Experience TRUTH - #36

The bread and the wine, the body and the blood of Jesus, the Upper Room, the most famous, powerful meal ever instituted by God, it's going on today. And you know when it will culminate? This culminated, by the way, the Lord's Supper, friends.

Welcome to Experience Truth. The Lord's Supper culminated the Passover Feast. The Jews celebrated this annually for years, centuries, since their exodus from Egypt. And now, in one moment, we have the last Passover where Jesus Christ came to fulfill it. And then one day, we'll have a marriage supper of the Lamb. We'll have another feast in heaven. We're going to be feasting in heaven. It's going to be unbelievable.

It's interesting, Robbie Dilmore's with me, we're going to get into these questions, we're going to get into the Scripture, we're in Luke 22, 14-23. Robbie, this is rich, but how often do we celebrate stuff over a meal? Think about it. If you're having your anniversary, if you're having your birthday, I'm taking you to lunch. It's going to be a good one, right? If you're having a wedding, can you imagine a wedding with no cake? No sirloin, no carving station, everyone cooks the best stuff up. Whether it's homemade or whether you cater it, but can you imagine all of that without it? So this is the greatest celebration feast ever given by God, the Lord's Supper.

And we're knee-deep in it. You'll read this passage, and then we're going to jump into the bread and into the blood, and then we're going to try to get through these questions as we look at Luke 22 and the Lord's Supper. So when the hour had come, he sat down and the twelve apostles with him, and then he said to them, With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Then he took the cup and gave thanks and said, Take this and divide it amongst yourselves.

For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it. And he gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. Likewise, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you. But behold, the hand of my betrayer is with me on the table, and truly the Son of Man goes on as it has been determined. But woe to the man whom he has betrayed!

Then they began to question among themselves which of them it was who would do this thing. Robbie, I just love this question, and we're going to try to go through these a lot quicker, but jump right into that one one more time, because this is so rich. So what four things did Jesus do to the bread in verse 19, and how did he experience these things? How do we? Wow.

So Robbie, I wrote a poem about this, by the way, and I'm not going to share that with you on this program. I promise I'll do it another time, but there's four things he did to it. The first thing he did is he took it. And then the second thing he did is he gave thanks, or he blessed it. Now, that's where we get the word Eucharist. The word in the Greek for give thanks is eucharist. That's the word. Eucharistic. And it literally means thanksgiving. So when you don't get thrown off by that, if you go to church and they call their Lord's Supper the Eucharist, you go, Whoa, that's a fancy name. You lost me.

Well, they didn't lose you. It just means thanksgiving. It's a powerful word of thanks. So Jesus took it, he gave thanks for it, and then he broke it.

So think about that. Those hands that had never been broken yet, that didn't have the nails in them, broke that bread, which symbolizes his body being broken. And then he shared it.

He distributed it. Now, I don't want to over-spiritualize a text. You want to be very careful about taking a text of Scripture and over-spiritualizing it. But isn't it fascinating that the very next day on Good Friday, this is the night before his betrayal, Jesus Christ would be taken. Jesus Christ, instead of being blessed, would be cursed. Jesus Christ would be broken. And then Jesus Christ, his sacrifice, his salvation, his body, his gift would be shared. The gift would be poured out.

Isn't that interesting? Just like the bread was distributed. So he says, this is my body. Now, this is a metaphor. Some folks take this to be the literal body and blood of Christ, which is impossible. And you say, well, it's a miracle. Well, no, it's not, because the Scripture itself clarifies this.

It says it's broken for you. So he's talking about, and the Scripture speaks like this. It's called hyperbole. Jesus said, if your right hand avenges you, cut it off. Well, the disciples didn't walk around without arms. He was saying, treat sin radically. Here he's saying, my body is going to be broken for you. I'm going to be poured off you.

I'm going to die for you. So you're not actually eating my body. They didn't grab a piece of his bicep and rip it off and eat it, or a finger.

Don't even go there, okay? They weren't really drinking his blood. But it's a deep, powerful symbolism. Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, he was broken.

In his passion, he would endure the severest torture. Those two words, Robbie, for you. Everyone say those words wherever you are.

For you. That is the statement of the Gospel. 1 Corinthians 15, how that Christ died for our sins. For our sins, according to Scripture. He died for you. His body was broken for you. So it's a great statement. Those two words brilliantly state and summarize the substitutionary atonement. Christ died for me. He died in my place. So that's what the picture of the bread is. And it's cool.

Look at the other application. He takes my life. He blesses my life. He breaks me. And what does he do? He shares me. Through me, he touches the whole world.

That's cool. That's a picture of every believer. It's not the only time he did it, by the way. In the Lord's Supper, it's the only time. When the little fellow came to him with the loaves and the fishes, what did it say he did? It said he took it, he blessed it, he broke it, he distributed it. Isn't that cool? What did he do in the road to Emmaus after these guys got there? They said, stay and eat with us. He took it, he blessed it, he broke it, he gave it. I'll give you a cool one that maybe you never thought of.

It blows my mind. Elijah came before Elisha, or however you want to say those two. Yeah, Elisha, yeah. And of course, John the Baptist came before Jesus. Well, when Elisha met Elisha, which means, by the way, it's the same word, Yeshua, at the end of Elisha. So you've got Elijah, John the Baptist, Elisha, sort of a Jesus picture. When he meets him, what's he doing? He's plowing with how many oxen?

Twelve. And what does Elisha do? He cuts up those twelve, and he blesses them. And then he shares them with all the people. And when you think about how many times we've feasted on Peter, how many times have you feasted on Paul?

The Word of God, right? We feast on each other. Like newborn babes desire a meal of work. But I've never eaten them for your bicep. Too graphic, too much, too much.

TMI, TMI. But you think about it, Jesus is called the bread of life, he's called the living water, right? Peter says newborn babes desire pure milk of the Word. So we talk about, you know, the author of Hebrews in chapter 5 says, quit living on milk, you need to get some meat in you, you know?

And so, powerful, great Robbie. So this really is interesting, and then you have the significance of the blood. But these two words Jesus said, this is a command, this isn't an option. He says, do this. He says, do this in remembrance of me. He's the focus of it. You are remembering and focusing on him and who he is and what he did. The central point of the universe, the central point of my life, the key narrative of our existence is who Jesus Christ is and what Jesus Christ accomplished. You get your next conversation with anybody on that topic, it will be a meaningful conversation, because it's the only meaningful thing there is, who he is. And he brings meaning in everything we are. So he says, do this in remembrance of me. He's the central person, he's the one giving this feast, he's the star. You know, in my own life, too, seriously, every single morning, I do it.

I have my little bread, I have my cup. Okay, and the reason is because when you are in communion with Jesus, if you're truly in communion with Jesus and you're truly eating his flesh and drinking his blood, then you walk into your day, from my perspective, I walk into my day under the blood, and it really gives me a sense of, like, where are your accusers, Robbie? If you're hanging out with Jesus, there aren't any. Yeah, so it's something you do that brings you into alignment with what his will and his plan is.

Now, this is fascinating. Just as the Jews ate and killed a lamb to remember their excess from slavery, which is what they exactly did when the unblemished lamb was slain and its blood covered their doorposts so the firstborn son could be spared, so the spotless lamb and only begotten of God, Jesus Christ, he was not spared. He could have called 10,000 angels, God didn't stay his execution on that cross. But his blood sets us free from the bondage of sin and the bondage of death, and it sets us into alignment with and into communion with God. But it happened at that cross, and what the Lord's Supper does is it brings back into our mind, full and center, who we are in him. It doesn't change our state, it doesn't wash us, we're not saved all over again, like some people say, if I die before I get to Mass, I'm gone.

No. It doesn't change any of that. But what it does is it reminds us that we've been bought, that we've been changed, we've been saved, and that we've been brought in a relationship with God. So then you've got the new covenant, you've got the blood, the cup, which is shed for you. So Hebrews 9.22, without the shedding of blood there's no remission of sin. The Jews, by the way, were forbidden by God, by the law of Moses, to drink blood. So how are these Jews, listening to Jesus talk, processing this when he says, this is my blood? How do you think this is what's rolling through their mind? When he says, drink this, they're like, wait a second, is he going too far? Has the Master lost his marbles?

Well, no. In the same way the blood of the Lamb spared Israel's firstborn from God's wrath, so the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all of our unrighteousness. I want to close with these several very important points about the bread and the cup.

There are two important points. Number one, it's established by Jesus Christ himself as a sacrament or an ordinance, just like the baptism. It's a powerful reflection of the new covenant. To be observed in the church, by the church, by his church, his living organism on this earth, is to be observed regularly and properly. The early church calmly broke bread together and celebrated the Lord's Supper, but they also got in trouble in 1 Corinthians when they abused this particular reason. They were focused more on the food and the drink than they were on the Savior for whom it stood for. It's not a funeral. It is a reflection and celebration of who Jesus is, what he's done for us.

He's the main attraction. He is at the table with us in the form of the Holy Spirit. It also has a futuristic, eschatological piece to it. That means doctrine of end times, because we're to do it in anticipation of his return. In the great feast, we'll all join with him in heaven.

It's very serious. There's all kinds of false views of this thing. The Lord's Supper does not save you like baptism. It powerfully and publicly points to, remembers, and celebrates the powerful, complete work of Jesus. Jesus Christ saves you.

Jesus Christ, celebrate this feast because you're celebrating me and what I've done for you and how it's broken for you. A lot of folks chase rabbits. They get stuck. They get lost. They get sidetracked. 1 Corinthians 11, 23-26, the Apostle Paul gives us great instruction on this. He goes back to this night. Interesting.

What a great deal for him. A Pharisee himself trained in the Jewish tradition to be one of the key leaders in the early church to incorporate this. A lot going on here, even at the most sacred of tables, with all this going on, you've got a traitor in the room.

At the end of the passage, Jesus says, even though the hand of the betrayer is with me on the table, feasting in an intimate moment with Jesus, he's pouring his heart out, he's incorporating this powerful feast that we celebrate to this day, and the betrayer is right there partaking in eating. Of course, all the disciples said, Is it I? Is it I?

Is it I? You know, that resounding question. Then they began to question themselves, which of them would do this thing. So ask us these final questions.

We're really out of time. So how often do we forget what Jesus did for us? Why should the Lord's Supper and Communion be a priority in my life and in my church? How does this prepare me to look for his great return? So we'll let those questions linger out there, but be a part of a church that really does celebrate this, and get it right biblically. Study it for yourself, and feel free to share this Word of God. Please share it with someone else. Experienced Truth, back next time right here.