Just two messages on our final day.
First Robert McCollum Jr gave his second, and I thought even better, address on communion - the experience this time, again from Mark 6. Then after coffee the closing sermon was given by Meirion Thomas on the communion itself. Once again, lots of good things.
Among many good things were these quotations from Charnock and Spurgeon
Charnock
There is in this action more communion with God (though not the sole act of communion, as some say) than in any other religious act. Prayer is an act of homage; praise an act of gratitude. We have not so near a communion with a person, either by petitioning for something we want, or returning him thanks for a favour received, as we have by sitting with him at his table, partaking of the same bread and the same cup. In all nations the nearest fellowship consists in acts of this nature. The eating of the supper, as the eating of sacrifices, is a federal rite between God and the believer, signifying that there is a covenant of friendship between him and them. It is the Lord’s table, and what feasted and cheered the heart of God in heaven, viz., the body and blood of Christ, God gives us to feast our souls on earth, so that we do in a manner eat and drink with him in this love banquet. Take, eat, manifests a communion; Christ is really presented to us, and faith really takes him, closes with him, lodgeth him in the soul, makes him an indweller; and the soul hath a spiritual communion with him in his life and death, as if we did really eat his flesh and drink his blood presented to us in the elements. Eating signifies taking in Christ as our own, his righteousness, and whatsoever is his in communion with him. Discourse of the end of the Lord's Supper, see Works, Vol 4, 392-426
Spurgeon
To know that Jesus loves me is one thing. But to be visited by Him in love is more. Nor is it simply a close contemplation of Christ; for we can picture Him as exceedingly fair and majestic, and yet not have Him consciously near us. Delightful and instructive as it is to behold the likeness of Christ by meditation, yet the enjoyment of His actual presence is something more. Till He Comes, 17
I can bear my own witness that, many and many a Sabbath, when I have found but little food for my soul elsewhere, I have found it at the communion table. – “In Remembrance” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 1909, 55, 71
We believe that Jesus Christ spiritually comes to us and refreshes us, and in that sense we eat his flesh and drink his blood. The Witness of the Lord’s Supper, 38
I think the moments we are nearest to heaven are those we spend at the Lord’s table. MTP 54, 332
Never mind that bread and wine, unless you can use them as folks often use their spectacles. What do they use them for? To look at? No, to look through them. So, use the bread and wine as a pair of spectacles. Look through them, and do not be satisfied until you can say, “Yes, yes, I can see the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” MTP 45, 525
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