Worldwide Communion Sunday is observed in churches of all denominations around the globe on the first Sunday in October each year. What a wonderful way to remember that we have a spiritual connection with brothers and sisters in Christ in every land, on every continent, in every nation, and in every setting. From great stone cathedrals with colorful stained glass windows to suburban colonial churches and their tall white steeples, from newly-planted congregations meeting in rented facilities in neighborhood schools to Christians gathering secretly behind closed doors and windows in lands where persecution is intense, from families meeting in a mud hut on the African savannah to believers huddled together under a canopy in the snowy forests of Siberia, we are all one in Christ as we come to the table of the Lord.
Our hymnals have large sections devoted to compositions about Jesus’ passion and the events of that final week leading to Calvary and the tomb. And there are also numerous hymns that explain the nature of the atonement as Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, and endured the wrath of God that we deserved, offering Himself as our substitute. All of these help us celebrate – yes, celebrate! not merely remember – Jesus’ atoning work. They all call us back to the cross as the central event of the gospel, the gospel which is not about us and what we are to be doing for God, but is about what God has done for us in the substitutionary death of Christ.
When we approach the Lord’s Table, we are proclaiming the Lord’s death until He comes again, as He instructed us. And at the table we find the nourishment for our souls, the body of Christ broken for us and the blood of Christ shed for us. The songs we sing help us recall the events of that Passion Week, and what was accomplished there because of His great love for us. And they also remind us of our connection to one another as we all partake of the same bread and wine, even when separated by thousands of miles. And thus we come to this day each year, Worldwide Communion Sunday, at the beginning of October.
When we think of Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), the great reformed Baptist preacher of the 19th century, we immediately think of the thousands of gospel-saturated, Christ-centered sermons he preached at London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, and the uncounted number of souls that were savingly brought to Christ through his preaching ministry. I doubt that many people would think of him as a hymn writer. But there is this one which he wrote in 1866 as a hymn for coming to the Lord’s table: “Amidst Us Our Beloved Stands.” It is a fine retelling of the story, and explanation of the elements Jesus told us to use in this sacrament. It was included as one of several hymns he wrote for the song book he published for the Metropolitan Tabernacle (“Our Own Hymn Book”), and this one certainly belongs in every hymnal today.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon lived only 57 years, 42 of them as a Christian, but few have preached the gospel in person to more souls than he, perhaps to hundreds of thousands! The number swells enormously when we consider how many have read his sermons, which continue in print and on-line to this day. At the age of 10, his grandparents took him to a meeting of the London Missionary Society. The speaker that night, Richard Knill, made a startling prediction when he met the young lad. He said, “I feel a solemn presentiment that this child will preach the gospel to thousands, and God will bless him to their souls.
The story of Spurgeon’s conversion has become well-known. Over the years, he re-told the story himself hundreds of times in his sermons!
I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a court and came to a little Primitive Methodist Chapel.
In that chapel there might be a dozen or fifteen people. The minister did not come that morning: snowed up, I suppose. A poor man, a shoemaker, a tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach.
He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had nothing else to say. The text was, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in the text. He began thus:
“My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now that does not take a deal of effort. It ain’t lifting your foot or your finger; it is just ‘Look.’ Well, a man need not go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man need not be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; a child can look. But this is what the text says.
“Then it says, ‘Look unto Me.’ ‘Ay,’ said he, in broad Essex, ‘many of ye are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You’ll never find comfort in yourselves.’”
Then the good man followed up his text in this way:
“Look unto Me: I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hanging on the Cross. Look: I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O, look to Me! Look to Me!”
When he had got about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes, he was at the length of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger.
He then said, “Young man, you look very miserable.”Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made on my personal appearance from the pulpit before. However, it was a good blow struck.
He continued: “And you will always be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death—if you do not obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.”
Then he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist can, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ.”
There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the Precious Blood of Christ.
Spurgeon understood. At that moment, a lost sinner, he simply looked to the Christ of Calvary, and trusted Him as his personal Savior. A simple tablet still marks the spot in that little chapel on Artillery Street, Colchester, where Charles Haddon Spurgeon looked to Christ for salvation, and received eternal life.
“Look to Christ” was a repeated theme in his gospel preaching and in many of the hymns he later wrote. Shortly after his salvation, he developed a deep desire to preach the gospel. His father was a gospel preacher, and shortly after he was saved, Charles wrote “How I long for the time when it may please God to make me, like you my father, a successful preacher of the gospel. Oh, that I might see one sinner constrained to come to Jesus.” He started preaching when he was 16 years old and God blessed him from the outset.
When he was 19, he was called to London to preach. The need in this large city was great. He began preaching in a small Baptist chapel, to 200 at a time, but within a very short time, the building was packed, with 1200 attending each meeting. Plans were then made to construct the great Metropolitan Tabernacle, which held over 5000 souls. C. H. Spurgeon preached there, faithfully, for 31 years. It was said that there was scarcely a service that passed, when souls were not saved by God’s grace.
E. W. Bacon, who attended many of these gospel meetings, wrote these words: “Never has London, or anywhere else, seen such a God-honoring, Christ-exalting, Spirit-filled, Bible-based, soul-winning ministry; a ministry consecrated to the dual task of bringing together the sinner and his Savior, the saint and his Lord.” Of Spurgeon himself, Bacon said “He came from the audience chamber of the Most High and stepped into that large human auditorium, as the mouthpiece of God.”
His messages were printed in English, and then translated into Dutch, Spanish, French, German, and Italian, and distributed far and wide. To patients in hospitals, prisoners in jails, sailors on the sea, men and women in public and private, his words carried the call of heaven all over the world.
Spurgeon passed into the Lord’s presence on January 31, 1892, a worn-out warrior. He finally got to look into the face of the Savior he loved and for Whom he labored. Ever since his salvation, his theme had been “Look to Christ.” When he was 16, he had written these words: “One joy, all joys shall far excel – to see Thy face, Immanuel!” Finally, God granted him his desire. More than 60,000 people filed by his body as it lay in state. On his coffin lay his Bible, opened to Isaiah 45:22: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.”
When we come to the Lord’s Table on Worldwide Communion Sunday, Spurgeon’s hymn calls us to do what that lay preacher challenged Spurgeon to do, and which he urged people to do Sunday after Sunday in his preaching at London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, to hear Jesus’ voice calling them to “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.”
In stanza 1, we sing that Jesus is actually present with us in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. While there is no transformation of the elements physically, He is in our midst spiritually to give nourishment to our souls. For those of us who come in saving faith to the table, our souls are able to see His hands and feet and side. These are “emblems” that point us to the work of atonement accomplished there by the one who said, “It is finished!”
Amidst us our Belovèd stands, And bids us view His piercèd hands;
Points to the wounded feet and side, Blest emblems of the Crucified.
In stanza 2, we sing of a banquet that is more festive and celebratory than any to which we have ever been invited in this earthly life. Spurgeon describes the food as “luxurious,” with wine that is “rich” and bread that is “sweet.” Surely that is true since it is the Lord Himself who is the food and drink for our souls. Not only is He present both as host as well as food and drink, but he has personally invited each of us to come as His guest!
What food luxurious loads the board, When, at His table, sits the Lord!
The wine how rich, the bread how sweet, When Jesus deigns the guests to meet!
In stanza 3, we sing of the tragedy of someone coming to this table and seeing the signs, the bread and the cup, but not seeing Him. Such is the condition of spiritual blindness in which we were all born. Such is the plight of those who come with their minds set on business or on some burden they carry or on a merely sentimental concept of the gospel, and who partake of the elements with no spiritual comprehension of what they signify, or the Savior who is present. The reference to “scales” reminds us of the apostle Paul following his “face to face” Damascus Road encounter.
If now, with eyes defiled and dim, We see the signs, but see not Him;
O, may His love the scales displace, And bid us see Him face to face!
In stanza 4, we sing of the glory of the Savior, which we long to see. It becomes possible when Jesus lifts the veil from our spiritual eyes. What a marvelous imagery this is, directly from the Scripture, that Jesus is that “glorious bridegroom” who loves His bride, the church, so much that He allowed His body to be broken and His blood to be shed for her. These are the very elements which are set before us on Worldwide Communion Sunday.
Thou glorious Bridegroom of our hearts, Thy present smile a heaven imparts!
O, lift the veil, if veil there be, Let every saint Thy glory see!
Here is a recording of the hymn with the tune most often used today.