God Delights to Eat With His People: The Lord's Supper in Its Whole-Bible Context

Johnathan Arnold expounds numerous passages of Scripture that relate to the Lord's Supper, from the Garden of Eden to Mt. Sinai to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Transcript

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When we gather, the risen Jesus is actually there. And he gives himself to those who come to the table in faith.

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In our service this morning, we heard several passages about the Lord's Supper. And it dawned on me that although you have heard me make numerous comments about the Lord's Supper, when we come to the table or in Sunday school, I've never actually preached a sermon just on the gift of the Lord's Supper. So this morning I want to look at this sacred meal that God has given us in the broader biblical context of God delighting to eat with his people. Let us pray. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father. We're so grateful that although you are a holy and mighty and majestic God, you genuinely care for us and love us and desire fellowship with us. That in fact we were made for holy, happy fellowship with you. And so, Lord, at the center of our church's life stands this fellowship meal. And I pray that as we look at your word this morning, we would gain a greater appreciation for the gift that you've given to us, and that we would then come week after week with greater faith, greater love, greater joy, greater reverence, and appreciation, and expectation to meet you there, and to delight to eat with you. We ask for you to open our eyes that we may see wondrous things in your word through Christ our Lord Amen. God delights to eat with his people. And God walking with them in the cool of the day. What a beautiful picture. God, invisible, incorporeal, incircumscribable, walking in an orchard. When the Lord appeared to Abraham many years later, he assumed a form so that he could share a meal with Abraham. Cakes and curds, milk, and a tender calf. And so perhaps the Lord plucked a ripe fig or a juicy pomegranate from one of Eden's trees. This much we know. God delights to eat with his people and to provide the food that is eaten. When Moses and Aaron and Adab and Abihu and 70 of the elders of Israel went up on Mount Sinai, the Bible says they saw the God of Israel. God manifested his invisible presence in some glorious way. There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And they beheld God and ate and drank. Isn't that beautiful? They beheld God and ate and drank. There on the mount which could not be touched. On the mount, which Hebrew says was ablaze with fire and darkness and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. There, on that mount they ate and they drank, and they shared a meal in God's glorious presence. God delights to eat with his people and to manifest his presence while his people eat. Leviticus then in the law describes the various kinds of offerings: the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, and my favorite, the peace offering. Because no matter how many different kinds of offerings they offered at one time, the peace offering always came last. It was the climax of it all, and it was the one and only offering where the worshiper ate part of the blameless lamb that had been slain. It was a shared meal with God. That's why it's sometimes called the fellowship offering. It was a fellowship meal, as if to say, all is well now. The atoning sacrifice has been offered. We are at peace. This is the goal of it all. This is what it's all about. God delights to eat with his people and to assure his people at table that all is right in the relationship. Inside the holy tent in the holy place, the place where Nadab and Abihu were struck down for offering unauthorized incense. There in the holy place stood a holy table, and on it twelve loaves of holy bread, one for each of the tribes. Twelve loaves, just a few feet away from the curtain to the most holy place where God dwelled with his people. Twelve loaves that were eaten by the priests once a week and immediately replaced. Because I am with you, I dwell in the midst of you, you will eat and be satisfied. God delights to eat with his people and to assure his people that with him they will never go hungry. In Exodus 20, at the most pivotal moment in Israel's history, when all hope seemed lost, to escape Pharaoh's stubborn grasp, God tells his people to eat. A lamb without blemish, and with it unleavened bread. There's no time for it to rise. We're getting ready to go, and bitter herbs to symbolize the bitterness of slavery. A lamb for the household, a lamb to be fully consumed, and its blood spread over the doorposts, that the angel of death, when he came, would pass over the house in the hour of judgment. This meal, this Passover meal, became the foundational meal of Israel's existence. The great commemoration of their redemption. Only the circumcised, only covenant members could eat of it. It recalled what God had done in calling them out to be his people, to be his chosen son out of Egypt. And it was eaten in God's presence to remember and celebrate all his mighty works in the land of Egypt. For God delights to eat with his people and to save his people through the meal that is eaten. Not just at the Passover, but again and again, Israel is invited and commanded to eat a meal in God's presence. Again and again, especially in the book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 12:7, you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households. And then again, you shall eat them before the Lord your God in the place that the Lord your God will choose, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God. And then a little bit later, you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household. And then again, you shall sacrifice peace offerings and shall eat there, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God. Eating and rejoicing, eating and rejoicing, eating and rejoicing. God delights to eat with his people and to see their joy as they eat. The prophets of Israel, in their darker days, spoke of a day when God would not forsake his people, but prepare for them and for all the peoples an even better meal at the messianic banquet. On this mountain, Isaiah said, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined, and he will swallow up on this mountain death forever. And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. God delights to eat with his people and to feed them with the best fruits of creation. When Jesus came, the Messiah, the great Savior who is here to inaugurate the final age of human history, to a climax in that great messianic banquet. Jesus was often eating or giving people something to eat. At Cana, in Galilee, at a wedding, God incarnate, the heavenly bridegroom, supplied the feast with a super abundance of wine, a hundred and fifty or more gallons of the best wine that anyone had ever tasted. He fed the 5,000 and the 4,000 with fish and with bread. He ate with sinners and outcasts and spoke of a day when many would come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But above all, Jesus spoke of himself as the true bread from heaven, the true food, the true drink, which brings eternal life. Jesus came to offer himself up as the meal that his people needed most. Truly, truly, I say to you, John 6, cause many people in Jesus' day to stumble. 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. As the living father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Jesus, of course, did not mean that we must eat his physical flesh, but he did mean that as food, as bread and wine must enter into us and be absorbed into our bodies and impart to us its nutrients in order for us to have health and life. Christ must dwell within us. We must receive him into ourselves. He must become one with us by the Holy Spirit. Paul says that the one who is joined with the Lord is one spirit with the Lord. And he must impart to us from within the benefits of his body and blood offered on the cross. God delights to eat with his people and to be the food which is eaten. Luke tells us that on the evening of Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before the crucifixion, Jesus gathered his disciples together in an upper room. He reclined with them at a table and he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. I've looked forward to this meal together. It's something that I delight to do. And as Jesus took the bread from the Passover feast, he broke it and he gave thanks. Eucharisteo in the Greek. Eucharist. Thanks. And he said, This is my body. Do this in remembrance of me. And as he took the cup from the table, he said, This is my blood of the covenant. Drink of it. It's as if to say all at once, I am the blameless Passover lamb whose flesh you must now eat. I am the bread which you must now consume. God delights to eat with his people. And to give us Jesus, to give us his son at the table. When the two disciples on the road to Emmaus were later discussing their disappointment over the recent death of Jesus, whom they had hoped would be the one to redeem Israel. Jesus appeared to them. He starts expounding in the scriptures all the things about himself. Their hearts burn within them as he speaks. But Luke says they don't recognize him. They still don't recognize him. Like Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, who thought Jesus at first was a gardener, that they had a veil over their eyes. And Luke says it was only when he was at table with them, and he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. That's the same exact wording that Luke uses just a little bit earlier in his account of the Last Supper. He's intentionally echoing that. He says, as Jesus took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. And they returned to Jerusalem and they told the other disciples that the Lord was risen indeed. Hallelujah! And that he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. God delights to eat with his people and to make his risen Son known in the sacramental bread. When Jesus ascended to heaven, he left for his disciples and for us a promise that we would eat together again. At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples that he would eat the Passover again when it was fulfilled in the kingdom of God, and that he would drink of the fruit of the vine when the kingdom of God comes. John foresaw that glorious day. And like the sound of mighty peals of thunder cracking through the sky, crying out, hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns, let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. And the angel said to him, John, write this: blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. God delights to eat with his people and will eat with his people forever in the eternal banquet of the new creation. Brothers and sisters, we live in the time between the Last Supper and the marriage supper of the Lamb, between the cross and resurrection and the consummation of all things, when all creation is restored to be like a new Eden. We wait for the messianic banquet to be fulfilled, for a feast of rich food and aged wine well refined. We wait for death to be swallowed up forever, and the enemies of God to be forever vanquished. But as we wait, the Lord has not left us without a feast. God delights to eat with his people, and still today he prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Week after week, Sunday after Sunday, Jesus earnestly desires, he looks forward to celebrating the new Passover feast with his people. Like Melchizedek, that strange, shadowy figure who brought out bread and wine to Abraham. Our great high priest, our Prince of Peace, our King of Salem, sets before us the bread and the cup of the new covenant in his blood. Like David, who invited Mephibosheth, that dead dog, to always dine at his table. Our King and Savior calls us poor sinners, no better than Mephibosheth. Come, dine, and eat always with me. Pastors, deacons were merely the instruments through which Christ supplies the feast. Christ is the host and the meal at this sacred supper. God delights to eat with his people and again to be the food which is eaten, to welcome us at his royal table. Acts 247 says that the church after Pentecost was devoted to the Lord's Supper. Acts 27 says that they came together for the Lord's Supper on the first day of. It was the central and characteristic act of the Lord's Day gathering. Five times, Paul says the church at Corinth, despite their many other problems, received the Lord's Supper when they came together, and that the church, this church of apostolic origins, came together on the first day of every week. Outside the New Testament, Justin Martyr gives us one of the earliest descriptions of the weekly worship of the Christians. He says, Christians in all the world gather every Sunday to hear the word, pray, and share the Lord's Supper. 250 years later, Augustine writes, All churches everywhere share the Lord's Supper at least on the first day of the week, though some share it twice or even every day. Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, they all continued the church's ancient practice. And John Wesley advocated for at least weekly communion, but he preferred daily, and he ate the Lord's Supper almost every day of his life. Why? Because God's people delight to eat with God and to eat as often as they have opportunity. Brothers and sisters, when we come to this holy supper, we do not come to a mere symbol. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says that as Israel was baptized into Moses in the cloud and the Red Sea, and then ate spiritual food and drink in the wilderness, manna from heaven, water from what Paul calls a spiritual rock that followed them and was in fact Christ. He says, We too, who are baptized into Christ, now eat spiritual food and spiritual drink in the Lord's Supper. And in what sense is it spiritual? Well, Paul goes on to say, because it is a participation, a koinania, a sharing or a communion in the reality of Christ's body and blood. Again, not in the sense that bread and wine turn into physical flesh and blood, but in the sense that the reality of Christ and his atoning sacrifice are imparted to believers at the table. When we gather, the risen Jesus is actually there. And he gives himself to those who come to the table in faith. In this beautiful, this beautiful, visible, and physical sign we may receive invisible and spiritual grace. The Didic is one of the earliest Christian documents that we have, and it includes a prayer for use at the Lord's table. It gives thanks to God for spiritual food and drink and life eternal through his servant Jesus. Calvin described the Lord's Supper as a spiritual feast which sustains and preserves our union with him who is the only food to invigorate and keep alive the soul. Wesley said, as we eat physical bread in order to sustain our bodies, this, the Lord's Supper, is the food of our souls. This gives us strength to perform our duty. This leads us on to perfection. God's people delight to eat with God and to receive from him the gift of spiritual food and spiritual drink as we participate in his own beloved son. When we come to this holy supper, we are coming to the cross of Calvary. In 1 Corinthians 10, 18, Paul draws a comparison between Christians eating the body and blood of Christ at the Lord's table and Israelites eating the sacrifices of the altar. And so Christ is the sacrifice which we eat. He's not re-sacrifice at the table. Of course not. But his once for all sacrifice is made present and available to us as we come in faith. As John and Charles Wesley wrote, they wrote a book of hymns just for use at the Lord's Supper. And there they write these words Thou Lamb that suffered on the tree, and in this dreadful mystery, still offers up thyself to God. We cast us on thy sacrifice, wrapped in the sacred smoke, arise, and covered with the atoning blood. God's people delight to eat with God and to participate in his sons once for all sacrifice. When we come in faith to this holy supper, we ascend no longer to Sinai, but to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Come to Christ, and thus to the tree of life from the Garden of Eden, and to the medicine of immortality, to the better peace offering, and to the better bread of the presence. To hear Christ say, once again, peace be with you. All is well. Eat, be satisfied. I am the way, the truth and the life. My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. I am the answer to all your needs. God's people delight to eat with God and to find in him their all and all. When we come to this holy supper, we come to the new Paschal feast and to Christ our Passover slain for us. We come confessing our sins and that we are unworthy to pick up so much as the crumbs under his table because we know that apart from his grace, we deserve to face the angel of death. And yet we come with confidence because we know that it is not the strength of our faith, but the fact of the blood applied, which saves us and will save us in the hour of judgment, and which sets us free from the slavery of sin and death. Where the paschal blood is poured, death's dark angel sheaths his sword. Israel's host triumphant go through the wave that drowns the foe. Praise we Christ, whose blood was shed, paschal victim, paschal bread, with sincerity and love, eat we manna from above. Of all the holy joys in Christ Church, this is so precious to us, God's people, who delight to eat with God and to celebrate the Paschal feast with joy. Brothers and sisters, in just a few minutes, we are going to come to this Holy Supper. And as we come, we come down the aisle as a bride to the altar to renew our vows with the bridegroom, to receive his kiss as the bread touches our lips, and to enjoy a foretaste of the marriage supper of the Lamb. We do not only look back to remember or up to receive, but we also look forward to rejoice in the hope that is set before us. We await that glorious messianic banquet when on the Mount of God we will say with a great multitude that no one can number from every nation, tribe, people, and language: behold, this is our God. We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord. We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For God's people delight to eat with God and He with us, and so it evermore shall be. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, as it is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen. Brothers and sisters, God has given us a great gift in the Lord's Supper. Let us keep the feast.

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