When we come to the Table, we are being given the privilege of exercising ourselves in the truths of the gospel. One of the ways that God enables us to do this is through the establishment of memorials, and this memorial is one of them.
When God wanted us to exercise ourselves in the truth of creation, He gave us the Sabbath day as a memorial. When God wanted the Israelites to remember their deliverance from Egypt, He gave them a memorial in the Passover feast. When God wanted us to exercise our understanding of resurrection life, He transferred the memorial of the Sabbath Day to the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day (Heb. 4:9-10; Rev. 1:10).
And when He wanted us to exercise ourselves in our knowledge of the shed blood of Jesus, and of His broken body, He gave us this memorial. When we do this, we do it in remembrance of Him, but because it is a covenantal memorial we have to remember also that we are lifting it up into the presence of God so that He will remember.
When we call upon God to remember, this is not because we are afraid that He was going to forget. He does not need our reminders. Rather, this is how memorials work—we need to remind Him for our sake, not for His. God places a rainbow in the sky as a memorial, testifying that He will never again flood the world. This is something that we need to remember. We must remember, but we must also remember to remind God. But this is because we need to be constantly reminded that God is the source of all things, and that when He is blessing us, He is doing so by keeping covenant.
And so, here is the bread. Here is the wine. Here is the gospel. Strengthen yourselves in it.
So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.