Feasting on God

Matthew 26:26-28 NIV

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."  Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Why Have the Lord’s Supper?

Perhaps you have wondered why we have the Lord’s Supper.  Of course Jesus commanded us to hold the Lord’s Supper and so we do it but that does not explain why He wants us participating in it.  Christian and quasi Christian groups have a variety of explanations for its regular practice.  Some believe that we literally eat the physical body of Christ when we take the bread.  Others say it is just a symbolic ritual that helps us reflect on Christ and what He did for us.  Many think that you gain salvation by eating the bread and drinking the grape juice.  So is it just a religious ritual without any real benefit to us other than getting us to think about God or does its practice have eternal consequences for those who do or don’t participate?

Let us for a moment reflect on the actual words Jesus used when He told His disciples to eat the bread he offered them and drink from the cup.  "Take and eat; this is my body."  Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  Consider the two parts to this: 1. Take and eat.  This is my body.  2. Drink from it all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.  In the supper, it is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ that is at the center of it.  What are we told to take into ourselves?  It is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.

Lest we get confused in this, we are not physically eating Jesus’ flesh or swallowing His blood.  That would be a grotesque violation of God’s law as even after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the Church is commanded not to drink blood.  Eating human flesh is just as revolting.  Yet consider what the body and blood are.  The body is the substance of Christ; what makes Him who He is.  It is Jesus Himself…His personality, His character, His way of life.  If you want to know how that looks, what His personality and lifestyle is, go no further than the Sermon on the Mount.  There you find how He thinks, the way He does things, His habits and approach to every relationship and task He undertakes. 

The blood is the life of Jesus.  When God commanded His people not to drink the blood of any creature, He insisted, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off."  (Leviticus 17:14 NIV)  It is the blood that keeps you alive, what makes you alive.  Without the blood, there is no sustaining force to empower you.  The blood is how you are able to live and thrive.

So what does Christ give us with His body and blood?  We have Him: His personality, His character and the force of His life.  Consider this statement of the Bible.  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20 NIV)  What an amazing assertion!  Christ can actually live in us.  Not figuratively or symbolically but in reality He becomes a part of you when in faith you accept His entrance into your life.  Jesus made the promise that, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23 NIV)  We have here the spectacular declaration by Jesus that as close as the Father and the Son are, so are the Father, Son and any of us who love Christ and obey Him.  This is a real union within the Christian; all God possesses in His nature, His holiness, goodness, faithfulness and love becomes the believer’s.  Remember what Jesus taught in John 15?  He is the vine and we are His branches.  His life flows through ours and empowers us in every way.  Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5 NIV)

Jesus made the promise that His people would do the same kinds of things He did.  I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. (John 14:12 NIV)  He was not pushing for imitation.  He was describing how we would look if we are connected to Him as branches are attached to a vine.  He is comingled with us so that it results in the impossible circumstance of in any way being able to separate where we end and He begins.  We become one.  Consider this declaration in the Bible.  But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:17 NIV)  Could this be any clearer?  Much like how bread and grape juice become inseparable from the body once it is digested, so too, when we unite ourselves with the Lord, we become one new being that cannot split into two.  One in spirit is much more than just some sort of fraternal partnership, it is the actual joining of Christ and you into a new creation.

Consider carefully this insistence in the Bible of just how profound is your union with Christ.  It is because of him (God) that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1: 30 NIV)  Let us look closely at this statement for a moment.  It is because of God’s decision that we are put into Christ and made a part of Him.  Because of that, each Christian has His wisdom and not only that, His righteousness and His holiness and His deliverance or redemption.  The union of you and Jesus Christ is complete.  It results in all His perfection becoming yours.  And how can this be?  It is by faith in Christ, that simple acceptance that He truly did die for your sins and raise you up into a new life with Him joined to you.  When you eat the bread and drink the grape juice, you do so with the same faith that saves you from your sins.  You eat it and it becomes a part of you just like the love and holiness and goodness and rightness of Jesus is a part of you.  We do take God into us when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  Not in reality but in actuality.  The bread does not become His earthy flesh and the juice does not become His gooey blood but better than that, He actually becomes a part of us because by faith we take the bread and the grape juice and make it ours in a union between us and Christ that truly make us one.

Crucified

You must settle in your mind how the Cross of Christ organizes the universe.  It is the power of God for salvation first to the Jews, then to everyone not Jewish.  This is never violated nor reduced to rhetoric.  The Cross of Christ is not a tool of propagandists to win over converts.  It is how we are taken out of the slavery of sin and made new creations.  All the world is bent by its will to redeem and the stars and the planets will be swept away by its power to remake them free of all Sin.  The Cross of Christ contains everything we need to know about life and death and eternity.  Whatever religion one may hold, it is all a barren tree if the Cross of Christ does not fill it through and through.  "Repent", John the Baptist proclaimed.  Why?  You cannot enter into the work of the Cross of Christ unless you repent.  "Believe" our Savior announced.  Why?  You do not have life unless you believe the work the Cross of Christ has done.   It is the stone over which the entire world stumbles and until we stand upon this great stone of life, we are crushed under the weight of our sins...we are wrecks that are wasting away from sin's wresting power.    In the Cross, our blood becomes mingled with our Lord's so that as we are transformed by the Crucified Son of Man, we have Him as a part of us.  There is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved but the Name of the One whose blood poured down from an old clumsy Cross.  Nothing matters but the salvation of our crucified Lord...all else falls apart under the weight of Sin.    A day like today is the one when the Savior of the World died; a day like today is one upon which He will return and take all those carried out of the slavery of this world and bring them into the Crucified Home.  The Cross is at the Center of the Gospel; it is The Good News!

The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.     Matthew 28:5 NIV

The Bloody Coup

Until we see the fullness of our depravity, taste  the sludge spewing out from the depths of our heart, we will not grasp the enormity of risk Jesus took to save us.  The humiliation we feel at the sight of our temper spewing poisonous wrath upon some stunned family member or careless co-worker is the edge at which we can get at the real crisis we face.  When a well-shrouded lust takes control of our moral piety, we are at the precipice of the most critical discovery.     We are filthy and corrupt at the core and it is needless trying to make something of our selves.  Our critical need is not self-assessment and adjustment; it is the rush of life Jesus gives us at the Cross.  We are not fixable; but we are destructible.  The sooner we see our true condition, the quicker we will be able to turn away from bandages when we need resurrection.  Jesus did not come to fix us but rather to raise us from the dead.   We are irretrievably ruined by sin and that becomes obvious when we blow up at our four year-old for smearing lipstick on her face just as we are about to leave for the wedding.    The entire town of Sodom may have been self-righteously unaware of the filth it was gathering but Lot knew what was there and although he tried his best to ignore the elephant in the room, he at the point of destruction had to face it squarely.    You are not fixable, but you are redeemable.  The difference in the two is as wide as the grave.  Only the life of Christ can remake the cities leveled in your heart by sin.  Only He can give you life that will turn sinless as He works all through you.  You will never be able to live with the filth inside you; at least not like the lovely woman going into Victoria's Secret hoping to lure her boss away from his wife.  You won't be able to make heads or tails of the tumult you know rages within you until you pursue Christ for your condition.  The woman who grasped after Jesus' garment to stem the flow of blood knew what the rest of the gawking crowd did not but you must decide is so as she did.  Jesus really is the only hope you have and you must choose  to reach after Him yourself and ignore the skeptics who blindly disregard how badly they are bleeding too.

For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!   Romans 5:10-11 NIV

I Know What I Am Doing

How often do we trick ourselves into thinking we've got it but those around us don't.  Far too soon in our Christian journey we come up against the oldest of Satan's tricks; the implication that we know what we are doing.  Eve convinced Adam that she knew what she was doing and Peter tried to convince Jesus too that he had the right idea when he lost his mind over three shelters.  It is a fallacy to believe that we can make it on our own just this one time because we have figured out other things so well.  What do we make of the Cross then?  Did Jesus endure it because we were only a few marks off in our thinking or because we were thoroughly wrecked by sin?  The notion that once we become Christian we somehow need Jesus a bit less if we play it sharp is an insult to the blood He poured out upon the ground of our lostness.  We need Christ at every moment of every day and the Holy Spirit must be heeded far more than ever now.    You do not need to read the Bible less as you move along because you have gotten familiar with it;  you need to read the Bible with greater fervor than ever because you should realize even more just how wicked you really are without the Word of God filling you head to toe.  Your point of comparison is not some poor soul next to you whom you barely know; it is the filth of the tar pit that stands within you waiting to suck you in at just one bumbling stumble over a cock-sure determination.  The love and mercy of Christ is not poured out for your independent strut but to galvanize your total  dependence upon God to take you through each day.
You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty. Psalm 18:27 NIV