Address to his Congregation

by the Rev. John Kennedy, Dingwall
Rome, January 18, 1884

MY DEAR FRIENDS,—I have been thinking much of the approaching Communion, and I feel a strong desire to say a little to you in view of it. I cannot be with you except in my thoughts, and this is well, because it was the will of God to send me to this city. There can be nothing amiss in any divine counsel or work. You will have the Lord’s servants, His Gospel, and His ordinances; and the coming season of Communion will be a blessed time, if you have His gracious presence as well.

O what privileges are yours as compared with the condition of the people among whom I sojourn! In this famous city there are some who fear the Lord, but these are “in number very few,” and there are small gatherings of people to hear the Word, but the overwhelming majority either ignore all religion, or come into contact only with the delusions of Popery. They know no Sabbath, and from the jading toil to which the spirit of the world subjects them they have no relief. They know God only as one hid out of sight in the world by the clouds that darken His providence, or behind the dust raised by the turmoil of secular business; and in the church all is done to keep out of sight both His glory and His grace. They know Christ only as represented by paintings and images, and their only idea of salvation is that it, as well as their God, must be “the work of men’s hands.” Think of these things when you assemble to hear the gospel, and when you are called on a Communion Sabbath to the house and to the table of the Lord. And when you consider the difference, in respect of privilege, which the Lord has made between you and them, seek to realise your responsibility, to acknowledge your guilt in abusing what the Lord has been pleased to give you, and lift up a cry to the Lord on behalf of perishing thousands in Rome.

In view of the approaching Communion season, I am anxious to direct your attention to what is implied in the Sacrament of the Supper, and what you ought to desire as preparation for the solemn service before you.

In considering both these things I have in view to speak exclusively to communicants. But I wish to reserve an opportunity of addressing some counsels to those who as yet have not approached the table of the Lord.

COMMUNICANTS

What is before you in the service of a Communion Sabbath? This is a question which you ought carefully to consider. To refuse to consider it is to enter heedless on holy ground. I wish to aid you, by the divine blessing, in answering this question.

1. There is the exhibition by God to you, who believe, through sensible signs, in connection “with the word of the truth of the gospel,” of His Son Jesus Christ, as His own “only Begotten,” and your Brother, as His own Lamb and as your Surety, as His anointed and your Saviour. O what a glorious one! O what a wondrous Person! O what a suitable Mediator! And he is to be “evidently set forth” as “crucified among you.” He is presented to you as one whose “body” was “broken,” and whose “blood” was “shed.” And all that befell Him ere His death was accomplished, and in His dying, came upon Him because he bare the sins of the people whom He was sent to redeem; and to all this He meekly submitted that their redemption might be secured. O what wonders are here for the mind, what satisfaction for the conscience, what love for the heart!

But a living Christ put the first Communion cup into the disciples’ hands. A living Christ does so still. He presents himself, by means of the appointed symbols, to His church now, and of His lordly and loving action in doing this it would be well to think. He is alive to present to His Church the new Covenant, which He sealed by His blood, with all the fulness of its precious blessings, as a free gift to each one of you who “have believed through grace.” This is the cup which the Lord Jesus places before you on a Communion table. And forget not that the risen and exalted Redeemer can fulfil, by the coming of His Spirit, the promise of His gracious presence, in order that there may be feeding as well as a feast. Himself in the merit of His death before you, Himself in the power of His life with you. O how precious is this privilege! How intensely anxious ought you to be to be enabled to enjoy it!

There is before you, on a Communion Sabbath, the fullest and the closest manifestation of the glory and love of Jehovah the Father given on the earth—the fullest, because through Christ crucified, the closest, because by means of sensible signs under the clear light of the Word. What a solemn moment it is to advance into such a light so shining, and what an inestimable privilege it is to be allowed, and called, to enter the brightness in faith, but with godly fear! Yes, the fullest manifestation of Jehovah is the glory that shineth from the face of Jesus Christ. He is “the Word of God” who “is God,” the “brightness of the Father’s” glory, and “the express image of His Person.” His it is to reveal the Father. And He came not only to speak of Him to men, but to place Himself, in His divine Person, as the Word made flesh, “between God and men,” that Jehovah might so deal with Him, as to give forth, through His flesh, a manifestation of all His glory. In giving Him He expressed His infinite love, and in bruising Him He showed forth the infinite glory of His holiness, righteousness, and truth, while in the adaptation of Christ, in His person and work, to all on the side of God and to all on the side of sinful men, appeared, as nowhere else, the manifold wisdom of God. How awfully great is the manifestation of Jehovah’s holiness and justice in making the soul of His well beloved an offering for sin! Verily, your God, believer, is “a consuming fire.” But in the measure in which thou discernest the fire, in the sufferings of thy Surety, the more persuaded mayest thou be that it consumed all that would interpose between thee and the embrace of the love, which the coming of the given Son, and each moment of His life on earth, proved to be a “love which passeth knowledge.”

Forget not, Friends, that if you are called to feast on the broken body and shed blood of Christ, it is in order to your being strengthened to rise, in desire and faith, to the love which gave Him, and to the name of Him whom He glorified on the earth, that you may find in the former the spring of all salvation, and in the latter the everlasting and unfailing fountain of your blessedness.

1. The Lord calls His people to be with Himself at His table, in order, as His guests, to be feasted by the provision of His love. He has nothing for you apart from Himself. He has all for you in and with Himself. You, unaided can partake of nothing of all He sets before you, but by His gracious help your soul can “delight itself in fatness.” In the feast to be spread before you are all the blessings of the everlasting covenant of grace, but neither in understanding nor in hope can you reach them but as you know Christ Himself, and enter into the mystery of His death on the cross. Therefore, He places Himself before you and His broken body and His shed blood, ere He presents to you the covenant and its blessings. It is only “the New Testament in” His “blood” that you can venture to appropriate. But if it was His body that was broken, and His blood that was shed, why, if you appropriate Him, and take your place on divine merit, before divine grace may you not appropriate all the provision of God’s covenant love—yea, the covenant God Himself—to be yours for evermore? And just in the measure in which the glory, shining from between the cherubims, abases you, will be your confidence towards God; your hope of His blessing, and your enjoyment of His love.

2. Before you is the prospect of making a solemn profession of dedicating yourself unreservedly to the Lord. To be honest in this profession, you require to be free of all conscious cherishing of any sin, and specially of all selfish motives in connection with your position and service as one under vow to be the Lord’s. If true in heart, you are willing to be a debtor to the grace of God for all you require in order to your salvation; and to the doing of the work which the Lord requires at your hand, you will make no choice of a sphere or form of service for yourself; you will leave yourself, without any reserve of aught you are or have, in the Lord’s hands, and you will desire to set Him always before you as the one source of your strength, and the one fountain of your joy. The engagement, involving all this, you are called to renew on a Communion Sabbath, under the all-seeing eye of God, while observed by “the elect angels,” watched by the powers of darkness, under supervision of the Church, and while challenging the attention and opposition of the world. How much such a profession involves, and how solemn a thing it is to make it in such circumstances!

3. And you are called on a Sacramental Sabbath to communion with the Lord and with His people. At His table there is an opportunity presented to you of enjoying both these fellowships. If you enjoy communion with the Lord because He is pleased to manifest Himself to your soul, and to draw you near to Him by cords of love, in the measure in which this will be your privilege will you desire to enjoy fellowship with all His people. Not that you can expect to have fellowship of intercourse with these, as you can have with the glorious Head Himself; but in the measure in which you can lay claim to His grace will it gladden you to think of the fellowship with you which all, who, having tasted that the Lord is gracious, enjoy; you will desire to have them all in your heart as embraced in the arms of a guileless love, be disposed to pray for their peace, and be ready to do what is in the power of your hand for their good. Be false in your professions, and to the ear, and under the eye, of God you will be saying “We care not for Thy fellowship, and we love not Thy people.”

4. At a communion table all true communicants do “shew forth the Lord’s death” to the world. All communicants may in this way preach Christ crucified. This, to all believers, is a lawful form of preaching; and they ought to regard it as their precious privilege, their high honour, as well as their bounden duty, to exhibit the crucified One to an unbelieving and hostile world. The sermons, preached by broken-hearted communicants, are rated far higher in heaven than the most eloquent harangues of those, who in pulpits display their “excellence of speech and of wisdom,” in a spirit of “lies” and of “lightness.” And this showing forth of the Lord’s death must be continued by each individual believer till the Lord came to take him to the Father’s house, and by the Church till He come at the final judgment. How glad one ought to feel to have his exhibition of Christ associated with His second advent! O is it not a precious privilege, to be allowed to express your faith and love, bearing on Him as crucified, till the glory of His coming have removed all darkness and all appearance of humiliation from the aspect which shall then be presented by the Lord? And surely, what shall appear in the greatness of His glory, and in the perfected purity and blessedness of His ransomed ones, at the last day, as the result of His travail, shall satisfy the Lord, and shall fill, with “the joy of harvest,” the hearts of all who loved His name, and who were shewing forth His death upon the earth. Sing in faith your spring song, because the “grain of wheat” has fallen into the ground and died, and in due time you shall have your autumn song, because the fruit of this death has been reaped. And thou art called to shew forth the death of the Lord, as if He, from His throne of judgment, were fixing the eye that is as “a flame of fire” on your heart and on your service. O, Friends, it is solemn work to be shewing forth “the Lord’s death till he come.”

II. In view of privilege and work so great

it would become each one of you to say “Who is sufficient for these things?” How can such riches of privilege be used? how can such spiritual service be performed?

1. A self-emptying sense of your weakness and folly, in view of what is before you, is the first requisite to preparation for meeting the feast and the service of a Communion Sabbath. Beware of avoiding such views of the Sacrament of the Supper as tend to make you feel your weakness, and your dependence on the grace of the Spirit of prayer for guidance to the throne of grace, from which alone can be dispensed to you the help you need. You have all the more need of being on your guard against this, because it is at present an epidemic within the Churches. The present tendency is to so undervalue the Sacrament of the Supper as to deem it unnecessary to make any marked distinction between it and the ordinary business of one’s worldly calling, and to dispense with all preliminary exercises with a view to preparation for communicating. With a facility, born of the flesh, men pass from the midst of engrossing worldly business to the most solemn service of the house of God, and they hurry back again to the world as if they were escaping from a prison. Friends, beware of thus prostituting the Lord’s Supper, and, in order to be put upon your guard, solemnly consider what this holy ordinance implies and requires, till you profoundly feel that “the preparation of the heart” which you need can come to you only from the Lord.

2. Carefully let your memory go over your course of profession and of service in the past, and ask light from heaven to discover to you your shortcomings. Let this be no overly work. Ask from the Lord that your mind may be enlightened, your conscience faithful, and your heart broken as you remember your iniquities. Seek to be so affected by them that you cannot rest till you attain to a true confession of your guilt, with the hand of faith resting on the slain Lamb of God, and till the light from the mercy-seat shines in upon your heart, and the Lord speaks peace to you through the blood of His Son.

3. Be not satisfied without conscious integrity in dedicating yourselves to the Lord. It is due to the Lord, and you owe it to yourself, that nothing less than this should satisfy you. How dishonouring it is to God that iniquity should be regarded, and that self should be indulged, and how destructive to your own peace it will be to cherish aught that may provoke the Lord to hide His face from your souls! Be true, be earnest in your closets in purging out the old leaven, and in praying to have, with the Lamb and the bitter herbs, “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

4. Seek to be fervent in your love to the brethren. It is offensive to the Lord, and utterly inconsistent with your profession, to be without such a state of feeling towards those who are members of the same body, partakers of the same Spirit, debtors to the same grace, and heirs of the same glory. Are you professing to eat the same bread, and to have fellowship with the same Christ, and is there coldness in your heart to any of the brethren? Friend, spare no pains in examining whether it be so or not, and be not at rest till under the eye of God you gather into the chamber of your heart fervent love to all who fear His name in heaven and on earth. Quarrels, or coldness, between his children at his table would be wounding to the heart of a father “according to the flesh.” O, let not the Father who is in heaven be thus displeased by His children when they gather at His table before Him.

5. Seek so to meditate on the Lord’s promise of His presence that your heart’s desire shall go forth in prayer for His coming. What is the feast to you, a lover of the Lord’s anointed, if David’s place be empty. O seek to be brought to feel as if you could not live without Him, and be not at rest till your heart so fervently seeks His fellowship, that you can tell the Lord without guile that you will not let Him go. Alas, of how little of such wrestling are our closets the scene. What is in fashion, even within the Church, is to be provoking Him away rather than to use pleading for His gracious presence.

6. And seek to add to brotherly kindness charity towards all who are not brethren, such as would dispose you heartily to forgive those of them who proved themselves to be your enemies, and to pray that they all might be “turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.” Thinking of them thus in your closets, come forth to the gates of Zion praying for an outpouring of the Spirit of promise in His converting power and grace, as well as for visits of the Comforter to those “that mourn in Zion.”

Friends, I have very dimly drawn the lines by which I intended to indicate the extent of your privilege, and the greatness of your work. I beseech you to ponder the hints which have been given, and by meditation to supplement what I have hurriedly written. And may the Lord bestow His blessing, for that can make rich the poorest offering that is laid upon His altar, as well as the poorest sinner that is willing to be a debtor to His grace.

I cannot close without writing a word of exhortation to those who have not as yet approached the table of the Lord. I am not prepared to say to any of you that you should come. There is something else than this which, in the first instance, is your duty. No one is called to come to the table of the Lord till first he comes in faith to the Lord of the table, as He is revealed and offered in the Gospel. The sin of refusing the call to come to Himself, and not your keeping back from His table, is that of which your conscience should testify, and of which you need to obtain forgiveness. You would be but adding to the guilt, and making more established the practical reign of your sin, to come as you are, while Christless, to the table of the Lord. You would but “eat and drink judgment” to yourselves if you follow those who come merely because they follow a fellow-creature’s advice, or because they see others go whom they regard as at least as unsuitable as themselves, or because they merely wish to consummate a profession of being Christians; or because they have such views of the sacrament as banish all carefulness about being “worthy” communicants from their hearts, or because they rest their hope of salvation on the consciousness of a change of feeling and of practice, which they care not to examine and to test, in order, by its fruits, to ascertain the source whence it came, and the power by which it was produced. Follow none of these, for you will go with them only “to do evil.” But are you to be at ease without a right to come to the table of the Lord? Can you afford to be without Christ? You may at present think that you get on best by ignoring Him, but can you feel, in your dying hour, that you can dispense with His saving power? Many a stout-hearted sinner death has brought to his knees, and death is mighty enough to constrain you to cry, though you may never have cried before. But there is a mightier power than even that of death, and it worketh graciously, and worketh now, in making a people to bow to King Jesus, and to take the place of patients, of disciples, and of servants at His feet. This power is that of the Spirit of Grace and Supplication whom Jesus has promised to send. Sinners hear, O hear, the kingly gracious voice of Jesus, as He says, “Turn ye at my reproof; behold I will pour out my Spirit unto you; I will make known my words unto you.”

---

Death for the Christian is a bridge that leads to the paradise of God.

Thos. Watson