(Connecting Advent and Holiness)
At His first advent He came to drink a cup (Matthew 26:39); the one to which He said to His Father, “Nevertheless, not my will but Your will”. He also came to give a cup (Matthew 26:27) of the Lord’s Supper. We will drink it again with Him in the fullness of His Father’s kingdom. The early house churches shared common meals and partook of the Lord’s Supper every time they met. To them it was more important than words of prophecy, the words of a visiting teacher or preacher. Christian worship moved toward the Lord’s table with its bread and cup (the sacrificial blood makes us holy); They were drinking the cup “showing forth the Lord’s death” til He comes” in His glorious second advent. Evangelicalism was built around getting conversions with everything moving to the altar call; in too many places, we have left the riches of the bread and cup behind to our own poverty. (Footnote: In our anti-tradition mindset, we threw out the rituals along with the baby. To quote my friend, the late Stuart McWhirter, who was himself a revivalist, “Our informality has become an ugly formality.”) Neglect not that cup.
“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26 NASB).
