Good morning, saints. Praise the Lord. It is always good to be at His table with my brothers and sisters—the Lord’s big family.
This morning, we are going to be sharing on the Lord’s Supper. Let us begin with a word of prayer.
Lord, it is on my heart this morning that You would really open our eyes to see this table, this supper, as You see it. Lord, that we might appreciate it and desire it as You appreciate it and desire it; that we might, by the Spirit through faith, experience the reality of it.
Lord, open our eyes that we might be delivered from taking it as a tradition or a ritual, from taking it in an unworthy manner. Lord, we want You to be pleased, satisfied, and refreshed as we take this table each week.
So, Lord, once again we ask that You would bless the words. Lord Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, may our eyes be opened to see. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, this is quite a lengthy subject, and I hope I will have a little grace toward the end here. First of all, I want us to really see how important this is to the Lord and how precious it is to Him.
The Lord’s table is always primary as we come together on Sundays. It is primary. It is important, and preparation is needed.
As we gather on Sundays, we gather on the first day of the week. I am not sure how many people realize that Sunday is the first day of the week. A lot of people think Monday is, but no, it is really Sunday. Sunday is the day we prepare for the week ahead, and thank God, He has given us this table to help us prepare.
We celebrate the Lord’s Supper at His table. Brothers and sisters, it is always important to remember, as we gather in such a way, that He is in our midst. I think sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we just do not realize He is actually present with us, even now as we share together.
He has called His family together for this supper. It is the Lord’s Supper. He has called us together as family.
In Acts 2:42, I think it is pretty clear. In the life of the early church, it says they continued steadfastly in fellowship and in the apostles’ doctrine. Then it says this was manifest in the breaking of bread and prayers. That was the life of the early church.
It was not something that they came up with—a list where they said, “These are the things we need to do.” It just came out of their life together around the Lord. They continued breaking bread, fellowshipping, and praying.
In the beginning, they actually broke bread daily, from house to house, it says. But later on, we see that they broke bread once a week, on Sunday.
In Acts 20:7, it makes it very plain:
And upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and prolonged his speech until midnight.
Now, at that time Paul was speaking, and that is the time when Paul spoke on into the night. You all remember the story of the young man who fell out of the window because it was so long. But it is very clear in the Word of God that the reason they gathered was for the Lord’s Supper.
Yes, they had teaching. They had ministry of the Word—powerful ministry of the Word—as that young man was actually raised from the dead. But the Lord is very clear to us that we gather for His supper.
The Lord’s Supper is primary. A number of times—it happens fairly often in our midst—when we come together, people talk about taking the Lord’s Supper. They say, “Well, yeah, we have a time of worship, then we have the table.”
Well, this is not really totally accurate, brothers and sisters. When we come in in the morning, the table actually begins when you come in.
What do you see? The cup is here and the loaf is here. That immediately reminds us of the Lord. The cup and the loaf are separate; the blood and the body are separate. It immediately reminds us of the death of the Lord.
So immediately our hearts should be drawn to the Lord as we come into the room. Actually, the Lord’s table begins from the very beginning.
Here in Richmond, we have a little opening in the beginning. We have been doing that for quite a number of years. But I say this with all love in my heart, brothers and sisters: if we were all truly prepared as we came before the Lord, that would not be necessary.
On the other hand, we often find ourselves coming and not really ready. We are distracted, and the opening does really help us. It helps us to center ourselves upon the Lord and our thoughts concerning our Lord Jesus. We all enter into that together, and we have found that to be very helpful. That is good.
Actually, it is good for the brothers. We decide this on Saturday, on the workday. It is good because the brothers are exercised to be before the Lord as to what the Lord would have for that Sunday, and that is good.
But, brothers and sisters, we should not depend on those brothers being prepared. We should be prepared as well. So, just a reminder: preparation is important. Preparation is expected. Even if there were not an opening, our hearts should be prepared.
Now, I do not know if you have noticed, but I have used two terms: the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s table. They are both scriptural.
In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul calls it the Lord’s Supper. The Lord blesses the loaf and the cup. The loaf is served first and then the cup.
Let us read 1 Corinthians 11, starting with verse 23.
For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread;
and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, This is My body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of Me.
In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood: this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me.
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till He come.
Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body.
For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep.
But if we discerned ourselves, we should not be judged.
But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.
Now let us read 1 Corinthians 10:16–17.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ?
The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?
Seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread.
In 1 Corinthians 11, you see, he calls it the Lord’s Supper. The Lord blesses the loaf and the cup, and then the loaf is served and then the cup.
But in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul refers to it as the Lord’s table. He says, “We bless it,” the cup and the loaf. The cup is mentioned first and then the loaf.
It is important for us to understand that these two admonitions from our brother Paul came because Paul was not at the original Lord’s Supper. The other disciples were there, but Paul was not.
Later, Paul was met by the Lord on the Damascus road. At some point—and we do not know when—the Lord spoke to Paul about the importance of this table. He wanted Paul to fully understand its importance and what it meant, so that he could share it with the church, which he did.
So it is important to understand, brothers and sisters, how important this is to the Lord, because He gave Paul special revelation. May the Lord give us revelation of its importance.
The Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s table are the same celebration, viewed from two different perspectives—two different aspects of the same meal.
In 1 Corinthians 11, it is called the supper, and we take it from the Lord’s viewpoint. It is a supper because He is calling His whole family together.
We used to do that when I was a child. We had supper. We were called to supper: “Son, it is time for supper.” You would go in, and what would you do? You would have a prayer.
In this case, the Lord is ministering this table to us. It says that He blesses it. He prays over it, giving thanks and consecrating the table before God. Then the table becomes a blessing to us as we take it.
The bread is served first, brothers and sisters, because from the Lord’s life we know that His body came first. He was incarnate. He came; the flesh was made manifest among us. He came as a man. He took on the form of a man, even that of a bondservant.
He walked this earth as you and I do. He ministered for thirty-three years in that body. At Calvary, His body was given on the cross. This physical body came first.
Then, brothers and sisters, He shed His blood as the penalty for our sins. He took our place on Calvary’s cross. The blood was the second part of the redeeming work on Calvary’s cross.
In 1 Corinthians 10, the table is emphasized. We come to the table. Now, it is interesting: we have a supper, we are called to supper, but what do we do? We sit around the table, do we not? We come to the table.
A table is the place of fellowship. So the emphasis in 1 Corinthians 10 is fellowship. We are fellowshipping with the Head of the table, our Lord Jesus Christ, and we are fellowshipping with one another.
In the King James Version, it says we commune with the blood and the body of Christ. What it is trying to emphasize is that there is a real transaction taking place.
In fact, the Greek word is koinonia. It means fellowship. It means sharing together. We do not just come and share as individuals; we share together. It is an experience.
That is what koinonia means: you are experiencing what you are fellowshipping in—not just a mental interaction, but a spiritual interaction. Another meaning of koinonia is joint participation. We jointly participate. All the family participates, not just a few.
The focus in 1 Corinthians 10 is on our response. Therefore, it says, we bless the table. In other words, we consecrate it with our prayers, brothers and sisters. We enter into fellowship, and it becomes a blessing to the Lord.
I want to try to convey the impact from the Lord’s side. He is at the head of this table when we come.
Last week, I had an experience that was very rare. My middle grandchild is not the affectionate one of the three. The youngest one is. He is not very affectionate at all; he never has been.
I was at home, and they had come over. We were trying to install a new TV, which only my son can do because I cannot figure out the electronics. Anyway, they were there.
As they were getting ready to leave, the middle one—the unaffectionate one—came and said, “Papa, I need to hug you.” I was startled. It kind of startled me. I said, “Certainly,” and he gave me a big hug. That really touched my heart.
That is what the table is about. It is embracing the Lord with our heart, with heartfelt adoration. How much that blesses the Lord.
Now, I think some of us are more expressive of affection than others, and that is okay. But, brothers and sisters, I have to tell you, it was quite a joy. He is, I think, nine years old. He is getting to that age where Grandpa and Grandma are not quite as thrilling as they used to be.
So I appreciated that little hug that he gave. You need to know that when we gather together, we are here to bless the Lord as well as to be blessed. We are here to show our affection to the Lord—giving that hug in our affections.
It is an important time for the Lord and for us. It is a time of fellowship with one another, and it is an experience. Just as that little incident with my grandson was an experience, as we come, we have an opportunity to experience His love and to show our love.
That is important because He has bought us with that blood. He paid the price with that body of His.
In 1 Corinthians 10, it mentions the blood first. That is because, from our perspective, when we first accept the Lord Jesus Christ, it is His blood that pays the penalty for our sin. He purchases us with that blood.
Then we partake of that broken body. In other words, we feast on the Lord. We continue to receive life from the Lord because we feast on the Lord. So the blood comes first from our experience.
I do not know where I am in all my points, but we need to know this is a living experience. It is not a ritual. It is not a tradition. It is a spiritual experience that can only be experienced in the Spirit.
A non-believer really should not take the table. How can they enter into the experience of it, brothers and sisters? It is spiritual in nature. It takes your spirit and the Holy Spirit to enter into the table.
It is a spiritual experience. It is an interaction, a joint participation with the Lord and with the brothers and sisters. It is a time of remembering and expressing love—our experience of His love and of what He has accomplished on Calvary’s cross for us.
The Lord said He was looking for those who would worship Him in spirit and truth. So it needs to be in spirit as well as in truth. That is why we are learning about the Lord’s table this morning.
When we come, how do we enter into this truth and this experience? We exercise our faith. That is the way we enter into it spiritually. By faith, we behold Him.
He is in our midst, but by faith through our spirit, we actually behold Him. We remember Him, and we rejoice in the value of His blood on our behalf and His broken body.
The Word is very clear. It says we can enter the throne room by the new and living way—His shed blood and His broken body.
Remember on Calvary, when the Lord Jesus died, the veil in the temple was rent. The Lord’s physical body was the veil. It veiled the glory of God.
If He did not have that physical body, you would have been blinded had you seen Him. All that glory was veiled, like a shade on a lamp. You are able to look at the light because of the shade. So His body was that veil.
When He died on Calvary’s cross, the veil was rent from top to bottom. That meant only God could do it. More importantly for us, it means that through His broken body, a way has been made for us into the throne room, into the Holy of Holies.
It is not a tradition, brothers and sisters, nor is it a ritual. It is not just a symbol. If that is the way in which we take it, it is meaningless. It is without spiritual impact, and it hurts the Lord’s heart.
In fact, it is harmful to us, as we will see later. It dishonors the Lord to come and take it as a tradition, as a ritual, or merely as a symbol with little importance.
This is the Lord’s Supper which the Lord has graciously provided to us. He calls His family together. It is a precious time to the Lord, and He desires to fellowship with His family.
He told the disciples at that last Passover meal, “With desire I have desired to eat this meal with you,” did He not? But do you know what the Greek says? It says, “With intense desire I desired to eat this meal.”
I could not help but think, “Lord, there is an intense desire in Your heart every Sunday morning. Lord, may there be intense desire in my own heart.”
Not only is the Lord’s table precious to Him, it is vital to our spiritual health. Just as we need healthy nourishment physically, our spirits and our souls need spiritual nourishment.
I have to confess, I lived mainly on fried foods—fried with lard, not with anything else. But anyway, we have become very health-conscious, and we have learned that our bodies need healthy nourishment.
The table is vital to our health. I could not help but remember that the Lord said He was the manna from heaven.
Remember the story of the manna? The Israelites had come out into the desert, and you know there is not much food in the desert. So they cried out to the Lord, and He provided manna from heaven. It came from His hand and sustained them all those forty years.
It was for their physical health, of course. The sad thing is that after a while, they began to despise the manna. By “despise,” I mean they began to think little of it. It was not satisfying to them. They said, “No, we need more. We need meat.”
You remember what the Lord did. He said, “Okay, you can have your meat.” But the fact that they thought so little of the bread from heaven He had supplied brought His discipline upon them.
He gave them quail in abundance, and then His discipline began. If you remember, it was a very severe discipline. He sent the snakes upon them, and they began to perish.
I only say that to say, brothers and sisters: the Lord Jesus is our manna from heaven. That is what we are partaking of when we take of the Lord’s table.
We should not lightly despise it. We should not take it lightly. Not only does it break the Lord’s heart, but in this case it angered God. So it is a serious thing.
It is not just something to be taken lightly, or entered into merely because you are here. It is to be entered into with a real heart of love for the Lord Jesus and with the realization of what we are doing. We are partaking of the Bread of Life, the manna from heaven. That is what nourishes us, brothers and sisters.
We take the cup also as nourishment. It is the cup of the new covenant. The blood reminds us that the blood has paid the price for our souls, and we have been redeemed by that blood.
The blood today is still effective in your life and in my life. If it were not, we would be crushed. If we sin, we can go before the Lord with repentance, and He will forgive us of our sins because that blood has been shed. He sees that blood.
Not only that, but the blood speaks of the covenant. When we come and partake of the cup, it speaks of the covenant the Lord has made with us: He will remember our sins no more and has put them away as far as the east is from the west.
Brothers and sisters, I have a hard time forgetting my sins. I have a hard time forgetting sins that others commit against me. But it seems that the Lord, who is the most intelligent Being in all there is, is able to forget. Only God can do that.
He puts away our sins. We have that guarantee. If we are right with the Lord, we have the guarantee that His blood has covered us.
He has also guaranteed that He who has begun a good work in us will complete it, because that is His covenant with us, brothers and sisters. It is the blood of the new covenant—this contract He has with you and me to complete us.
He has signed it with His blood, and His life backs it up. It can never fail and never be made null and void. Is that not marvelous?
We continue to be a problem to the Lord, do we not? We do continue to sin, but He does not say, “I will not make My covenant.” No. You still need the blood. You need to confess that sin. But His covenant still stands with you.
He says, “I am going to complete you and bring you into completion.” That is what the cup does for us.
When we consider that manna from heaven, that bread from heaven, and when we consider the value of the blood and the blood covenant that has been made with us, does that not strengthen your spirit?
In the inner man, are you strengthened on Sunday mornings? I certainly hope you are when you come and partake of the table. It strengthens our spirit, and we begin to rest in the Lord. It brings us peace. We are refreshed and made ready for the week ahead.
Then we go through the week still eating the manna and partaking of the blood all week long.
I think it is interesting: in the Scriptures that we read, He says, “As often as you do this, do it in remembrance of Me.” Remembrance is the key to this table.
It tells us how we are to enter into the spirit of the Lord’s Supper. It is beautiful in its simplicity. The Lord gives us one instruction: “Remember Me. Just remember Me.”
As often as you do it, remember Me. It is profound in its simplicity. Brothers and sisters, remembrance is so important.
The older I get, the more important my memories are. I think the older ones can appreciate that. We can remember. Of course, we remember some bad things, but mostly we try to remember the good things—the things in our lives that really counted and mattered. That is what we remember.
Remembrance is important. The Lord said, “If you really want to enter into the spirit of this table, just begin by remembering Me.”
I have heard testimonies of many soldiers over the years, particularly those from World War II. Many times they would be asked, “How did you make it through such a terrible ordeal?”
They would say, “I remembered my wife. I had this picture of my wife. I remembered my family.” It was those remembrances that, they testify, carried them through.
The Lord knows how important remembering is, and that is His simple request: “Just remember Me.”
As we come in on Sundays, we begin with visual reminders. The loaf is here. The cup is already here. When you see them, it should automatically trigger something in your heart.
A death has occurred. Blood is here, and the body is here—the death of my Lord Jesus on my behalf. So, even as we enter the room, our spirit should begin to be touched.
That is why we have that visual representation, brothers. That is why it is there when you arrive. It is the first thing we desire to see and focus on: the Lord Jesus Himself. That is why it is important to be prepared.
As we begin to worship the Lord and His death on our behalf, our hearts are touched. As we begin to remember His broken body, our hearts begin to melt before Him.
He is in our midst. We begin to thank Him and worship Him together. Brothers and sisters, I think sometimes we hold back. How can we hold back if the Lord has really gripped our heart from the very beginning?
We cannot hold back our worship. We remember His work on Calvary’s cross, His great salvation.
Brothers and sisters, have you ever thought about it? You were slaves—slaves to the enemy, slaves to sin, slaves to this world, slaves to your own flesh, slaves to the law, to self, and to the fear of death.
But He set us free. He set us free from the consequences of sin. He set us free from the power of sin, from the world, from the law, from the flesh, from self, and from the fear of death.
Not only that, brothers, He set us free, and we are here on Sunday mornings to declare, “Lord, You have set us free. But now I want to give myself back to You as a slave—as a love slave to You, Lord.”
You set me free not to live life as I want to, but to be able to walk in the Spirit, worship You, live for You, and serve You. That is what we have been set free for. We need to remember that.
That word jubilee always touches my heart. My mother-in-law—I call her my spiritual mother—was the one who really awakened my heart to the Lord Jesus in a very personal way. I was already saved.
But she died in her fiftieth year, the year of Jubilee. She went to be with the Lord. What a Jubilee she had—her fiftieth year. Young, as I see it now.
It was a real blessing to me, and I am glad that she had her Jubilee. Brothers and sisters, let me say this: He is your Jubilee.
He is the One who has set you free from slavery and brought you into His kingdom, into His house, into His banqueting house. His banner over you is love. That is what Sunday morning is about. Do this in remembrance of Me.
We are also told in 1 Corinthians 11:26:
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till He come.
Brothers and sisters, as we take this table, it is a testimony to the world that the Lord has died for me, that the Lord has given Himself for me. It is a testimony to what the death of the Lord Jesus has done for me, to me, and in me.
It is a testimony. I know it is mostly Christians here, but you are really testifying before the world as well as before your brothers and sisters. We are testifying to the value of His death and to what it has accomplished in our lives.
We are not ashamed. We should not be ashamed to announce it openly and proclaim it.
It is also a testimony to the unseen world. Think about it. The angels—the good angels—marvel when they see what the death of the Lord has done in us. They have never experienced it.
They are amazed at God’s grace toward us as sinners—these specks of dust, this little creation of His. It is a testimony to the angels of the great love, the great mercy, and the great grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But as we show forth His death, it is also a testimony to the demons and the demonic powers of darkness. Brothers and sisters, do you think they are not looking on? Do you think they do not hate this time? They hate it with a passion.
It is a testimony to His death and His triumph over death—His triumph over them. It reminds them that they have been defeated. That should be a comfort even in our personal lives. They have been defeated.
That is what the death of the Lord Jesus means. He has triumphed over them. They are also reminded that God has judged them, and that the execution of that judgment is coming very soon.
They tremble at the testimony of what the death of our Lord Jesus has done to them. That is what we do on Sunday mornings: we testify to the death of our Lord Jesus.
In 1 Corinthians 11:28–29, it says:
But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body.
There are a couple of key words: unworthily, prove yourself, eat and drink judgment to yourself, and not distinguishing the body.
It is a serious time. The Lord reveres this time, honors this time, and expects us to do the same. It is very important.
You might wonder what it means to distinguish the body—to not distinguish the body. If you read in Corinthians, you will see that some of them were even getting drunk at the table. It was horrible, and Paul had to admonish them about this.
Thank goodness that is not what we are doing. But, brothers and sisters, we are to honor Him. It says we need to distinguish the body. So what does that mean?
We need to know what we are doing. The body, when we take the table, is represented in two ways.
First, as we begin, we see the loaf before us. It represents, as I mentioned before, the body of His incarnation—the body that He used for those thirty-three and a half years, the body which was put upon the cross, the body in which He was crucified, and the body that took on the sins of the whole world.
It is the body that suffered the hatred of men, the whips on His back, and the stripes. It is the body that was judged and received the wrath of God as He was crushed there on Calvary’s cross.
Brothers and sisters, that is the loaf. It is His body, His physical body. Lord, just think about it. When we really think about it, how can we dare take it lightly, when we know what the Lord experienced in His body on this earth?
It is very serious. He is the manna from heaven.
Secondly, once the loaf begins to be broken and we pass it around, if you look up in a little while, you will see that the loaf is entirely gone. It is not there anymore. It is gone.
But is it gone? What has happened is that we have each taken a piece of the life of our Lord Jesus, and now that loaf is in us.
Each one of us has a part of that loaf. But each piece has only one life in it—not many lives, just one life. It is the life of the Lord Jesus.
In 1 Corinthians 10, it is very clear:
Seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread.
This one body out of many is the church. So the loaf represents Christ in His personal body while He was on earth, but it also represents His corporate body—the body He received at Pentecost when the Spirit was outpoured on the one hundred and twenty.
Brothers and sisters, when we take the table, we are in fellowship with Christ and with the body that He offered on Calvary’s cross. As we partake of it, we are in fellowship with all of our brothers and sisters, because they are receiving the same life that we are.
So the loaf once again becomes one loaf, even though it is in many.
We should not partake of this loaf, brothers and sisters, if we are at odds with our Lord Jesus. If there is a controversy between us and the Lord, it is better to let it go by. Better yet, get it settled. Repent before the Lord, get it settled, and take His blood.
Also, if we have an offense with a brother or sister—an unforgiving spirit—it is better not to take it. We need to recognize not only the body of our Lord Jesus Himself, but His corporate body as well.
It is an offense to the corporate body if we have an unforgiving spirit in our hearts. We should get it straight with the Lord first. We need to distinguish the body, that we may not be an offense to the Lord or to one another.
That is distinguishing the body of the Lord.
The next word was prove yourself. That is interesting, because prove yourself means you need to examine yourself before you take the table.
How this examination occurs is extremely critical, and you will see what I mean in a moment. Before we take the table, we are exhorted to prove ourselves. So how is it done?
Brothers and sisters, I can tell you emphatically: it is not done by looking inwardly. All you are going to see is a mess. You are not going to see anything good if you truly look inward. All these things will start coming up.
That is called introspection—considering yourself—and that is actually pretty dangerous. When you look inwardly, you are going to get a false reading, I guarantee you.
You will either think you are better than you really are or, in most cases, you will think you are far worse than you really are. You cannot accurately discern through self-examination.
If self-examination is unreliable, how are we to examine ourselves—to prove ourselves? It is pretty simple. You do not look inwardly. You look outwardly.
You look at Christ. You look to Him. You put yourself in His light, in the light of His Word. His Word, as you read it, may speak to you and say, “You need to get this straight.” Or He may speak to you through the Holy Spirit and point out something.
That is conviction. Conviction is good because conviction is meant to set you free.
If you look inwardly, what will happen is that you will not be convicted; you will be condemned. Condemnation imprisons your spirit. You come under condemnation, and you see no way out.
You pray, and it just keeps coming on. The weight gets heavier and heavier. That is condemnation.
The Holy Spirit convicts us to set us free. He simply says, “This is it.” You say, “Lord, I am wrong. I need Your forgiveness.” The blood covers you, and you are free. That is conviction.
The Word says:
In Thy light do we see light.
That is the only reliable light in which to put yourself: the light of our Lord Jesus.
Actually, it is very simple. Let me read Psalm 139:23–24:
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts;
And see if there be any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
Notice, he is asking God to search him. That is our prayer. That is the way we examine ourselves: in the light of the Lord.
I will probably run a tad over. Forgive me. I want to talk just a moment about the Passover feast and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
When our Lord instituted the Lord’s Supper, they were actually celebrating the Passover feast. What you also need to remember is that the Passover feast was the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasted seven days.
The Passover was participated in on one day, but the Feast of Unleavened Bread went on for seven days. These two feasts are joined together because, just before Passover, the Israelites would clean their houses of all leaven.
Leaven in the Bible speaks of sin. It speaks of defilement and uncleanness.
The sisters probably know what leaven is. I only know it because I read it in the Word. I have never used it or tried to cook with it. But, interestingly enough, leaven is not easy to get rid of.
The leaven they used was, I read in a little article, one-tenth the size of pollen. So, when they used that leaven, it could get into the air.
They could not simply take the leavened bread out of the house and think that was it. They actually swept and washed down their houses on the inside to make sure they got rid of all the leaven.
When the Lord instituted the memorial feast that we celebrate—the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s table—He was taking the Passover feast.
While they were doing that, He took the bread, broke it, and said, “This is My body given for you.” He took the cup and passed it around: “This is the blood of My covenant, the new covenant. Take and drink it. Do it in remembrance of Me.”
It was at the Passover feast that He instituted the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s table.
When we take the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s table, we take it as a memorial to the true Passover.
The Israelites remembered when they were in Egypt in bondage, and the Lord was about to deliver them. He said, “I am going to wipe out all the firstborn here.”
But He said, “You can save your firstborn and yourselves by putting the blood of the lamb over the doorpost. When the angel of judgment comes, he will pass over you.”
That is what they were celebrating. As they were celebrating, the Lord was really saying to them, “I am the true Passover. From now on, that is what you need to memorialize. That is what you need to remember.”
You can remember your deliverance out of Egypt, and that is fine, but I am the Passover. I am the fulfillment of what the Passover meant.
Brothers and sisters, when you have the blood of the Lamb in your life, the angel of judgment passes over you because he sees the blood.
We celebrate the true Passover. We celebrate the fulfillment of the Passover as it was fulfilled in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Not only that, the Lord was the fulfillment of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Think about it: He lived a sinless life. There was no leaven in His life whatsoever.
He was the fulfillment of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
The Passover was celebrated just one day because the sacrifice our Lord Jesus made as the spotless Lamb of God was made once and forever. It never has to be repeated.
But the Feast of Unleavened Bread went on continuously for another seven days. So what does that mean to us? It means that as we take the table, brothers and sisters, we are memorializing that as well.
We should celebrate unleavened bread in our lives continuously. For the church, we celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread until the Lord comes back.
We do not want leaven in our lives, and if we discover it, we get rid of it. How do we get rid of it? By the blood of the Lamb.
When we take this, it is a memorial to the true Passover and to the true Feast of Unleavened Bread. That is our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:7–8:
Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened.
For our Passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ:
Wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. That is what we are celebrating. Then it says, “Let us keep the feast, not with old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
We come and celebrate this table in the spirit of sincerity and truth—sincere love for our Lord Jesus Christ. We memorialize the true Passover and the true Feast of Unleavened Bread.
For the Israelites, it said that if you violated the Feast of Unleavened Bread—if you had leaven in your house, if you partook of leavened bread during that time—you were cut off from the nation of Israel. You were cut off from the promises of God.
I found it very interesting that 1 Corinthians 11 says that if we partake of the table in an unworthy manner, we eat and drink judgment to ourselves. What does that mean?
Basically, it means that the Lord is going to have to discipline us if we take it in an unworthy manner. In 1 Corinthians 11, it also says that some suffered sickness and even death because they thought so little of the table and were taking it in an unworthy manner.
I am not saying this to frighten anybody or to keep you from taking the table. We need it. We need the table. Brothers and sisters, we should take it in a way that honors the Lord Jesus.
It is a serious matter. It is precious to the Lord. It is a precious time, and He wants to keep it precious.
Let me say it a different way. When we come, we come to celebrate the true Passover and the true Feast of Unleavened Bread—the One who lived without sin and offered His sinless body on Calvary’s cross. That is what we memorialize.
We do not come lightly, casually, mindlessly, or take it as a ritual. If we do, we do not have a sincere heart. The Lord is very gracious with us, but there can be serious consequences because He will have to discipline us. He cannot let it go on.
It is true with our children. We see them doing something wrong. I told you before, my mother hated lying, and when she caught me in one, she let me know it.
One time it went on for three or four times, and then finally she addressed me. You all remember the story. She told me, “Jerry, if you do not get straight with the Lord, you are going to hell.”
So I got straight with the Lord, put it that way. She gave me that little nudge, that little reminder.
If you will give me just a few more moments, the Word says, “Until He comes.” We celebrate His death until He comes.
We do not only look back in remembrance at the table; we look forward. As we remember Him and look back, our hearts begin to be moved, and we begin to look forward to seeing Him face to face.
As we take the table, it should begin to work on our hearts and say, “Lord, I need to see You face to face. I need for You to come, Lord Jesus.”
We are looking for that day when He will come and we will see Him face to face. But at the same time, we need to consider that the Lord’s heart is moved as well.
He is longing for His bride. He is longing and saying, “Yes, I know you want Me to come. You are not ready. I want to come. I long to come. I long to have My bride. But you are not ready yet. But you will be.”
He is looking forward, brothers and sisters, to the bride. He is looking forward to the wedding feast.
When we take the table, that is a feast—the Lord’s feast that He has provided for us—but it is looking forward to its complete fulfillment: the wedding supper of the Lamb.
That is what He is looking forward to. In Luke 22:15, He told His disciples, as He shared His heart with them:
With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.
Then He went on to say:
For I say unto you, I shall not eat it, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
This feast of the Lord’s Supper is real, and it is marvelous. But it is looking forward to the marriage feast of the Lamb.
Do you all remember the wedding in Cana? The wedding feast in Cana? It says His mother was there, the disciples were there, and the Lord was there. They ran out of wine.
We know what happened. The Lord turned the water into wine. I think it is very interesting what the master of the feast said. They had someone over the food and drink—not the master of ceremonies, but the master of the feast.
They took the wine to him, and he made a comment that caught my heart when I read it at the conference:
Every man setteth on first the good wine; and when men have drunk freely, then that which is worse: thou hast kept the good wine until now.
Brothers and sisters, wine in the Word speaks not only of the covenant we have—the blood covenant—but also of joy, happiness, and pleasure.
In the Song of Solomon, the maiden says:
Thy love is better than wine.
As we take the table, it is good wine. It is excellent wine. But, brothers and sisters, He has saved the best for last—at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
That is why He encourages us to overcome, because it is those who overcome who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
It says, “Blessed are they that are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Oh, He is saving the good wine for last.
Lord, we just come to You this morning. We thank You for Your great love for us, that You have given us and instituted this.
I know a lot of people fall back at that word institution, but Lord, it was something that You directed, something You desired, something You instituted on our behalf.
This memorial feast is to the true Passover and the true celebration of unleavened bread. Lord, we desire to share this feast with You.
Lord, we thank You that You desire to share this feast with us. May it become our great desire in our lives, Lord.
Lord, open our eyes to see how much this table means to You, and may it become precious to us. Lord, may we be prepared and come in a worthy manner, that You might be refreshed.
Lord, work in our lives. The best wine You have saved for last. Oh Lord, we do want to find its fulfillment in the kingdom age.
As Your Word has said, You would not drink of the wine anymore until it has been fulfilled in the kingdom. Lord, we thank You in Jesus’ name. Amen.