The Lord's Supper
As believers in the Messiah,
we are to remember the death of the
Lamb of God regularly by participating
in the Lord's Supper.
Here now is Gene to explain:
We're continuing here in lessons that
we can actually learn from this
Old Testament setting with Hezekiah.
You see, once Hezekiah had prepared
and cleansed the temple--
and we've seen how he's done that--
he did something else.
He issued an invitation to all Israel,
and that's key, all Israel, to come to
Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.
The Passover.
Now this is something they hadn't done for years.
And we read about this in
2nd Chronicles 30, verse 1:
Then Hezekiah sent word throughout
all Israel and Judah...
Now let me just simply say that
Hezekiah was concerned not just about Judah.
But he was concerned about all Israel.
The other ten tribes.
The northern tribes.
The interesting thing is, however,
that the Assyrian captivity had
already taken place.
So who was left?
Well there were a lot of people left that
weren't taken into captivity. That existed
and still lived in the northern tribes.
And so consequently, Hezekiah was
concerned about all Israel.
So we read:
...Then Hezekiah sent word throughout
all Israel and Judah, and he also wrote
letters to Ephraim and Manasseh...
And again, these are northern
tribes beyond Judah.
...he also wrote letters to Ephraim and
Manasseh to come to the LORD's temple
in Jerusalem to observe the Passover of Yahweh,
the God of Israel.
He's reinstated now the Passover.
And what this is doing, what he was
doing is taking us all the way back.
Taking the people of Israel all the way back to
their deliverance from Egypt.
Back to what we read in Exodus:
Keep this command permanently [God said]
as a statue for you and your descendants. ...
This was after they had slaughtered
the Passover lamb.
They had put the blood on the doorpost.
They had had this meal together.
And God came and passed over.
That's where the word Passover comes from--
had passed over the children of Israel.
When He brought judgment--
when God brought judgment on the Egyptians.
And so this is what God said:
...Keep this commandment permanently
as a statute for you and your descendants.
When you enter the land that the Lord
will give you as He promised,
you are to observe this ritual. ...
And by the way, that's exactly what
Joshua did when they crossed over the Jordan.
When they went into the land,
they came to Gilgal where they set up the
stones that they took out of the Jordan.
But they also had the Passover.
Something they hadn't done during the
wilderness wanderings.
So they had the Passover
when they went into the land.
And notice we read:
...When your children ask you...
Now this is what Moses wrote in Exodus.
...when your children ask you,
"What does this ritual mean to you?"
you are to reply,
"It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord,
for He passed over the houses of the
Israelites in Egypt when He struck
the Egyptians and spared our homes."
So the people bowed down and worshiped.
And so here we have Hezekiah inviting
all of Israel to come to Jerusalem to join
the Jews who lived in Judah.
To worship the Lord in this restoration
and in this reformation in this renewal.
Well it's interesting because centuries later,
when Jesus met with the apostles in the upper room.
Remember? What was He participating in?
It was a Passover meal.
They were having this Passover meal together.
This goes all the way back to the book of Exodus.
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread,
blessed and broke it,
gave it to the disciples, and said,
"Take and eat it;
this is My body." ...
He's introducing a whole new meaning
to this Passover meal.
..[And] then He took a cup and
after giving thanks, He gave it to them and said,
"Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood
that establishes the covenant;
it is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins."
Back there in Israel, back there in Egypt,
the blood over the doorposts.
What was that reflective of?
For projecting ahead to the
shed blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God
that takes away the sins of the world.
So Jesus is now establishing
a new approach to the Passover.
And we see it taking place when we get
into the book of Acts.
So those who accepted his message...
We read in Acts 2:41. "His" refers to Peter--
Peter's message.
...So those who accepted
[Peter's] message were baptized,
and that day about 3,000 people were
added to them. ...
That is to the church.
...And they devoted themselves to the
apostles' teaching, to the fellowship,
to the breaking of bread...
And we need to understand that this is more
than just taking their meals together.
They are now remembering the Lord as God--
as Jesus had taught the disciples
there in the upper room.
...to the breaking of bread, and to prayers. ...
We read on in that passage:
...Every day they devote themselves to
meeting together in the temple complex,
[and] they broke bread from house to house. ...
Now here rather than just saying:
We're breaking bread and we're eating.
They were actually using the bread that
they were eating as a part of the meal
to remember the broken body of Jesus Christ.
I think in those early days,
they remembered the broken body of Jesus Christ
every time they had a meal together.
There in Jerusalem as they were meeting
from house to house.
...They ate their food with a joyful and
humble attitude, praising God and
having favor with all the people.
And every day the Lord added to them
those who were being saved.
Now it's interesting that we read,
as we see the unfolding story,
that Paul picks up on this idea.
And he says:
For I received from the Lord...
Writing to the Corinthians.
He must have had a direct revelation
from the Lord Jesus.
You know, he met Jesus face to face
on the road to Damascus when he was converted.
Somewhere along the line,
the Lord Jesus reinforced this truth.
So he said:
...[For] I received from the Lord what I
also passed on to you:
On the night when He was betrayed,
the Lord Jesus took bread,
[He] gave thanks, broke it, and said,
"This is My body, which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of Me." ...
Now this is what Jesus did in the
upper room with the apostles.
But notice it says:
...In the same way, after supper...
After a meal, which was the Passover supper.
...He also took the cup and said,
"This cup is the new covenant
established by My blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it,
in remembrance of Me."
Now you see the key phrase there: after supper.
In the early days of the church,
breaking the bread and taking the cup
was never separated from the supper.
Just as it was not separated
from the Passover meal that Jesus
had with the apostles.
It was a supper. And that breaking the bread--
[and the blood and shedding]
--and drinking of the cup was part of that process.
Now what happened was
that throughout the church, they had what
is called an "agape" feast.
And we read about that in Jude, for example.
We call this the Lord's Supper.
These are the ones who are like
dangerous reefs at your love feasts.
You see, the early days of the church
in those days, they had these love feasts.
They called the them the "agape."
And this was part of what was
happening in the New Testament church.
But somewhere along the line when
the church was forced to go public,
they went to a token meal.
A little cup of juice
and a little piece of bread.
It's been various forms
throughout church history.
And what we've done is we've
eliminated the meal. Which is all right
because there's freedom in form.
The important thing is the meaning of
that little piece of bread or cracker or
that cup of juice.
The important thing is that we
remember the Lord from our hearts.
Which means that we have all kinds of
creative ways in which we can
remember the Lord.
So here, let's remember this truth:
As believers in the Messiah,
we are to remember the death of the
Lamb of God regularly by participating
in the Lord's Supper.
Now we call it a supper even though
it's just a little token meal.
So this raises a very significant question
for Reflection and Response:
In what creative ways can Christians
today have a full meal and use the
elements of the meal (the bread and the cup)
to remember the broken body
and shed blood of the Messiah?
Boy, open opportunity for creativity.
I remember we when I first got involved
in church planting and introduced the
whole concept of small groups in homes.
You know, you have a wonderful
ideal way of having a meal. And having
the breaking of the bread and the cup as
a part of the meal.
And you can do that in all kinds
of creative ways.
I remember with the elders and their wives--
meet in our home. In the kitchen,
on the island was all the food we had.
But there was a big loaf of bread.
Sweet bread.
And I remember that we met together
around that island and the food.
And we take first of all, just standing there,
take that loaf of bread and break it.
And pass it around and all of us would
take a bite of that sweet bread.
And then remember the broken body of Jesus.
By the way, I like sweet bread.
It reminds me of the sweetness of Jesus.
You can use leaven bread to remind
yourself of the bitterness of the cross.
See, there's freedom in form even with
the element that you're partaking of.
And then we had a meal.
We partook of the meal.
And then afterwards, we had cups of
juice on the tables.
And after the supper,
we remembered the blood of Christ.
Now that wasn't exactly the way it was
done in the New Testament.
The elements were different.
The approach was different.
And yet it's in harmony with the
Principle of remembering the Lord
with freedom in form.
By the way, you go to other cultures,
they may remember the Lord with
elements and substances that
we don't even have in our culture.
I know in one place, we have this in our culture,
where they take an ear of corn.
They pass an ear of corn around and
bite off kernels of that corn to
remember the broken body of Jesus.
And then they pass juice that
we don't even have in our culture.
You see that's freedom in form in terms of
giving freedom to practice these
Principles in any given culture of the world.
I remember one time with a group of
counselors. Where I taught
counselors up at Word of Life Island.
Way up in upper state New York.
We went out on a day and we were there
on a big rock overlooking a beautiful lake.
And someone said: Let's remember the Lord.
Well we didn't bring any crackers or
we didn't bring any bread with us.
We certainly didn't have any grape juice.
But you know what we had?
We had some cookies.
And we had some juice--
some "ade" that we have put together.
That we have brought with us.
And there on that rock overlooking that lake,
these cookies represented the
broken body of Christ.
And the juice that we drank represented
the blood of Jesus Christ.
You see what I mean by freedom in form?
So here's the Principle to Live By:
As believers in the Messiah,
we are to remember the death of the
Lamb of God regularly by participating
in the Lord's Supper.