"But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup" (1 Cor.
11:28). Do not let these warning words of the apostle keep anyone away from the Lord’s Supper.
It is an occasion for you to fulfill His desire, but also to think while you are fulfilling it of what
you are doing. Do not be light about your attendance at the breaking of bread. Let it be a serious
matter. Be careful of your thoughts and acts.
There is a great need on the Lord’s day to be thinking beforehand of the Lord’s Supper. I am not
referring to that very unwise and improper practice of looking out some scripture to read aloud
on the occasion, or some hymn to be sung. This is feeble and wrong, and tends to quench the
working of the Holy Spirit in the assembly.
What, then, is the proper way to prepare for the Lord’s Supper? What is the theme that will then
be especially before us? The Lord’s death. Who is there that fully understands what the Lord’s
death signifies? No person knows anything of its spiritual import apart from the revelation of
Scripture. The proper preparation for the Lord’s Supper is to store our minds with some of those
numerous passages of Holy Writ relating to that subject, so that we may have right and holy
thoughts about the sacrifice and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Saturate your mind with the very
words of the Holy Ghost in reference to that death. Never give yourself up to your own thoughts
and ideas on that sacred subject. The person who thinks his own thoughts about the death of Christ
is sure to end in error and delusion. The one who most rightly appreciates the death of Christ is
the one most subject to the Word of God, and who will not trust himself to express views about
that death in terms other than scriptural.
Throughout the Scripture, both the Old Testament and the New, we find the great theme of the
death of the Lord Jesus Christ recurring, and presented to us in various ways. The prayerful study
of such passages prepares our hearts so that when we are together our meditations are kept in
accord with God’s revealed truth about His beloved Son. Let us therefore examine ourselves with
regard to this practice, and so let us eat the bread and drink the cup in the felt presence of the
Lord who died. We are kept by the Word of truth; and we may know that the Spirit of God is
assuredly directing our thoughts when in the assembly He brings before us His own words about
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
(From The Institution and Observance of the Lord’s Supper.)