JackHammer

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. ~~Genesis 3:15

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. ~~Genesis 12:2-3

And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. ~~Genesis 17:7

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. ~~Galatians 3:16

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. ~~Romans 10:4

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. ~~Romans 10:9-12

After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. ~~1 Corinthians 11:25

The Lord’s Supper should be a thankful celebration of our Substitute’s victory on our behalf. It is a remembrance of the freedom we gained in the New Testament. A Testament sealed with His blood.

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

1 Corinthians 10 16

In this verse we see the name I’ve heard most commonly used for the Lord’s Supper: Communion. The word communion carries with it the ideas of fellowship and participation. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we remember Christ’s work on our behalf, and in a sense, fellowship in his sufferings and participate in his death and subsequent victory. His Supper is the communion of the body of Christ.

Now I think it is important that we recognize not only our fellowship with His physical sufferings in some way, but also our fellowship with His body that we can see right now — the church. Communion is the fellowship and participation of the church as it remembers the work of Christ in His death, burial, resurrection and triumphant ascension. This is one reason why we don’t bring communion to people that are not at church. That’s not communion. You have to have an assembly in order to have participation with one another in fellowship.

This is another reason why the Lord’s Supper is necessary for the health of a church. As we partake, we ought to discern the Lord’s body around us. His body that we are a part of. His body that we have mistreated, or slandered, or envied. If we come to His table with these sins in our lives, we should immediately confess and forsake them. We should right them. If we have this understanding of the Lord’s Supper, the more often we partake, the healthier the body will be. This confessing and forsaking is true self-denial, maybe even taking up our cross.

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death til He come.

The Lord’s Table is His supper celebrated with thanksgiving in communion with other believers because of our fellowship in Christ. We show loyalty to the Lord as we remember His broken body and shed blood, which washes away our sin.

Bread Cart 

The message completed, the deacons prepare the table for the Supper. It is a serious time, though not a sad time. We seriously rejoice. We celebrate solemnly. The table is prepared. One blesses the bread, already broken, prepared in the plate. The silver plates filled with bread are distributed to the deacons. They pass the plates. It is an offering of sorts. Not a collection, but an offering. Bread offered to the people. The people receive the bread, they take it, and hold it in their hand. The deacons return the plates. I look. Bread still fills the plate.

God filled His Word with bread. This should not surprise us. An exhaustive study of bread in the Bible reveals an exhausting amount of bread. And bread stories too. Bread stories fill the Word. The bread stories are not isolated, disjointed, random, or coincidental. Together, they form the grand story of our bread, the One Bread. Like manna in the wilderness, he that gathers little has no lack, and he that gathers much has nothing over.

God provides bread. Melchizedek met Abram, returning from the slaughter of the kings, with bread and wine. This was not the Lord’s Supper. Nor was it the first time bread was mentioned. Bread was first mentioned with the curse. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. If a man will not work, he also should not eat.

So, man sweats, and God provides bread. God provided Egypt with bread. God took a Hebrew boy from his father’s house. Through treachery, God made him a slave. God sent that Hebrew slave to a great man’s house. Through treachery, God put him in prison. God caused men to dream, and the prisoner to interpret. One man died, the other lived, and forgot. Until God reminded him. God reminded the man at the perfect time. The Hebrew slave became Egyptian lord. Second in command. Over Potiphar, and his wife. And by that lord, Israel ate bread. Egypt came to the Hebrew lord, seeking bread. They sold themselves to him for bread. God provides bread.

Then came a day when a new king rose up, that knew not Joseph. Joseph’s people were sold into slavery. Miraculously, God delivered them. On the eve of their deliverance, God instructed the people to eat bread. Unleavened bread. With the flesh of a lamb, and bitter herbs. They ate the bread, and they were delivered. And as a memorial, they ate the feast again each year. This was not the Lord’s Supper. Nor was it unrelated.

God provides bread. God gave manna in the wilderness. Israel doubted. They said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness? God can. God did. God already had. Man did eat angel’s food. God had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat. He that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating. God gave manna with a purpose. God taught the people with the manna. Lesson number one:

God gave them the Sabbath. And therefore on the sixth day, they gathered the bread of two days. God gave rest, and God gave bread. Man rested, and was fed. Manna fed man, but manna was not that bread from heaven. The Father gives us the true bread from heaven.

The priests put bread on the table. Hallowed bread. Consecrated bread. The Bread of the Presence. They called it shewbread. Twelve loaves, baked fresh. Baked every Sabbath. The priests profaned the Sabbath, and were blameless. The priests eat the old bread. But not always. Once, David and his men were hungry. The priest had no common bread to give. So, the priest gave the hallowed bread to David. And for this crime, the priest gave his life. He died for David, at the hand of King Saul. But it was no crime. The bread God gives does cost something.

Gideon was bread. A cake of barley bread. That cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along. Bread can be dangerous. The One Bread is. God bakes dangerous bread.

God provides bread miraculously. Ask Elijah. When there was not bread to be had, the ravens brought him bread. When the brook dried up, God sent Elijah to a widow. God commanded her to sustain him. So, Elijah asked a poor widow to use her last handful of meal to feed him. She was gathering two sticks. She and her son would eat and die. Elijah asked for that bread, their last bread, promising that the barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sendeth rain upon the earth.

God provides a continuous supply of bread. We will never stop eating bread. God provides an abundant supply. A boy brings his five loaves to Christ. In Christ’s hand, the loaves come alive. He blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. The multitude ate, and was filled. And they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.

God provides a continuous supply. God provides a miraculous supply. God provides an abundant supply. God takes the children’s bread, and casts it unto dogs. God provides a heavenly supply. Christ is the giver of bread. Christ is the Bread Given. The One Bread. And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The first mention of bread is with the curse. But then, there is blessing.

The plate is passed, the people receive. Scripture is read, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. The people take. They eat. They are fed. And the plate remains full.

You can partake of the bread of the Lord’s Table, and still not eat the Living Bread. But those who have eaten the Living Bread will hunger for the bread at His Table. Nor will they stop. Not in this life, not in the next. Lord, evermore give us this bread. Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God!

The two elements of the Lord’s Table are bread and cup. We know that the bread represents Christ’s broken body and that the grape juice symbolizes His shed blood. Does the “broken body” get a whole lot of coverage in Scripture? What’s the point? I contend that “broken body” or bread is substitutionary death and that “shed blood” or cup is sacrificially shed blood. Jesus couldn’t just bleed; neither could He only die in some non-bloody way, like strangulation. Both were necessary. The blood was not a mere metonym[1] for death and the Lord’s Supper reminds us of that. This fits with Colossians 1:20-22 (applied phrases highlighted):

And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:

The Lord Jesus Christ reconciled us to God by means of “the blood of the cross” and “the body of his flesh through death.” The second is not just a restatement, but a separate mandatory aspect of the work of Christ at Calvary. Our salvation depends both on His death and His shed blood as two entities within the same work of the Lord.

Several different types of wounds were opened upon Jesus’ body for Him to bleed profusely. They scourged Him with the cruel cat-of-nine-tails[2] (Mt. 27:26; Mk. 15:15; Jn. 19:1), pierced His precious head with the hard, sharp, Palestinian crown of thorns (Mt. 27:29; Mk. 15:17; Jn. 19:2, 5), struck His beautiful face with hard punches (Lk. 22:64), pounded those railroad spike-type nails into His hands (Jn. 20:25; Col. 2:14), and gashed His side with a deadly, Roman spear (Jn. 19:34). These details reveal the bloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ, for “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). His blood washes away (Rev. 1:5) and cleanses (1 John 1:7) sin.

“Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). He “died for all” (2 Cor. 5:15). Hebrews 9:16, 17 says:

For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.

Shed blood is necessary. Death is necessary. We take the cup and we take the bread.

And when we receive these separate elements into our bodies through our mouths and then into our digestive systems, what do they do? Putting the bread of the Table into our bodies through our mouths and drinking the juice of His Supper into our bellies through our lips testify of an ongoing reception of Him and everything that He is.

When the Passover was observed, as part of the ceremony the master of the feast offered the sop to those at the table. The sop was a piece of bread dipped in a special sauce. By accepting and then eating the sop, the one at the Table declared his reception of the coming Messiah.  It was at that very point of those proceedings that Satan entered Judas and he went out to betray the Lord Jesus Christ (John 13:26-30). He stood up and walked out into the night. It was a fitting moment for Judas to leave. The Messiah truly had come, was seated right next to him, and he would not receive Him.  He left the Bread of life, walked away from the Light of the world, and went into ultimate and utter darkness.

Every time we come to the Table, we also have the opportunity again to receive Jesus Christ, not for salvation this time, but for sanctification. We welcome His fellowship and His presence. We gladly associate ourselves with His body. We publicly pledge our loyalty and love to Him in the light of the special presence promised to His church.

Footnotes

[1] Metonym is a figure of speech. This sentence will illustrate the metonym: “I read Shakespeare.” I am not reading William Shakespeare, the man, but what he wrote. In this case, when I say “Shakespeare,” I don’t mean Shakespeare, but his writings. As this figure of speech applies to the issue of death and shed blood, some, like John MacArthur, say that although shedding of blood was necessary, shed blood is a metonym for death. I believe this evaluation falls short of Scriptural teaching and, in so doing, devalues the shed blood of Christ.

[2] Scripture does not actually mention this kind of whip; this is a historical point.

You can’t do that!

Yes, I can.

No. You can’t.

You just watch me!

Have you ever had this conversation? You insist that someone “can’t” do something, and they insist that they can. Yours is a spiritual point of view, theirs, physical. You are saying, “You can’t be happy or successful as a Christian and continue that practice.” They are saying, “I am a Christian and you just watch me!” The same thing is happening in 1 Corinthians 10.

Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils. – 1 Corinthians 10:21

While the Corinthians could partake in a pagan ceremony during the week and in the Lord’s supper on Sunday, he states plainly here that they could not partake of both tables.

When Paul uses the title “Lord’s Table” to describe the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, he introduces an idea that Christians must remember as they partake. He contrasts the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils – the Lord’s Table and the table of devils. To be noticed here is that there are only two cups and tables. Also recognize that we are drinking from one of those cups and eating at one of those tables. There is no such thing as not drinking or partaking. Everyone drinks and partakes of one or the other. In a parallel idea, we cannot serve God and mammon, God and Baal; and in communion, we cannot drink of the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. We are loyal to one or the other. Christ is not in concord with Belial; there is no agreement between the Temple of the Lord and the temple of idols; there is no fellowship between light and darkness; and there is no partaking of the Lord’s Table and the table of devils.

There is a youth chorus that states, “I want to be more than a Sunday-go-to-meetin’ Christian.” When we approach the Lord’s Table, we are reminded that we demonstrate our loyalty to the Lord at His Table. We cannot serve Satan all week and eat at the Lord’s Table on Sunday. Sure, we can put the elements in our mouth, but God is not fooled – and neither is he mocked. When we partake unworthily, we ask for the judgment of God on our lives – a judgment that was laid on the Corinthian church members physically. We cannot compartmentalize our lives. All of our life is present with us at the Lord’s Table.

The Lord’s Supper is not an island of worship experience that is isolated from the rest of life. It is a sort of “call to arms,” and there is no side called neutral. You are either at His Table or at the Devil’s. If you are not loyal to Him all week, don’t try to eat at His Table on Sunday.

The Lord’s Table is His supper celebrated with thanksgiving in communion with other believers because of our fellowship in Christ. We show loyalty to the Lord as we remember His broken body and shed blood, which washes away our sin.

Bread to the Eater 

Bread has very little value, except to be eaten. Obvious as that is, it is also true. Bread does not make nice decoration at the table. Bread is not aesthetic. It is useful.

That being said, bread adds something to a table that flowers simply can’t. To this author, nothing dresses a table better than warm, fresh bed. Bread offers itself as one of those simple pleasures, extraordinarily ordinary, stunningly plain.

Bread is for eating. The good cook places the bread on the table last. It can cool on the plate. And no need for half-melted butter. Let the bread do the melting. Serve the butter cold. Cut off thick slabs of it and watch it soak into the bread. The first slice won’t survive long. Usually, a second slice is needed before finishing that first plate-full. The main course is for health. The bread, sheer pleasure.

Eating bread is a pleasure. When you have prepared it, it sits, warm and inviting, wanting to be eaten. After all, what other purpose does bread have? It exists to be eaten. You oblige. You pick up the bread and carry it to the mouth. In anticipation, you salivate. You open your mouth to receive the bread. Your teeth grab hold of that first savory bite. Your mouth receives the bread. It chews. The mouth chews until the bread can be swallowed. And all the while, your tongue soaks up the taste. The mouth tastes and sees that the bread is good.

When the mouth finishes with that bite, the tongue, teeth, and esophagus begin the work of swallowing. If you did not swallow, you did not eat. To chew the food and spit it out before swallowing cannot be called eating. The man who chews without swallowing, who spits out the bread before it can be ingested, sins against the bread. He consumes upon his lusts. He didn’t really want the bread. He only wanted the taste. He didn’t want it in him. Maybe he was afraid it would make him fat. Maybe he was afraid it would become him. Maybe he was afraid he would become it. He wanted the pleasure without any commitment. He would not be married, only gratified. Bread is not for tasting. Bread is for eating.

The eater chews and swallows. When he swallows, the eating is complete. He has ingested the bread. He tastes and sees that it is good. Now, he believes it to be health to his naval, marrow to his bones. Man is dust. And unto dust shall we return. But in between, man becomes what he eats. Bread, when ingested, is digested. Miraculously, the body breaks down the bread and distributes it throughout the body. That bread becomes the body, and the body becomes that bread. I in it, and it in me, that we may be one. I become that bread, and that bread becomes me.

The Lord invites me to His banqueting table, and his banner over me is love. He has bread at that table. Bread and a cup. At the Lord’s Table, I take that bread, broken for me. Christ says, take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

I take that bread. By faith I open my mouth. I place the bread inside. I close my mouth. I chew. I swallow. I do not spit it out. I want it in me. That is faith. Faith is taking, tasting, chewing, swallowing. I hunger for bread. Extraordinary ordinariness. Stunning plainness. It dresses the table like nothing else. I ingest it. I digest it. I am fed. I am full. The bread becomes me.