The church in many ways has forgotten the real significance of a very important command of Jesus. Last week we focused on baptism on our series of sermons about the local church and its task and this week I would like to shift gears to another thing that we may take for granted - The LORD’s TABLE.
From the history of the earliest Christians we know that one of the most important things that they would do would be to come together for the Lord’s Supper. Many earliest Christians were slaves in the Roman Empire and would have to work on Sunday. The Church would meet at dawn on Sunday to take the Lord’s Supper. If the Church was being persecuted they would meet in the catacombs which were the burial tombs under the city of Rome.
Communion was so important that the Deacons in the early Church would take communion to the sick and shut-ins of the 1st century church.
As a matter of fact, this is one of the best historically documented roles of Deacons in the early church that we find outside of the Scriptural record.
Fast forward this to the early 1800’s here in America. A group of ministers grew tired of denominationalism and started what would become the American Restoration Movement. One of the focal points of that movement would be the Lord’s Supper. As a matter of fact we might be shocked to learn how men like Alexander Campbell, David Lipscomb, and Moses Lard felt about the Lord’s Table. Alexander Campbell stated, “In the house of the Lord is always the Table of the Lord” Campbell argued that the first day of the week should be the day always set aside for this celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Campbell believed that the perfect meeting house for the church should have the Table for the celebration of the Supper as the central place of focus of any building. Moses Lard once said that if he had it his way the Lord’s Supper table would extend across the building the entire building and we would stand in reverence as we received the Lord’s Supper. In these next few sermons I want to go back to the Bible and to the backgrounds of the Lord’s Supper and just see what got these guys so excited about celebrating communion. Typically, in the Restoration Movement we have recognized four things about the Supper that many Churches have either distorted or totally thrown away. I would like to propose that if we don’t go back to the Scripture we will develop our own tradition that is counter Biblical and we will loose a part of our distinctiveness. This Biblical view of the Lord’s Table was part that made the Restoration Movement such a breath of fresh air in a very divided and opinionated religious world.
The four elements that have always been recognized since the earliest days of the Church are the following:
Four C’s
Commemoration
Confession
Communion
Covenant
This morning we will take on two of those and that is the idea of Christ establishing His New Covenant. To understand one of the central acts of the Church we must go back to the day it was instituted by Jesus. We must go back to the Scriptural narrative of the Last Supper.
Luke 22: 14 14
When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him. 15 And He said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer;
Jesus ate the Passover meal with His Disciples. Jesus had anticipated this meal. This was not a haphazard time but was thought out and planned by Jesus. This would be a significant milestone in the story of God’s rescue and redemption of man. Jesus ate this Passover in Jerusalem and the Passover was one of three feasts that were to be yearly celebrated in Jerusalem. The other two feasts were the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of Pentecost.
The Passover was a celebration of what God had done for Israel. It was a yearly reminder that he rescued them from slavery. It was a yearly reminder of how the death angel passed over the homes that had the blood of the lamb painted over the door posts. It was a reminder that the first born would be spared because of this blood. At this Passover meal everything would be different. Now the ONLY SON OF GOD would become the true lamb that would save us. This true Lamb of God would give us his blood that God’s wrath would pass over us and cover our sin.
This Passover would be transformed into a New Covenant or a new Plan for mankind. Jesus would have celebrated this Last Supper in the HAGGADAH format for the Passover Service.
Layout of the Passover Service:
Afternoon: Slaughter of the Passover Lamb
Evening: The Meal
Preliminary Course Blessing spoken over the 1st cup of wine, dish of green herbs, bitter herbs and fruit sauce
Serving of meal and mixing of the second cup of wine
Passover Liturgy The telling of the Passover Story Singing of Psalm 113 (the little hallel) The second cup of wine
Main Meal Grace spoken over the bread Meal of roasted lamb, unleavened bread, bitter herbs Grace spoken over third cup of wined (cup of blessing)
Conclusion Singing of Psalms 114-118 (the great Hallel) Grace spoken over the fourth cup of wine
Night: the watch and remembrance
This service would have been the format that Jesus and His Disciples would have followed that night in the upper room.
I. COVENANT
Luke 22: 19-29 19
And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." 20 And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.
This is the only time in the New Testament that Jesus uses the word Covenant and it is significant that he only uses during the institution of the Lord’s Supper. In Luke 22 verse 20 Jesus uses the Greek word ‘Ekkheho’ which means to be “poured out”. In the Greek translation of the OT this same word is used in sacrificial sense but its most important occurrence happens in Exodus 24 when Moses seals the covenant with the blood of bulls. Moses took one bull from each tribe to offer to God to seal the covenant in blood.
Exodus 24: 3-8
Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the LORD and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice and said, " All the words which the LORD has spoken we will do!" 4 Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. Then he arose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 He sent young men of the sons of Israel, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the LORD. 6 Moses took half of the blood and put {it} in basins, and the {other} half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 7 Then he took the book of the covenant and read {it} in the hearing of the people; and they said, " All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!" 8 So Moses took the blood and sprinkled {it} on the people, and said, "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words."
Same word is used in this passage of Moses pouring out the blood on the base of the Altar and the same word is used for the sprinkling of the blood on the people is the word used by Jesus in the Last Supper. God was sealing His covenant with Israel in Exodus 24 but the Israelites knew there was a time coming when God would establish a new covenant with Israel. Jeremiah the Prophet prophesied in Jeremiah 31.
Jeremiah 31: 31- 34 31
" Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. 33 "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, " I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 "They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
When Jesus broke off of the Haggadah script the apostles would have paid close attention. This is a service they had participated in every day of their life once per year for as long as they could remember. When Jesus uttered the phrase ‘the blood of the new covenant in my blood’, their minds surely would have remembered Moses and the Mosaic covenant ratified in Exodus 24 as well as Jeremiah’s promise that a new covenant would have been established. Jesus further describes the nature of this covenant in Matthew’s gospel. In the parallel passage found in Matthew 26, Matthew records one more detail of Jesus words that Luke leaves out.
Matthew 26: 28 28
for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.
The Prophet Jeremiah foretold that this new covenant would bring about the forgiving of iniquity or the forgiveness of sin. Jesus is using this moment at the establishment of His Supper to establish His New Covenant. The significance cannot be lost on us. God is there in the flesh eating with people in His presence and He chooses this moment to establish His New Covenant with mankind. This brings so much more significance to the celebration of the Lord’s Table. It also sheds light on Paul’s teachings on the Lord’s Supper. This idea of covenant as it is connected to the Lord’s Supper makes sense of a passage in I Corinthians 11. Many have struggled to make sense of what Paul is saying but with the idea of covenant in mind it all comes together.
I Corinthians 11: 28-31 28
But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged.
Paul’s warnings fall in line with all of God’s covenants that he makes. When God made covenants in the OT with Israel there would be a listing of blessings as well as curses. In this passage we see this concept of covenant curses for those that come to the table in an unworthy manner. When one comes to the table of the Lord one must remember that we are reaffirming the covenant with Jesus. We are saying Yes to God once more that we desire the blood of Jesus to cover our sins. We are saying yes once again to our need of a Savoir. Most of all, we are saying yes to our host of this Supper Jesus.
CONCLUSION:
At the conclusion of the Passover if the Jews were celebrating the Passover in a town other than Jerusalem they would say, “Next Time in Jerusalem” Thinking about this I cannot think but to remember Jesus promises. Jesus promised that one day we would partake of this meal with Him in the Kingdom – now and not yet. We are in the Kingdom now but one day we will see Him face to face. It will be the great marriage banquet of the Lamb that we will take part in. Could you imagine taking the Supper again with Jesus present at the table? Could you imagine sitting their with our loved ones who have passed on before and catching up on old times in the presence of the Lord where we have nothing to be afraid of?
No comments:
Post a Comment