1 Cor No.22 The Lord's Supper - It's Origin

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, in Egypt this month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are.

You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.

Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire along with bitter herbs and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire, head, legs, and inner parts.

Do not leave any of it till morning. If some is left till morning, you must burn it. This is how you are to eat it, with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand.

Eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn, both men and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.

I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

This is a day you are to commemorate for the generations to come. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord, a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast.

On the first day, remove the yeast from your houses. For whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day, hold a sacred assembly and another one on the seventh day.

Do no work at all on these days except to prepare food for everyone to eat. That is all you may do. Amen.

I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles open at 1 Corinthians in chapter 11. And I read once more from the 23rd verse to the 26th. For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.

The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

On three occasions, I have brought you to this passage in Paul's first letter to this Greek church. And you may remember that the first time I opened it up, I tried to show you how the Lord's table causes the participant to look back to Calvary, to look to the present in himself and his experience of Jesus Christ, and to look forward to a great day that is yet to dawn. Then I opened the scriptures again and tried to show, I trust humbly and lovingly, yet with some degree at any rate of clarity, that in no sense can this passage of scripture or others that deal with or touch upon the Lord's table be thought to underline the Catholic understanding of the mass.

And then last week, I drew your attention particularly from the 27th verse and down towards the end of the chapter to the responsibilities that are involved on the part of all those who will take bread and wine were not to do this in a discourteous fashion or else there are certain physical and spiritual risks that we would engage in by so doing. Now, you might feel that having looked at this passage for three different weeks, that it's rather wearisome of me to bring you back to it again. And yet I make no apology on two counts.

First, because here is teaching on one of the two sacraments of the Church, the first being baptism and the second, as I spelled out before, being the Lord's table, this one being a repetitive sacrament. It's necessary for us to understand it. And then my second reason would be that it's only here in all the epistles of Paul or John or Peter, for that matter, where we have laid down express teaching from scripture about this most holy ordinance, the Lord's table.

So it's good that we pause and we do justice to this aspect of what Paul has to share to the Corinthian Christians some 2,000 years ago and realize that his teaching is up-to-date and meaningful for you and for me. And there's one more reason. And it is this.

I have not yet shown you the historical significance or context out of which the Lord's Supper emerges. One might ask the question, just to start our thinking this morning along the right line, is the Lord's Supper new or is it in some senses old? Is it an innovation or is it an extension of what we find in the Old Testament? Sometimes I have used the analogy, pardon me for employing it again, but I think it's a fair one, that the Old Testament is to the New Testament what a negative is to a fully developed picture. The ledger will tell you that from a negative you can work out certain things about what ultimately in his art he will be able to produce when the negative has gone through the process of being developed and eventually you find the final portrait.

Now in many senses the Old Testament is like the negative. You can see somewhat indistinctly that there's sufficient evidence to work out what is going to come. And the negative is processed, if you like, in the mind of God and by the surfaces of the Spirit and you move into the New Testament and you see it in all its clarity, in all its dimension, in all its color and luster.

And that applies, I believe, to what we refer to now as the Lord's Table. Some of you who are pretty astute in Bible study may have wondered why earlier in this series I paid scant attention to a very interesting passage in the fifth chapter of this epistle. Turn to it now and you will see the reason why I left it on one side at that point in our considerations of Paul's teaching.

There in the seventh verse and onwards the Apostle makes light reference, light I mean in the sense of just in passing, to what he's going to develop in the eleventh chapter. He speaks about the Lord's Table and about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but he does so in a unique way in the New Testament. He tells us first of all to clear out of our lives old yeasts.

By that he means anything that's evil, anything that would embarrass the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he goes on to speak of our Savior and he does so beautifully and pregnantly. He says, For Christ, our Passover Lamb, hath been sacrificed.

Therefore let us keep the festival not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread, without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. What word there do you recognize that you find on many occasions in the Old Testament? Well, no prizes for a correct answer. It's an easy question.

The word is Passover. When do you come across the word Passover in Scripture in the New Testament? Well, not very often. Only once, apart from this in the Epistles, and that's in the Epistles to the Hebrews.

Apart from the Gospels. And in the Gospels you find, particularly in the first three, reference made to the way the Lord Jesus set up the Passover meal that he was going to keep with his disciples at the end of his life, that is, before Calvary. We could look at each of the first three Gospels, but we haven't time.

So let's turn to the 22nd chapter of Luke and take that as our example. While you're finding it, I'll set the scenery up in your mind. Jesus is approaching Jerusalem and he wants his disciples to ensure that a room has been booked, whereby this important feast of the Passover can be celebrated by him and his colleagues.

By now you should be at Luke 22, and I'm reading from verse 7. Then came the day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go and make preparation for us to eat the Passover. Where do you want us to prepare for it? They asked.

He replied, As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters and say to the owner of the house, The teacher asks, Where is the guest room that I may eat the Passover with my disciples? He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparation there.

Our Lord and the disciples arrive at the room, and Jesus tells us in the 15th verse his attitude on that occasion. He says to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.

Now let's stop there, and something must be obvious in your mind at this stage. And it's this. If you are going to fully appreciate, as I'm sure many of you do in any case, what it means to take bread and wine, you've got to have some understanding of the old Jewish feast, the Passover.

Because the Passover in the Old Testament is what the Lord's Supper is in the New Testament. There are certain common denominators. The one springs from the other.

The one is the negative, the other is the copy, with all the color and with all the dimensions of understanding that we now have since the death and mighty resurrection of our Lord Jesus. So I'm arguing this, that the Lord's Supper is not novel. It is not in any sense an innovation.

Rather, it is a translation of one thing into another. And there will be certain common denominators that last as the Lord Jesus lifts it out of the key, if you like, of the Old Testament, using a modern analogy, into a higher and perhaps more beautiful key as you discover it in the New Testament. All right, what was the Passover in the Old Testament era? What did it commemorate? Well, I reckon most of you could give me, again, a fairly accurate answer.

It takes us back to that epoch in the history of the Hebrews when they were released as a slave people from Egypt and they moved into the Promised Land. But it wasn't quite as easy as that, as you know. The Lord had to intervene in a remarkable fashion.

And he caused a plague, a heaven-sent plague, so before the Egyptians and their firstborn were killed by the angel of death. How did the Hebrews escape? They took a lamb and they slaughtered the lamb, a perfect lamb. And the blood of the lamb was applied to the doorposts of the humble dwellings in which they lived.

And the Lord said, when I see the blood, I will pass over you. That very verb giving the title to the subsequent festival that the Hebrews used to commemorate the occasion. The Passover.

And from that time onward, it was intended by almighty God for the Hebrews to commemorate that day. So important was the month, you will recall if you listened to me carefully earlier when I read from Exodus. So important was the occasion that the month of the Passover became the first month in the Jewish calendar.

And the sensitive spiritual view was never to overlook responsibilities of attending to the Passover and going through in the meal all that it commemorated. Now in the New Testament you've already got a common denominator in the Lord's Supper. Jesus has instituted a festival, a feast, which is so important that he says it is to be commemorated throughout all time until the occasion when he returns.

And it became the practice ultimately of the early church to come around the table at least once a week, sometimes more often. Now having said all that, I should have excited your interest to some degree in the Passover meal of the Jews. And I want to spend about five minutes just going through the main essentials of the Passover meal.

You may not be interested in this, so you can switch off for five minutes, then I'll wake you up again. But for me it is absolutely fascinating and gives a lot of color and texture to what we will be doing in a little while as we come around the table. There was in the keeping of the Passover after the escape from Egypt, there was the necessity for Jews to gather together in small companies and for some governor to preside.

Now as I describe the Passover meal to you, from the knowledge you have of the New Testament, find the common denominators between the Lord's Supper and the Passover meal. The first thing I told you was that there is a governor. There is someone who presides.

One thing more that I'll say just by way of introduction is this, that there are four cups of wine, which at some stage in the Passover meal will be consumed. Those four cups approximate to or are reminders of the fourfold blessing that God predicted for the Hebrews as they became his people and as ultimately they moved into the promised land. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.

And it goes on in Exodus chapter 6. I'm sorry, I'm reading from Deuteronomy. It goes on in Exodus chapter 6 to tell us that the blessings are ones of protection. God will look after his people.

They are ones of redemption. God will bring them into the promised land. They are ones of love.

He will constantly love his people. And they are ones of protection and deliverance subsequently. Having paraphrased that, let me give you what the scripture says.

Therefore say to the Israelites, I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. Promise one. I will free you from being slaves to them and will redeem you with an outstretched arm.

And with mighty acts of judgment, I will take you to be my own people and I will be your God. And you will know that I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, Isaac, etc.

Four promises which are brought to mind in the Passover meal as the four cups are drunk. Well here is the president of the feast. And he's got a handful, at least twelve were necessary to make up a Passover company.

He's got a handful of men in front of him. And he takes the cup, which is known as the Kiddush, the cup of commemoration. And he thanks the Lord for his goodness to the people of Israel historically.

And then he will wash his hands three times in a symbolic fashion. After he's done that, he will take some lettuce or maybe some parsley. And he will dip those elements into water which is salted.

The parsley or the lettuce stands for the hyssop weed which was used as a brush to apply the blood to the doorposts of the Hebrew houses as the angel of death passed over. The salt water reminds the Hebrews of the tears that they often shed in Egypt. And also of the deliverance through the Red Sea.

And then having done that, he will take one of the three loaves and he will break it. And he'll divide that bread into even smaller pieces. And ultimately it will go to those who are participating in the feast.

And they would, from that visual aid, remember that when their forefathers were in Egypt, they never had a decent meal. They never had one full loaf for themselves. They never had a full stomach.

And at that particular point in the feast, if it was being held outside of Palestine, then the Jews would say, today we eat here, next year in Jerusalem. Having got to that point in the feast, the president will then engage in proclamation. The proclamation is reminding those who are present of all that God did at the time of the Passover.

He will also, following the instructions of Deuteronomy, speak about God's blessings upon Abraham. And how the nation of Israel was formed centuries ago. And how God involved himself in the life of the patriarchs and eventually liberated them from Egypt.

At that point, the second cup will be used. And wine will be poured into it. And it will be the cup of proclamation.

As they remember all that they have just been reminded of and give thanks to God for it. Now at this point, they're very happy. They're happy because they have remembered that God has been very great to them.

And so they start to sing. They sing from Psalms, known as the Hillel Psalms, from the 113th to the 119th. But at this point, they'll just sing two of the Psalms.

And then, all who are going to participate in the feast will wash their hands. Grace will be said. And they will start to eat bitter herb.

And that will remind them of the bitterness in Egypt that their forefathers endured. And then, and this is very significant, at that point, the president of the feast will direct their attention to a bowl on the table. And in that bowl is paste, known as cherished paste.

It's made of apples and dates and nuts. And it reminds them of the clay that they used when in Egypt to make bricks. In the paste itself, there are sticks of cinnamon, which reminds them of the straw that was necessary also for the making of bricks.

The straw which ultimately was taken from them by Pharaoh, who still demanded that they churn out the same number of bricks. And at that point, the governor of the feast will take some bread, and in it he'll have some herbs. And he'll dip the herbs and the bread in the bowl.

And he will make what's known as a salt. And he will hand the salt to one of the distinguished guests who is participating in the Passover meal with him. When that has been done, the proper meal begins.

The lamb is eaten, and at the conclusion, hands are washed. And then the remaining bread is eaten up, the unleavened bread. Then there's thanksgiving.

And anticipation is made in their prayers of the coming of Elijah, who will be the herald of the Messiah. And finally, or nearly finally, the third cup is filled with wine. And then it is filled again for the last time.

And the final part of the Hallel Psalms are sung, from Psalm 115 onward to Psalm 118. And then, because they're all in a state of intense jubilation, they will sing together the 136th Psalm, one of the most beautiful psalms in the whole of that book. And there are two prayers to be offered up by the president of the feast.

And he will conclude by saying of God, From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. And beside thee we have no king, no redeemer, no savior. Well, there you have a summary of what happened at the Passover meal.

Now, when you come to the New Testament, you find various indications that our Lord Jesus was celebrating this with his disciples. He was concerned, as every celebrant of Passover meal would be, that they were in Jerusalem. So they moved from Bethany right up to Jerusalem.

They had the minimum number of people necessary, twelve. You will recall that it was held in the late evening, the meal. The same night in which Jesus was betrayed, he took bread.

The most unusual time to have a big meal. But that was the significance of the Passover, because the Hebrews left at night. You will discover that the scripture says that the men were reclining on couches in oriental fashion.

So dissimilar from the first Passover, when they ate the meal with a loin skirt, and they were standing up ready to get out of Egypt. So many aspects of the gospel narrative fit into the account of the Passover, as we discover in the Old Testament and in Jewish tradition. And you know how the Lord Jesus takes bread, and he breaks it.

And how he makes a great deal of one of the drinks of wine in particular. And as for proclamation, well he gives the disciples instructions. And he talks in terms of something ultimately that's going to happen.

Not the coming of Elijah, but rather the occasion when he will be back. And he will drink wine again in their presence in the kingdom of his father. And then how does the whole thing conclude? By the singing of hymns, they went out down to the Kidron, and ultimately across into Gethsemane's garden.

Now I've taken time in spelling out the significance of the Old Testament Passover, and showing you how the Passover meal of the Lord Jesus Christ fits into it. But Jesus does something that lifts it a little bit from its original setting. And he moves our attention from the lamb itself that they eat, to the bread that will be broken.

Why does he do that? Because as he realizes this feast will become universal, it will be much easier for folk to have access to a loaf. It will be much more economic and reasonable for the church around the world ultimately to remember his death. Not in the slaying of a lamb or a goat, but in the taking of bread, and realizing that his body was broken on their behalf.

And as for the cup, well all the bitterness of the meal, when sometimes they ate the bitter herbs, it's all read into the cup. The cup which Jesus drinks, the horror of Gethsemane and of Calvary, it's all there in the cup. And those who are sensitive, they appreciate that having taken bread, and remember the brokenness of Christ.

So when they drink, they recall the bitterness of the experience through which he passed when he was made sin for them. They will recall as they take both bread and wine, how God's wrath passed over them as the angel of death passed over the Hebrew encampment in Egypt. And was deflected to Christ as the angel of death went around the Egyptian households and slew the firstborn.

God's firstborn is slain for us, and the bread and the wine, they speak of it. And it all, the Lord's Supper, it all has an origination in that beautiful, picturesque, dramatic festival of the Passover. And it's that, that we have to have in mind this morning, as ultimately we come around this table, because Jesus is our Passover.

Two or three things to say in conclusion. When the Hebrews took the Passover meal, they knew that it was a meal that was spread for hungry men. For hungry men.

Literally they were hungry because they hadn't eaten for hours prior to taking the Passover meal. Prior to taking the meat, and the bread, and the wine. And today my dear friends, as you come around this table, you have no right to be here unless you're hungry.

That's why we sang that hymn some while ago now. Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me now and evermore. Jesus my manna be.

You remember these great hymns, I hunger and I thirst. Do you have a desire for him? To know more of him? Then if you have a hunger, you have a right to be here. Because it's here that he meets spiritually with his people.

He makes himself known in the breaking of the bread, and in the drinking of the wine. This is a feast for hungry people because it is Christ our Passover slain for us. And we come to feast upon him.

What is more, this is a feast for holy people. The old Israelites could have no leaven in their household in days gone by. Because leaven to them at that point spoke of what was evil.

And there was no semblance, either symbolically or literally, of evil to be within the heart of the Hebrew man, nor of the Hebrew lady. And that's the same with us. You cannot come to this table with unconfessed sin in your heart.

If you do so, then poor ones of the consequences. You cannot come with a fractured relationship with the living God, nor with a broken relationship with your brother or sister. If you do that, then you're risking spiritual and physical consequences.

This is a table for holy men. This is a table for hungry men. But more than this, it is a table for happy men.

Those Israelites, they danced their way out of Egypt. Who wouldn't dance? Who would not have been overjoyed to have left Pharaoh and all the nastiness of Egypt behind? When they got across the Red Sea, there is Miriam, the first founder, whatever history books may tell you, of the Salvation Army. As she gets her tambourine and she starts to lead the dancing amongst the Hebrew maidens.

And as they praise the Lord who has upset Pharaoh and divided the sea. These were happy people. They were marching on to Emmanuel's land, marching on to the promised land, free from the slavery of Egypt.

And when you come around this table, oh yes, you do so solemnly in one sense, and that is right and proper. But you also do so in a happy frame of mind. You take the bread and you take the wine.

You remember what you were, a sinner undone, a sinner in bondage, a sinner bound for hell. And then you think of what Christ has become for you, the Passover, His blood, the wrath of God has seen it. It's been applied to your heart.

And God's wrath passes over you. And instead there's mercy and forgiveness. There's union with the Father.

There's sonship because you've entered into His family circle. There's the indwelling of the Spirit. Tell me man, tell me woman, can you come around this table and not be happy? This table, I tell you, is for hungry people.

It's for holy people. It's for happy people. It's a table that has its antecedents in the Old Testament.

There is the negative in the Passover meal as I've described it to you. But it moves into a more perfect fulfillment. There's much more color and promise and wonder as Jesus takes that Passover meal and He transforms it.

He transposes it. He puts it into a more beautiful, a more melodious key. And He says, look, take this meal and remember as you take it, you're only doing it till I come.

Because I'll be back again. And you're showing your solidarity with one another as brothers and sisters and your unity in the Christian faith. You see, you've got to have the Old Testament in mind to be able fully to make sense of this New Testament festival.

But once you've got both and the understanding of Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 11, then you're fully prepared to take bread and wine in remembrance of our blessed Redeemer and in anticipation of His soon return. Amen. 303.

Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off thy guilty fears. The perfect sacrifice in my behalf appears before the throne.

My surety stands. My name is written on His hands. We sing from the second verse, 303.

It amazes us that your plan of salvation could be seen in blurred fashion in the Old Testament and then can pass through into the New and becomes more clear and more wonderful. We thank you that what Moses spoke of, Christ embodied in His own life. The Passover He has become.

The Paschal Lamb, that was His role. And we bless you and pray that in a moment many of us here, as we take this bread and wine, we may recognize afresh and the significance may be more wonderful of what we are about. And may we meet with Jesus as we remember Him and anticipate His coming again.

Amen.