Let's Stop Diminishing the Lord's Supper

Summary

The sermon calls for a renewed reverence and biblical fidelity in the observance of the Lord's Supper, emphasizing its central role in Christian worship. Drawing from the Gospels, Paul’s letters, and the early church’s practice in Acts, it affirms that the Supper is not a peripheral ritual but a profound act of remembrance, communion, and proclamation of Christ’s sacrifice, meant to be celebrated frequently—ideally weekly—and at the heart of corporate worship. The preacher warns against diminishing the Supper through infrequent observance, mechanical or individualized distribution, devaluing the Supper by viewing it as just a symbol, and the omission of thanksgiving, participation, and teaching. Instead, he advocates for a communal, liturgical, and meaningful celebration using biblical elements—bread and wine—accompanied by the Lord’s own words, intentional fellowship, and a posture of spiritual readiness, restoring the Supper to its rightful place as a vital expression of the church’s unity and identity in Christ. At its core the Lord’s Supper is a spiritual meeting between the risen Lord and His people. By treating it with more reverence and frequency, the church can better participate in the "sweet, intimate fellowship" and the forgiveness of sins that the meal is meant to proclaim.

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Transcript

Title:  Let's Stop Diminishing the Lord's Supper

Date: April 30, 2026

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11;23-26; Luke 22:14-20

AI TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad. God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light on our path. 

Today's topic, let's stop diminishing the Lord's Supper. I believe the Lord's Supper is a very important observance in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and is certainly underscored by the biblical passages that speak of it. Let's listen to the words of our Lord Jesus as recorded in the gospel narratives.

While they were eating, I'm reading from Matthew 26, and what they were eating is the Passover. While they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. Then he took the cup, he gave thanks, and he gave it to them saying, drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. And then he went on to speak of the fact that he would not be able to do this again with them until he drinks it with them in the father's kingdom. Well, listen to the gospel, not only of Matthew, but the gospel of Mark. Mark and Luke also record the institution of the Lord's Supper. Mark, who is a friend of Peter, says, as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them and said, take, eat, this is my body. Then he took the cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And he said to them, this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many.

Again, he says, I no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. Now the fullest detail is given to us in the Gospel of Luke 22, beginning at verse 14. When the hour had come, that is the hour for the observance of the Passover meal, he, Jesus, sat down and the 12 apostles with him.

Then he said to them with fervent desire, I've desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Then he took the cup, he gave thanks, and he said, take this and divide it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

Now, Jesus is doing this at the beginning of the Passover meal because that's how you begin the Passover meal is with a cup of wine that is shared with the participants. But then later in the meal, he took some of the unleavened bread and he took bread, he gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." Likewise, he also took the cup after supper. So, this means one of the last two cups of the Passover meal. He says, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you.

Now that's the three gospel narratives recording the Lord's Supper. Then we have the testimony of Paul. who writes concerning the Lord's Supper. For I received from the Lord, he says he received this from the Lord himself, that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and he said, take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner also, he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.

He also comments about the supper in chapter 10, 1 Corinthians 10, verse 16 and 17. He's contrasting the Lord's Supper observance with participation in idolatrous rites. Remember the Corinthians had come from a pagan background. He says you can't be mixing your worship, Christian worship with other kinds of worship. And in this reference, he says, the cup of blessing, which we bless, is it not the communion that is the participation or the fellowship of the blood of Christ. The word is the koinonia. And the bread which we break, is it not the communion, the koinonia, the fellowship and participation of the body of Christ. For we, though many, are one bread and one body, for we all partake of that one bread.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles, the early church, that they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers, the four activities that they did continuously after the day of Pentecost as the new church has emerged and now starts growing.

We read in Acts 2 46, and so they continued daily with one accord in the temple. and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. Now, the early church didn't have buildings like we have. They met in different houses or public venues, and so they broke bread from house to house, and they often had a meal, a common meal in connection with the Lord's Supper. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. Acts 20, verse seven says, now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul then spoke to them. So, you see, according to Acts 20, the coming together on the first day of the week was primarily to break bread together. So, the Lord's Supper is not something that's pushed off or is infrequent. It seems to be something that occurred every first day of the week. How important the Lord's Supper is, how important that we have the meaning of it correctly is given to us again in 1 Corinthians 11.

Therefore, Paul writes, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But so, we don't do that, he says, but let a man, let a person examine himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. Now these are the verses in the Bible that speak of the Lord's Supper. It's recorded several times, so we have at least four or five witnesses to the Lord's Supper, to its meaning and to its practice. 

And if you read those, as you read these words, do you come to think that the Lord's Supper is something that's inconsequential to the life of the church? Something that is infrequent in the life of the church? Or something that carries very little meaning I'm afraid that in many respects, the Lord's Supper has been and is being diminished in the churches of the Lord Jesus Christ.

They do that in several ways. And in other instances, they're not being diminished, but the supper is being distorted. Today, I want to primarily focus on the diminishing of the Lord's Supper and let's stop diminishing the Lord's Supper. And you say, Wayne, how do we diminish the Lord's Supper? Here's one of the first ways we diminish it, is infrequent observance of the Lord's Supper. That is that we only do it once a quarter.

Although many churches have now instituted monthly observance of the Lord's Supper. There are even some rare cases in some Christian groups that only have the Lord's Supper once a year. That certainly does not seem to coincide with the scripture witness, especially of Acts 20, that on the first day of the week, they gathered for the observance of the Lord's Supper, to eat the Lord's Supper together.

Now, I'm from a Baptist background. And in many respects, I definitely am Baptist in my understanding about a lot of things, although I vary sometimes within the tradition as well. But you know, one of the great heroes of the faith, not only among Baptists, but certainly Baptists, is Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon was the premier Baptist preacher in the 19th century, in the 1800s, and he pastored the largest church, the largest Baptist church in his day, known as the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

And he was the pastor there for many years. Spurgeon greatly valued the Lord's Supper, and in fact, the Lord's Table was observed weekly in Spurgeon's Tabernacle. He even wrote a hymn. I don't know if you know that, but Charles Spurgeon wrote a hymn concerning the Lord's Supper. It's entitled, Jesus or Jehu's Presence Delightful. Hear the words of this communion piece written by Charles Spurgeon.

Amidst us, our beloved stands and bids us view his pierced hands, points to his wounded feet and side, blessed emblems of the crucified. What food luxurious loads the board when at his table sets the Lord. The wine, how rich, the bread, how sweet, when Jesus deigns the guest to me.

If now with eyes defiled and dimmed, we see the signs but see not him. Oh, may his love the scales displace and bid us see him face to face. Our former transports we recount, when with him in the holy mound, these caused our souls to thirst anew, his barred but lovely face to view. Thou glorious bridegroom of our hearts, thy present smile a heaven imparts. O lift the veil, if veil there be, let every saint thy beauties see. You can see from words that he wrote.

He greatly valued the Lord's Supper. And one reason he valued it is because it was not simply a kind of remembrance that Jesus died. It was a meeting, a meeting between the Lord who had been crucified but was now risen and in heaven ascended, who now met with his people by means of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God around the emblems that he had given to them to celebrate, to remember, to recall, to proclaim, and to participate in the benefits he had earned for us at His cross and through His resurrection from the dead. The Lord's table was above all a place where God's people had sweet, intimate fellowship with their Savior, who was spiritually present with them.

That, I believe, is a biblical view of the Lord's Supper. But we diminish the Lord's Supper by having infrequent practice of it. I truly believe it would be the most biblical to observe it every Lord’s Day as part of the service, not a tack-on at the end of the service or at some other part in the service, even in the middle. If it's just a tack-on, just something that we just hurriedly put in there and move on as if it's not the main deal, we diminish it. We reduce its value in the eyes of the people.

You see, the way we do something is just as important as what we say about it. Things are conveyed, meaning is conveyed by words and by actions. And sometimes, you know, our actions betray the words. I want to give you some examples. You know, sometimes we give, we say words and we do things in a way that we're not meaning necessarily because of our sinful nature, we end up doing it anyway. We're not meaning to diminish something that we do.

Let's say you give a gift to someone who's less fortunate than you. Maybe someone in your family, our close friend. And you have many more resources than that person does, but you give them the gift. And when you give them the gift, you sort of say words that diminish the value of the person and make that person feel either obligated to you or make that person feel diminished, small in your eyes. It's how you give it. how you say it that made a difference.

This is true with how we do the Lord's Supper as well. So, what must we do so that we're not diminishing the Lord's Supper? Let me give you a few little, I believe, scriptural concepts or principles to try to counteract what I believe to be a diminishing of the Lord's Supper. Well, first of all, the infrequent observance of the Lord's Supper should be abandoned, and it should be the practice of every Christian church to observe the Supper very frequently. I do believe it's best to observe it every Sunday. It should be actually at the center of the worship.

But if you don't yet buy into that, it should at least be very frequent. And I'm not sure that once a month is frequent enough, because it still gives the idea that this is not as important as the preaching, is not as important as the singing. And you know, we already diminish praying in the church. So if we diminish the role of prayer in the church and we diminish the role of the supper in the church, then what we have left with is how important is the singing, especially if it's performance-based, and how important then is the sermon.

Well, all elements of the Christian worship is important. We should not diminish any one of them, but we should hold them in a scriptural balance. And a scriptural balance means that the word and supper are central in the observance of Christian worship.

So, let's get rid of infrequency. You see, when we're infrequent, what we're telling the people is that it doesn't matter that much. It's not that important. Maybe we don't mean that way. Some people will argue, well, if we make it frequent, then they won't value it. Well, we frequently sing. Does that make singing less valuable? We frequently preach. Does that make your preaching less valuable?

Now, granted that in many churches we do infrequently read the Bible. You say, wait a minute, we read the Bible in our church every Sunday. Yes, we often read a verse that the preacher may be preaching on, sometimes a passage, but seldom, do many churches read from the different portions of the scripture when they gather on the Lord’s Day? I submit to you that that's a biblical practice rooted even in the synagogue practice of old but certainly rooted in church history.

And we should read God's word. We should give time to read it. We should give time for teaching. We should give time for singing. We should give time for the Lord's supper. You say, wait, wait, wait, Wayne. That means our time is gonna be You know, we can't get all that in 50 minutes. We can't get all that in an hour. Well, so what?

I do not see in the scripture where Christian worship is supposed to be timed according to the clock of the particular society in which you are involved. Currently, we're in a society in which attention span is short or so we say but it's amazing attention span is short and yet people go to movies that last a long time and they go to sports events that last a long time but yet in the church we want to be sure that they get out by the time the hour is up Or you know, everyone's going to turn into a pumpkin. We teach people that worship is optional and worship is just personalized for your convenience when we do not take the time to worship God.

And we do not take the time to have a meaningful observance of the Lord's Supper. So out with infrequency, in with frequency. Let me mention another thing by which we diminish the Lord's Supper. We diminish the Lord's Supper in how we serve the Lord's Supper and what we serve it, how we serve it and what we serve it in.

Recently, I went to a Lord's Supper, servants, and when we go into the door of the church, nothing against this church, by the way, but we're handed a little plastic packet. You just pick it up. It has in it the one little piece of bread on one end and a little sip of grape juice on the other end. We're handed that as you go in the door of the church. They're telling you that sometime in the service before it's over, they're going to have, quote, the Lord's Supper. So now we have conveniently given to them the little elements, individually given it to them so that when it's done, they can peel back the bread and then take the sip of wine.

What we have told and what we've done is we have destroyed the communal nature of the supper. and we have made the supper appear to be like something that you get out of a vending machine. Think about it. The way you do something gives meaning or takes away meaning. And I submit to you that having the Lord's Supper with little pre-prepared plastic packages takes away the meaning of the Lord's Supper. It detracts from it. It doesn't totally destroy it, but it does take away from him.

Another thing become practice in other churches where they do have the bread and the wine as separate actions as indicated by the word that we read is that they now have instituted the practice of intention. I may not be saying that word right. It means to dip the bread in the wine or the grape juice. So you come through the communion line, and you just get a little piece of bread, you dip it in the cup, and you take it in one action.

That destroys so much of the meaning of the Lord's Supper. When we read the scripture narratives, is that how Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper? No. And one great practice, you see, of the Protestant Reformation was to restore the cup to the people. And I submit to you that the churches that have instituted this dipping the bread into the cup have in a real sense taken the cup from the laity. They've taken the cup from the people of God. And now the only one who drinks it is the pastor. That's a retreat toward Rome, not a building on the foundation of the scripture that was recovered at the Protestant Reformation. Jesus took the bread. He took the cup. Two separate actions, two separate distributions, two separate consumptions.

That's the way the Lord's Supper should be. Let's quit trying to cut corners with the Lord's Supper. And let's quit trying to observe the Lord's Supper in accordance with the latest scare that we might have gotten from the disease control unit. We must learn to respect God's word and do God's word. Another way we diminish the meaning of the Lord's Supper is the words that we say at the Lord's Supper.

If we do it in a hurried manner, we simply say a little brief little prayer or call on someone to say it, that you can't even hear them say the word sometimes, and we quickly do it without any liturgy, without any movement and words connecting meaning, then we use it as a tack-on.

We're treating it as an optional activity. We're treating it as something where we just gotta do this because Jesus told us to do it, but we don't really look forward to it. The tragedy is, is some churches that only have communion, let's say quarterly, or maybe once a month, that's the one service in which there are some people who absent themselves from it. That's a tragedy. And the reason they do it is that they don't truly understand the meaning of it.

So, brothers, we must teach the meaning of the Lord's Supper. Not just every now and then, but we need to practice teaching it when we do it. So, we may fill it full of the meaning it should have. So, we should have the cup and drink from the cup We should partake of the bread that is broken and shared among us. It should be a cohesive service in which there is meaningful actions that has a beginning and an end.

Now the scriptures give us some guidelines of some things we must always do in a Lord's Supper observance. So let me mention those to you. You found them in the readings that I gave. First of all, when we do the Lord's Supper, we must repeat the biblical words that not only authorize it but interpret it.

Now here's another diminishing of the Lord's Supper. When we give the Lord's Supper, and what we do is to emphasize what it is not, rather than what it is, we have immediately diminished and taken away meaning that should be there in the supper. We shame do this with baptism. If you do baptism and you start telling people, well, this does not do this and does not do that, then by the time you get through to telling what it does, people said, doesn't mean much. The same is true with the Lord's Supper.

When we say, well, it's not this and it's not that, it's just this. And we use these words that it's just a symbol, just a symbol, a mere symbol. We may not use the word weird, but we do say it's just a symbol. Number one, back that up with scripture that it's just a symbol. It certainly may not be what some communion people say it is. It's not turning the bread and wine into Jesus himself. But nowhere does the scripture teach it is just a symbol. But even if you do use the symbolic language, remember the symbols carry great meaning. They're not meaningless.

So, let's endure the supper with the meaning that the God's word has given to it. Jesus said, this is my body, this is my blood. He said to take and eat, take and drink, and indicates to us that this is for the forgiveness of our sins because of his sacrifice for us. Use biblical words in the Lord's supper, both his authorization in distribution and in interpretation. Secondly, be sure to use the elements that the Lord himself gave us.

Bread and wine are the fruit of the vine. I don't care whether it's grape juice or whether it's wine, but for millennium, the church used wine and certainly wine is biblical. In our own church, we have grape juice and wine so that people can partake of the one that they feel comfortable with. But it is the fruit of the vine. It is grape juice or wine, and I prefer wine, and bread.

Now we use unleavened bread. The scripture doesn't say it has to be unleavened bread. The reason we use unleavened bread is because that's the bread that was used at the Passover. In Christ our pastor has been sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast. But if you use leavened bread, that's okay. It must be bread and wine though. There must be a Eucharistic prayer. Eucharistic means Thanksgiving. We must give a Thanksgiving prayer for Christ's death and for the elements that he himself instituted.

Now we get our pattern from this, back from the Old Testament itself. When they did the Passover, you can read the instructions given in Exodus. The people were to tell the children and everyone at the table the reason for it, the meaning of it, by telling in a brief form the story of the Exodus. And we should do something similar in our practice of the Lord's Supper.

It doesn't have to be long, but it should be full, it should be meaningful. It should capture some of the meaning. In other words, we need to teach some and we can do some of that in the prayer that we pray and that the congregation may pray together. Not only then should we say the words and have the elements passed and shared among us, but we must partake, to participate.

This was something also recovered at the Protestant Reformation. And in one great tradition, a big, huge tradition within Christendom, we have the Mass. And the Mass is a performance by the priest. And it's important that the priest participate. The people may or may not participate. And in the medieval period, it got to the point they only sometimes infrequently had the bread, but they observed the supper. They observed the ceremony. That's not the way to do the Lord's Supper. We're not there to simply observe. We're there to participate by eating of the bread and drinking of the cup with Thanksgiving.

Well, as you can tell from the time I've spent on this, this is a very important teaching and practice, I believe, in the Christian church. And I'm calling upon us to stop diminishing the Lord's Supper and to reevaluate how we're doing it and to put it front and center in the Christian worship experience, week by week. 

This has been Wayne Conrad with Bible Insights.