Acts 20:7 — On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight.
In our previous meditation, we listed out many reasons, drawn from Scripture, for a frequent celebration of the Lord's Supper in the church. We are going to explore some of those in more depth as we bring this series to a close, beginning this time with the Scriptures that seem to indicate the early church frequently took the meal together.
The text above strongly implies that the church specifically gathered each Lord's Day to take the Supper together in the context of their regular worship and the preaching of the Word. This is also reinforced for us in the following text:
1 Corinthians 11:20 — Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper . . ."
Here, Paul strongly indicates that when they meet, it is in order to eat the Supper. However, because of the abuses in the church at Corinth, they had turned their celebration of the Lord's Supper into a mockery of the real thing.
We know also from Acts 2:42 that the breaking of the bread was one of the characterizing, "continual" behaviors of the early church. It seems they took the Lord's Supper with a comparable frequency to meeting for prayer, to hear the Word preached and to enjoy fellowship:
Acts 2:42 — They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
While it seems that the church met together for regular "love feasts," or fellowship meals, the passage in Acts 20:46, implies that the church celebrated the Supper daily in their home meetings, as a separate activity from taking a meal together:
Acts 2:46 — Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart,
So, then, there is evidence from several places and from two different New Testament authors that points strongly to a frequent (weekly or even daily) participation of the church in the Lord's Supper. This was a practice that characterized the church as much as prayer or listening to the apostles' teaching. From all that we have seen in this series, it would be surprising if this was not the behavior of the Lord's church as they were guided by the Holy Spirit, so recently poured out upon them.
The question is why so many churches in more recent times seem to have abandoned frequent celebration of the meal in favor of monthly, bi-annual or even annual participation. Seeing that this is a means of grace given to the church by her Lord, on what Biblical basis would we so restrict the occasions on which we could commune with Him in this way?
