Acts 20:7 (ESV)
⁷ On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.

The church at Troas assembled to worship God on the first day of the week. Their main objective was to participate together in the communion of the Lord, that is, to observe the Lord’s Supper. What a wonderful way to worship God. In 1 Corinthians 11, we are told more specifically what is involved in this observance.

1 Corinthians 11:23-24 (ESV)
²³ For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 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.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

The bread that we partake of represents the body of our Lord. Every time we partake of it, our minds should be on the body that our heavenly Father prepared for Jesus. Without that body there could be no sacrifice for our sins. The Hebrews writer said, “And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10 ESV). We must always be mindful of how significant it was for Christ to be willing to leave heaven and take on a human body. Paul said that Jesus “became poor so that you by His poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). An even more vivid comment by Paul is found in Philippians 2:7. There he wrote that Jesus, “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”  That was the beginning of the sacrifice of Christ. He gave up a lot long before He died on the cross. We can only imagine what it would be like for one in the state of glory that Jesus was in before His fleshly incarnation, to be made in the likeness of men. Yet, that was a central part of God’s plan of salvation. In fact, there could be no plan without it. We needed a man to die in our stead; thus, the one doing the dying had to have an earthly body. Every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper, that great sacrifice made freely by Jesus should be on our minds.

Paul went on to say in Philippians 2 that Christ was, “obedient to death—even the death of the cross.” On that cross, Jesus shed His blood for us, and it is that blood that is represented by the cup that Jesus commanded that we take in remembrance of Him. That did not mean that we are to contemplate the benefits of the blood of Christ only on Sunday, when we commune with Christ and other Christians, by partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus did not say, “do this remembering me,” though we should. He said we are to partake of the bread and the cup “in remembrance of me,” meaning we partake of it because we remember Him. We remember Him every day, and we celebrate that remembrance of Him at the divinely appointed time, that is, the first day of the week.

What can wash our sins away? As the song says, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”  Without that blood, we would have no chance for a home in heaven. Thank God Jesus was willing to die for us and thank God we have been given a means to show our appreciation by communing with Christ when partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

As you wind down for the night, think on these things.