The Lords Supper, from the beginning..
The Lords Supper from the beginning.
If I make anyone feel uncomfortable today, I am sorry that you are uncomfortable, but I am not going to apologize for the Word.
At 6AM on Saturday October 2nd, 1529 over fifty theologians and laymen gathered in Marburg, Germany.
This early morning event was the beginning of a very long session,
a very long meeting.
This meeting was the beginning of the profound difference that continues to divide the protestant church regarding the Lords Supper.
This meeting in Marburg focused on the proper interpretation of the Words Jesus used to institute the Lords Supper.
One group was wrong, but which one?
The trouble is, that this historic meeting continues to this day, to create the dividing line
between those who let the unreasonable Words of Jesus mean what they say,
and those who make sense of the Words of Jesus by inserting very reasonable conclusions.
I am not making this up in by any stretch,
Ulrich Zwingli took the stance that the literal understanding of Jesus’ Words did not make sense.
It was not reasonable,
Therefore, at this meeting that took place 494 years ago tomorrow,
Ulrich Zwingli argued for the Symbolic interpretation of Jesus’ Words.
Others stood their ground, and to this day, say His Words used in His covenant are to be taken literally.
I will confess first,
that I am on the side of the literal.
Why?
Let’s get into it.
Today as always, I will present you with the facts and let you decide.
I will not be giving you the same verses and arguments that you have heard 100 times by now,
but I will let the scriptures build the foundation for the only possible Biblical conclusion you can make in faith.
What I want to do is talk about the Lord’s Supper,
not from a New Testament perspective
but from an Old Testament perspective.
Don’t worry, we’ll get to the New Testament,
but our main concentration will be on building a foundation
on all the various meals and stories that provide us with what you might call
the Old Testament background of the Lord’s Supper
because if we don’t look at the Lord’s Supper from the perspective of the entire Bible,
everything from the Tree of Life, to mana, the peace offerings,
to the bread of the presence, to Passover,
then we will miss the full and rich importance of exactly what is happening in this particular Passover meal.
So with that introduction, let’s go to the very beginning,
So we began in Genesis chapter 2 with what’s called The Tree of Life
In Genesis 2:8-9
8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
this tree of life was designed by God so that it’s fruit would give life itself to Adam and Eve
so we see already in the second chapter of the Bible that when and where
God wants to give life to his people
he puts that life in something they eat
so this food, this fruit from this tree would have been the way in which God continually enlivens his people
by consumption of that tree of life they lived
This is very important because this lays the foundation for how God continues to bless his people with life
He’s going to give them life in the very food that they eat
What he did for Adam and Eve as you will see,
He’s also going to do for Israel
And what he did for Israel he’s going to continue to do for the church today.
Did you know the tree of life is not just found in Genesis chapter
2?
It also comes up in a couple of other very important chapters in both the old and the New Testament
So Let’s look at Ezekiel chapter 47
Ezekiel has a vision of a temple. It’s an end time temple that God is going to build
And he sees the following, amazing sight
There’s a river that begins as just a trickle of water from the side of the temple
and the farther it goes toward the Dead Sea the deeper and the wider it becomes
Then it eventually it goes into the Dead Sea and it makes the salty sea fresh!
It takes the salt away, a miracle in itself,
but what’s even more amazing is that along the banks of this river grow trees
and it says that these trees produce fruit, not just once a year
not just a couple of months, but every month of the year and their leaves are for healing.
then if you jump ahead to the very last chapter of the Bible
John picks up on this very same image from the Book of Ezekiel
and he reveals a little bit more
John sees this vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven and then
He too sees a river that flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb because they are the temple in this city
and this river it says has trees that are growing along its banks just like in Ezekiel
except John identifies these trees explicitly as The Tree-of-Life
and he says they bear twelve kinds of fruit, and their leaves are for the healing of the nation’s
Why is this important?
Because this is the vision of what God is going to do for us in the resurrection
so from beginning to end God is blessing his people with food and life and healing
And all this is in connection with the Tree of Life
Can you begin to see that from Genesis to Revelation
He gives life to his people by the means what they eat
and not just physical life but supernatural life
the life given by God is placed in this food
so that in it we receive what God desires us to have
this union and fellowship and communion with Him
God, who is the giver of life itself
There’s much more.
Keeping in mind what is happening in Ezekiel and Revelation
And then what happens to the Israelites after they leave the land of Egypt and stop for a long while at Mount Sinai
At Mount Sinai there’s a couple of very important and revealing events that happen to Israel
so for us to understand what is given to us in the Lord’s Supper
This connects what’s called the “blood of the Covenant”
In Exodus 24:6-8
There was a ceremony that took place at Mount Sinai.
Moses has some sacrifices offered and they collect the blood in basins
and it tells us he threw half of the blood against the altar and then he took the book of the Covenant
and he read it in front of the people
and the people said all that the Lord has spoken,
we will do and we will be obedient
and then what did Moses do?
Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said
“behold the blood of the Covenant that the Lord has made
with you in accordance with all these words
This is a very unusual event
In fact nothing like it is repeated anywhere else in the Old Testament
The blood was not thrown on the people at any of the ceremonies,
except in this covenant
This blood is actually thrown upon the people of Israel
the blood of the Covenant is thrown physically and directly upon them
And the reason for this is important is because that exact phrase
“the blood of the Covenant”
is the exact wording that Jesus later uses
when he Institute’s the Lords supper in the upper room on the night in which he is betrayed
The Jews of the time memorized all of the scriptures,
So clearly anyone who knew the scriptures at that time
And heard
“the blood of the Covenant”
would immediately go back to what happened at Mount Sinai
so to hear Jesus say this is
“the blood of the Covenant” ……..and to hear Moses say
“this is the blood of the Covenant”
Joining those two together is how we are going to understand exactly what God is doing when he
“in and through Christ” Institute’s the supper for us
But with the Biblical meaning regarding the blood
There’s something else we have to understand
and that is with regard to the blood itself
What you might call the theology of blood in the Old Testament
Next lets go to Leviticus 17
it’s hard to emphasize enough how significant it is that
we understand exactly what God does with blood
in both the old and new Testament
Leviticus 17 says that if any one of the Israelites eat any blood
I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut
them off from among his people
and then this important verse
“for the life of the flesh is in the blood”
and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls
for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life
The atonement is the work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation.
so life here is not understood to be some kind of thought or idea, or symbolism,
but the life is in the blood itself and it says that this blood is God’s gift
This life-giving blood is God’s gift
and he places it upon the altar so that through this life-giving blood on the altar
God might give life to his people
and they’re not to consume it,
instead they are to place it upon the altar
now keep that in mind
because once we get to the institution the Supper
we’re going to see just how radically Jesus is going to change things for the New and better covenant.
When Jesus told his disciples to take the cup and to drink of it.
now the remember the Life in the blood of the Covenant sprinkled upon the people there at the foot of Mount Sinai
but there was something else going on at Sinai that’s really amazing
A meal that takes place there
Right after Moses read the book of the Covenant and sprinkled the people with the blood,
Moses and Aaron and the elders went up onto Mount Sinai
and it says that there they saw the God of Israel
We read that there was under his feet like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness
and it says that God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel
But they beheld God, and they ate and drank
Try and picture that
All of these Israelites are gathered together on Mount Sinai and
they behold God
The very God if Israel is the host of this particular meal
they come into his presence and while they see Him they don’t just
gaze and wonder or fall on their faces in worship
what do they do?
They eat and they drink they share a meal in the very presence of God himself
So God desires his people to see him
God desires his people to be close to him
and when this happens, He wants to feed them.
He wants to give them drink.
He wants to be the host of their meal at the very place
where that Covenant was established.
We have the life in the blood, we have the Tree of Life
we have this meal on Mount Sinai and what else do we have?
The bread of the Presence
In the book of Exodus and, also in other places in the
First five Books of the Bible,
we find what is called, the “Bread of the presence”
literally in Hebrew it’s the bread of the face
It’s the bread of the face because in Hebrew
when you wanted to say you were in someone’s presence you were
“in their face”
looking directly at them or they’re looking directly at you
In the Blessing in Numbers 6:24-25 we see that
The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
It’s called the bread of the face, or the bread of the presence because this bread was placed on a small table
That table was located in the holy place in the tabernacle
and later in the temple
Twelve loaves of unleavened bread were placed on this table and
then every Sabbath day the priests would eat these
and then they would be replaced by twelve more
This bread and the language of Leviticus is called most
holy
you had holy things and you had most holy things
and the most holy things were not just holy but they were actually able to communicate holiness
to those who touched them because holiness was a real thing
you could touch it, and in the case of this bread you could eat it
and so this bread, because it was in the very face of God
who was just in the next room in the
Holy of Holies
was called the bread of the presence
So a true real presence of God was in this bread
and the priest by eating it, was consuming holiness
they were sanctified by the means of the eating of this holy bread
And this was an ongoing way that God was giving Himself
as holiness, as sanctification,
As blessing to those who served at His altar
So we have that particular bread associated with the presence of God
That bread that’s consumed
but we also have what are called the peace offerings
Peace offerings were different from every other offering in in the Old Testament
They had scent offerings, and guilt offerings and other offerings but these peace offerings were different in this way
you would bring an animal to the tabernacle and there would be three parties involved here
the Lord would be the host of the meal
He was the one who established this sacrificial ceremony
This was at His altar, or His table, in his house of worship.
and the priest and the worshiper would sacrifice the animal
the priest would take the blood and the fat
and place it upon the altar as the gift to God as the sacrifice itself,
and then the priest would get part of the animal as his payment
this was the one of the ways the priests were taken care of
they got parts of certain sacrifices
but guess what happened to the rest the animal?
it went back to the worshiper.
Yes, most of the animal went back to the Israelite who brought it
after it was sacrificed
after its blood was shed
and then what did he do with it?
he took it home to his family and they had a meal
they would invite others and they would share this in this sacred communal meal
so they consumed the very price of their forgiveness
they took into their bodies in this meal the very one who had given its life for their behalf
the blood was placed in the altar and then the food from the animal was taken into them
so they consumed in a very real way, this sacrifice that had been offered for their behalf
These were called the peace offerings of the Old Testament –
The Greek Word Koinonia
Now Paul in 1 Corinthians makes reference to
this Koinonia, about eating from the altar
if you look in (1 Corinthians 10)
there’s annother very important text for understanding the connection between in the Old Testament altar and the New Testament altar
The Altar at which we receive the Lord’s Supper
This is (1Corinthians 10:16-18)
16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a “Koinonia” participation in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
Take note of what Paul says next
18 Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices the same word “Koinonia” participants in the altar?
Paul is explaining the connection
He explained first about the Koinonia
“Koinonia” is a Greek word that means a participation in something
a United participation in something
and this particular word occurs three different times in these passages
And these passages directly join our understanding of the New Testament altar with the Old Testament altar
So Paul writes
“the blessing that we bless is it not a Koinonia – a united participation in the blood of Christ”
“the bread that we break is it not a Koinonia – a united participation in the body of Christ”
because there’s one bread, we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread
And then he shifts to the Old Testament
he says consider the people of Israel
are not those who eat the sacrifices Koinonia – United participants in the altar
So Paul draws a direct link between those who were engaging in
Koinonia at the Old Testament altar
and those who are engaging and Koinonia at the New Testament altar
so they ate the sacrifices offered for them
and what do we consume?
well, we consume the body and the blood of Christ we have a Koinonia, United participation in the body we have a Koinonia in the cup we have
participation and this participation is directly connected to what the Israelites had in the peace offerings.
I want to share this Communion Hymn that was sung way back in the 300’s
It is from the book of the teaching of the 12 Apostles to the Nations.
Called the Didache
“This is His blood, who took flesh from the virgin, Jesus Christ.
This is His blood, who was born of the God-bearing one. Jesus Christ,
This is His blood, who was seen by men of whom demons fled, Jesus Christ
This is His blood, who offered Himself a sacrifice for our sins, Jesus Christ……..
So we have the sacrifices, but from the Old Testament we also have a couple of other significant stories
And these may be well known to us
First the story of the giving of the manna that God gave to the people of Israel during 40 years of wandering in the wilderness
and then once they reach the Holy Land the manna stopped being
given
Manna is this this mysterious bread that comes down out of heaven in
order to feed the Israelites.
It’s their daily bread during the 40 years that they were in the wilderness
Exodus 16 says that when the dew had evaporated there it was on the face of the desert.
they didn’t know what it was so Moses told them this is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat
It’s very important to understand this
Understanding the manna as God’s gift to the Israelites gives the background we need
for one of the well-known sermons that Jesus preaches and is recorded in John 6
Jesus is comparing Himself to the manna that came down out of heaven and beginning of verse 48 Jesus says
“I am the bread of life.
Your father’s ate the manna in the wilderness and they died
this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die
I am the Living bread that came down from heaven.
If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever
and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
And then a few verses later Jesus continues
“truly truly I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of
Man
and drink his blood
you have no life in you,
whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day
for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him
Remember what Abides means?
The Greek word for “abide” means “continue” or “remain”.
Again (John 6:56) for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him
Now this was such a radical and scandalous teaching to the people that day, that many of the people who had been following Jesus turned around and walked away
because Jesus was making what to them seemed like an unreasonable claim
and of course it has to strike us also as one of those statements that you have to stop and think about just like many that walked away did, and just like Ulrich Zwingli did.
We must reflect upon exactly what Jesus is communicating because he is saying that he is giving not manna but Himself
He’s giving his flesh to eat and his blood to drink
And in this we receive life
And that brings us all the way back to Genesis chapter 2 doesn’t it?
There we have the Tree of Life
So God placed His gift of life in that fruit that Adam and Eve were to eat and
Jesus is saying now that He is the one in whom the life of God abides
and His flesh is true food and his blood is true drink
So he’s not just manna that people can eat and then die
For physical life only
but instead consuming him is to consume the very life of God Himself
to drink his blood is to drink the very life of God Himself “in Christ”
so Jesus is telling us I am the new and the better manna
and this manna is actually my body and this manna is my blood given to you that you might have eternal life.
Now lastly, the story that is most commonly connected to
the Lord’s Supper
That is the Passover
back in Exodus chapter 12 is where you have the tenth and final plague against the Egyptians
When God is finally going to bring his people Israel out of slavery in Egypt
this plague if you will recall is the death of all the firstborn.
but on that night the Israelites are protected in a couple of different ways
God says that on the 10th of the month he wants them to choose a lamb and then to keep that lamb into the fourteenth day of the month
And it must be an unblemished lamb one year old
and then on the 14th of twilight they had to sacrifice that lamb and
then to do two things with it
they must take the blood and paint the
doorways, or the doorpost of their homes and the lintel
and then they cook the lamb,
take that food inside and that night they are to consume that lamb with
the meal
Remember this is like that meal in the peace offerings again,
That meal in which they are consuming the very one who’s going to protect them with it’s blood.
the blood is on the outside doorpost protecting them and on the inside they take the lamb who was sacrificed for them
that lamb is now being consumed by them
so we see the same theme coming up again and again,
they consumed the very lamb who’s life was sacrificed for them
they consumed the very one whose blood now protects them
they take into their very bodies the sacrifice that was given on their behalf
Passover of course is where Jesus was instituting His supper
He had gathered his disciples in the upper room
and it was in the very context of this Passover meal that he took bread
and after the blessing he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said take eat this is my body
and then he took the cup and when he had given thanks he gave it to them saying
drink of it all of you for this is My “blood of the Covenant”
again that’s that language from back in exodus 24:8 right?
this is my blood of the Covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins
I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day
when I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom
So Jesus
in a very midst of a Passover meal that is full of this Old Testament theology of redemption
and sacrifice, and eating and drinking and the gift of life
It’s in the very context of that meal
on the very night in which He’s betrayed,
and the very day before He was going to give his life and shed his
blood
have his body pierced upon the cross
and have blood and water pour out of His side.
It is at that time, that He Institute’s his supper and he gives it to his church’
So that we can continue to receive him
So that we can eat his body which is the new manna
which is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world
which is the fruit from the new Tree of Life which is the true peace offering
all of this together is what is given to us in the body of Christ
he who once sacrificed himself on the cross and now gives us the fruit of that sacrifice
that one-time sacrifice is consumed in an ongoing way by the church so that we might
physically take into ourselves the very life of God
So this is nothing new
This is the same pattern that God has given to us from creation
And all the way through the biblical story now finishing in this holy supper
Now the blood is the most amazing part of this
because as we saw in Leviticus 17 there is no consumption of the blood in the Old Testament
So we can only wonder what look must have been on the faces of the disciples when Jesus said that he wanted them to
drink his blood
but nonetheless, that’s exactly what Jesus says, because now this is a new covenant
“in Christ”
things have changed and this blood, this wine is the blood of Christ which is poured out for them
so drink of it for the forgiveness of your sins
for life
and for salvation
and in both the eating and in the drinking we take life into ourselves
the very life of God
redemption
we take into ourselves forgiveness
we take into ourselves everything that God wants us to have as
His church
so if you look at all these Old Testament stories
and then you finally look at the Lord’s Supper you can see all through the Old Testament
things that prepare us to truly understand and appreciate what God is
giving to us in his supper
everything from the tree of life
to the Covenant blood and meal at Mount Sinai
to the bread of the presence in the peace offerings
the manna
the Passover
all of these together form the background for us to understand what is happening
what God is doing for us in the Lord’s Supper.
Ver briefly on the wine/grapejuice discussion.
Again, I will give you the facts because that is why I am standing here.
I don’t know what makes people so passionate about this subject, but for me, I am just doing what the earliest Christians were doing.
For over 1800 years the practice was bread and wine, but then this controversy began well After the time of the reformation.
We know the earliest Christians in Corinth were using wine because Paul chastised them for some of them getting drunk on wine.
(1 Corinthians 11:18-21)
18 For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, 19 for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. 20 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. 21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.
The historical origin of the modern practice of substituting grape juice for wine in the Lord’s Supper is not found in Scripture
or the teaching of the church for the first 1800 plus years.
Even the churches for 300 tears after the reformation held that both the Bible and Christian tradition taught that alcohol is a gift from God that makes life more joyous, but that over-indulgence leading to drunkenness is sinful
So this practice instead came out of the 19th century Temperance movement.
Yes, in the early 1800s the abuse of alcohol was widespread in the United States (as it was before that, and as it has been since).
In 1785, Dr. Benjamin Rush had published the first widely distributed article on the effects of alcohol entitled,
“An Inquiry into the Effect of Ardent Spirits.”
It is believed that this publication was a primary cause of the “temperance” movement that spread across the country.
The Methodist churches were the first to begin a protest of the abuse of alcohol from a “Christian” angle.
Later, the revivals of the Second Great Awakening throughout the 1900’s further fueled the growing protest that eventually evolved into this “temperance” movement.
American “protestant” Christians’ beliefs changed during the early 19th century in that Second Great Awakening period.
Out of a bunch of enthusiastic religious revivals, the Second Great Awakening also began to promote enthusiastic social reform movements, especially abolitionism and temperance.
This movement also produced the Seventh Day Adventist’s, the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, and later the Oneness Pentecostal movement.
The big motivator of the movement was its teaching that alcohol itself was evil,
and that any use of alcohol was sinful.
While using the word “temperance,” which means moderation, or self restraint,
it had as its ultimate social goal of prohibition of alcoholic beverages.
This was one of the fundamental flaws of the movement.
All Christians should support temperance or moderation with respect to the use of alcohol.
The Temperance movement, however, confused temperance with abstinence and prohibition.
The evils associated with widespread drunkenness still today real
but we should understand that the Christian answer to abuse is not disuse, but in this context, “care”.
The “temperance” movement never made this distinction.
So of course, the teaching that alcohol was in itself evil had an impact on the practice of the Lord’s Supper.
The logic worked its way back to the institution of this sacrament.
If the use of alcohol is inherently sinful,
and if Jesus never sinned, then Jesus could not have used an alcoholic beverage such as wine in the Lord’s Supper.
Of course we can recognize this as circular reasoning,
because then if Alcohol was not inherently evil, then Jesus using it and turning water into it at the wedding at Cana, was not a sin.
But they reasoned that He must have used some other beverage, and then it was further reasoned……….
isn’t grape juice also the “fruit of the vine”?
Churches which had adopted the “temperance gospel”
followed this reasoning, and for social change and for the first time, around 1864, the sacrament was changed.
The prohibition of alcoholic beverages was a political cause that united most Protestants.
It was supported both by modernist liberals who saw it as one way of adopting their social gospel,
And by conservative Christians who saw it as one step back towards the “good old days” or one step forward toward the Kingdom of God.
Not long after, the temperance and prohibitionist movement failed miserably.
Like every other movement which places the responsibility for sin on some external “thing,” or Law, it did not get rid of the evil and sin in the heart of man.
The only thing the temperance movement succeeded at
was permanently removing the biblical sacrament of the Lord’s Supper from a large number of Protestant churches in the United States.
Though it is not for me to judge or decide,
the Christians who have replaced wine with grape juice should at least be aware
that the origins of this practice are not found in the Bible or in the practice of the earliest Apostolic church.
They are found in a 19th century American moral/political movement that brought the church along with it.
We hate traditions, especially of the Roman Catholic church,
But what made our modern traditions? The scriptures alone? or the political social agenda’s of the 1800’s.
You decide….
Beginning in Eden, God was already preparing us for the Lord’s Supper.
All through the Old Testament–in the tree of life, manna, peace offerings, bread of the presence, the Passover, and more—
He was showing us that he gives life, salvation, forgiveness, holiness, and hope in His chosen food and drink.
Amen
