my heart may have an infinite respect for the blood of my Saviour,
the stream in which all my comforts, both for this and a better world, come
swimming to me, which has landed thousands safely at the haven of eternal
happiness, one drop of which I am sure is more worth than heaven and earth;
that as all murder is abominable, being against the light of nature, so
Christ-murder may be most of all abhorred by me, as being directly against the
clearest light of Scripture, and the choicest love which ever was discovered to
the children of men. Good Lord, whatever I jest with, let me never sport or
dally with the death of Thy Son! Let me not give Him cause to complain of me,
as once of Judas, “He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall
betray me” (Mt 26:23)! Let me never buy a sacrament, as the Jews the potter’s
field, with the price of blood. “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, thou
God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness” (Ps
51:14).
I wish that I may prepare my heart to meet the God of Israel at this holy
ordinance; and to this end, that I may be impartial in the search and
examination of my soul, whether I come short of the grace of God or no. I
desire that both by my tongue and hand, by my words and works, I may know the
state and condition of my heart. In special, my prayer is, that I may never
fail to try my faith, which is to the soul what the natural heat is to the
body, by virtue of which the nutritive faculty turns the food into nourishment,
but may make sure of an interest in the vine before I drink of the fruit
thereof.
I wish that before I go for a discharge, I may look into the book of my conscience,
cast up my accounts, and consider how infinitely I am indebted to my God, that
I may consider whence I am fallen and repent, and like Tamar, though I am
ravished and defiled by force, may yet rend my garments, my heart I mean, with
godly sorrow and self-abhorrency. Oh that my soul might be so searched to the
bottom that none of my wounds may fester, but all may be discovered and cured.
I pray that I may not dare to turn the Table of the Lord into the table of
devils, by receiving the sacrament in the love of any known sin, but may go to
it with a hearty detestation of every false way, and a holy resolution against
every known wickedness.
I wish that when I come to the Table I may, like the beloved disciple, behold
the wounds of my Saviour, and see that water and blood which did flow out of
His side; that as in the Gospel I read a narrative, so in this ordinance I may
have a prospective of His sufferings: how He emptied Himself to fill me, and to
raise my reputation with His Father, laid down His own; how He humbled Himself,
though He had the favour of a Son, to the form of a servant, and though He were
the Lord of life and glory, to the most ignominious death, even the death of
the cross.
I wish that in His special passion I may ever take notice of His affection, and
esteem the laying down His life, as the hyperbole of His love, the highest note
that love could possibly reach. Ah! how near did this high priest carry my name
to His heart, when He willingly underwent the rage of hell to purchase for me a
passage to heaven! “I will remember thy love more than wine” (cf. Song 1:4). I
desire that when I see Christ crucified before mine eyes, in the breaking of
the bread, and pouring out of the wine, I may not forget the cause, my
corruptions, but may so think of them and my Saviour’s kindness, in dying to
make satisfaction for them, that as fire expels fire, so I may be enabled by
the fire of love to expel and cast out the fire of lust.
I wish that however my body be attired, my soul may by faith put on the Lord
Jesus Christ at this heavenly feast; that I may not only look up to Him, as the
cripple to Peter and John, expecting an alms, but may receive Him by believing,
and so banquet on His blessed body, and bathe my soul in His precious blood,
that my spirit may rejoice in God my Saviour, whilst I am assured that though
the pain were His, yet the profit is mine; though the wounds were His, yet the
balm issuing thence is mine; though the thorns were His, yet the crown is mine;
and though the price were His, yet the purchase is mine. Oh let Him be mine in
possession and claim, and then He will be mine in fruition and comfort, “Lord,
I believe; help mine unbelief” (Mk 9:24)! I wish, since love is the greatest
thing my Saviour can give me, for God is love, and the greatest thing which I
can give my Saviour, that His love to me may be reflected back to Him again,
that my chiefest love may be as a fountain sealed up to all others, and
broached only for Him who is altogether lovely, that I may hate father, mother,
wife, child, house, and land, out of love to Him; that many waters of
affliction may not quench this love, but rather like snuffers make this lamp to
burn the brighter. Beasts love them who feed them. Wicked men love their
friends and benefactors; my very clothes warming me are warmed by me again, and
shall not I love Him who has loved me, and washed me in His own blood! Oh how I
desire that I may follow Christ at this ordinance, as the women did to His
cross, weeping, considering that my sins were the cause of His bitter and
bloody suffering.
When my soul has been thus feasted with marrow and fatness, Lord, let my mouth
praise Thee with joyful lips. Ah, what am I, and what is my father’s house,
that when others eat the bread of violence, and drink the wine of deceit, I
should eat the flesh and drink the blood of Thine own Son? “What is man, that
thou art so mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Ps
8:4; Heb 2:6). I wish that I may show my thankfulness to my God and dearest
Saviour for these benefits—the worth of which men and angels can never
conceive—by the love of my heart, the praises of my lips, and the exemplariness
of my life. At the sacrament Christ gave His body and blood to me, and I gave
my body and soul a living sacrifice to Him, and that before God, angels, and
men. Shall I pollute that heart which was solemnly devoted to God, and profane
that covenant which I have seriously contracted with the most High? Oh let me
never start aside from my vow like a deceitful bow! Lord, I have sworn, and
will perform, that I will keep, through Thy strength, Thy righteous judgments.
Lastly, I desire that I may not only differ from them who, like the Habassines,
will not spit on a sacrament day, but will spew the next day; deny sin at
present, but afterwards defy it; that I may not only be faithful to my oath of
allegiance, but also fruitful in obedience; that as Elijah walked in the
strength of one meal forty days, I may walk in the strength of that banquet,
serving my Saviour and my soul all my days. In a word, I wish that I may ever
after walk worthy of my birth, having royal, heavenly blood running in my
veins; worthy of my breeding, being brought up in the nurture of the Lord, fed
at His own Table with the Bread of heaven, clothed with the robes of His Son’s
righteousness; and that my present deportment may be answerable to my future
preferment. Oh that I might in all companies, conditions, and seasons, walk
worthy of Him who has called me to His kingdom and glory! Amen.