Communion

Today's a special edition. If you notice, we have laid out a special table. This is a reasonable facsimile of the type of meal that the Jewish people ate during the Passover season. This was the Passover meal that Jesus and his apostles shared on the night before he died.

And if you notice a few things: over here are the bitter herbs; in this area you have the lamb that they ate and shared; you have the cup of blessing of wine; and the unleavened bread.

And if you're wondering why there's no tablecloth here: the Jewish people searched for leaven throughout the house, and even under the table they looked to see if there was any leaven.

So today we're going to see the relationship between the Jewish Passover and the communion that Christians celebrate throughout the world. So stay with us for this special edition this week on Bible Talk.

A Crash Course in Jewish History

All right, we're going to step into our class. We've moved away our Passover meal, if it were, and we've taken out another chart here.

Because, you see, if you want to understand communion–or the Lord's Supper (there are different ways of naming that particular celebration)–you first of all have to understand the Jewish Passover. If you don't understand the Jewish Passover, you cannot understand the Lord's Supper.

So what we're going to do today–what we're going to attempt to do today–is give you a crash course in Jewish history. So hang on to your hats. We're going to do a crash course in Jewish history.

We're going to go to our little chart here, and first of all I want you to note one thing: I have not listed here all of the generations. I've just kind of hit the high points here in Jewish history.

We begin here with Adam and Eve, of course, in Genesis. And the next great event is the flood and the appearance of Noah during that period of time. And Noah has three sons: Japheth, Ham, and Shem. And then from the family of Shem comes one particular person–we have to go all the way over here to find him–his name is Terah.

Terah had a son, and his name was Abraham. And now we start to get familiar. We're starting to know the characters. Abraham was a man who was chosen by God. We're going to stop at Abraham for a moment; I need to give you a little bit of background.

God chose Abraham to form a special people. He said to Abraham basically two things. He said: "Abraham, I've chosen you, and I'm going to give you a promise which includes two things.

Number one: the whole world will be blessed through your descendants."

That was the first inkling of the promise of the Messiah to come–that through the generations of Abraham, a Messiah would come that ultimately would be a blessing to the whole world.

The second promise that God made to Abraham was that Abraham's descendants would inherit a special land. So a special people were going to be formed, and that special people were going to have a special land.

Now let's go back to our chart here and continue with our little historical survey of the Jewish nation.

After Abraham: Abraham had a son called Ishmael, and from the descendants of Ishmael we now have the Arab nations. That's where the Arab nations come from–they come from Ishmael.

Abraham also had another son, and his name was Isaac. And now Abraham passed the promise that God had made to him down to his son Isaac. He was the one that was going to receive it. His generations were going to receive the promised land, and through his generations the Messiah would come.

Now Isaac also had two sons. One was named Esau and the other one was named Jacob. A little later on, God changed Jacob's name to Israel. So we wonder, you know, where does the word Israel come from? It comes from here: God changed Jacob's name to Israel.

Abraham gave the promise to Isaac, and Isaac gave the promise to Jacob. And Jacob had twelve sons. He had a big family. He also had a daughter, but he had twelve sons.

And if we go down here, we see the twelve sons. I don't have time to mention all their names, but we see the twelve sons of Jacob right here.

These twelve sons of Jacob formed the nation of Israel. In other words, from each one of these sons came one tribe. And when you put all these twelve tribes together, you have the Jewish nation.

You see how it works? From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob. Jacob has twelve sons, and from those twelve sons come the Jewish people.

I want to mention a few other things.

If we go back to our chart over here: one of the sons of Jacob, his name was Levi, and down through Levi's descendants we get the man called Moses. And we know a lot about Moses–we'll talk about him in a little while.

Of course Moses' brother, his name was Aaron, and that's where we get the priesthood. Moses was the leader of the Jewish nation. Aaron was the one that God chose to serve as priest. And both of them came from the tribe of Levi. As a matter of fact, all the priests in the early times came from this particular tribe. You had to be from the tribe of Levi if you wanted to be a priest.

Now I want to show you another thing in our little chart here: from another son of Jacob, his name was Judah. And down through the generations of Judah–down through his tribe–we had a man called David.

We remember David, don't we? David and Goliath–that famous story. All right, he was the king of Israel.

And down through David's generations, many generations later, we had a man who was born, and his name was Joseph. And Joseph is significant because he was the earthly father–or the stepfather–of Jesus Christ.

So we wonder sometimes, you know, how do we get Jesus? How does it follow? Well Jesus comes from the tribe of Judah.

Many people say Jesus was the "son of David." You ever hear that? Jesus, Son of David. What they meant was that Jesus was a descendant of David.

Okay, so much for our crash course in Jewish history. We could have put a lot more time into this, but I just wanted you to get an idea–a notion–of the symmetry of history here.

The Jewish nation didn't just appear in a bubble, you know, all of a sudden it's a myth or something. It's a very structured history that they have.

The Passover and the Exodus

Now, through a series of circumstances, the Jewish people were found in Egypt. These twelve tribes here eventually went to Egypt, and they multiplied, and they became a great people.

With time, the Egyptian kings subjected them to slavery, and they became slaves in Egypt–actually for almost four centuries.

Finally they cried out to God: "God, help us. We want to get away from this slavery," and so on and so forth. And finally God heard their prayers. (A little parenthesis there: God hears prayer–you just got to keep at it.)

Finally God heard their prayer and he raised up Moses. Remember we talked about Moses? He chose Moses, and he said:

"All right, Moses, you're going to be the one that leads the people out of slavery and leads them to the promised land."

Remember I told you that God promised Abraham two things: that through him the generations would be blessed, and also that they would receive a promised land.

Well Moses was the one chosen to lead the people out of Egypt and bring them into the promised land. Now one little problem: when you've got a million or so people who are there as slaves, you're not ready to let them go. We're talking cheap labor here–no unions in those days.

So the king says, "There's no way." Moses goes to the king and says, "You've got to let my people go," and he says, "You're crazy. There's no way I'll let these people go."

So to help the king along–the Pharaoh, they called him in those days–God sent some plagues. You know, kind of encouragement–things to help him make up his mind. And we don't have time–I could get another chart out here listing all the plagues: the frogs and the blood and the bugs. It was really bad for a time–about a year there. Destroyed the crops, everything.

And the king didn't want to let the people go. So finally God said to Moses:

"Okay, we've got one more plague that we're going to send on these people to kind of encourage them to free you."

And here's what it is:

"On one particular night I'm going to send an angel–an angel of death–and he's going to go throughout the land and he is going to destroy the firstborn in every single family. And after that happens, the Egyptian king will let you go. I guarantee it."

Now somebody says, "Yeah, but what does Passover have to do with this? We haven't even talked about the bitter herbs; we've not talked about the meat yet. What about the meal? Where does that come in?"

Well that's where this comes in.

God said to Moses: if you want the Jewish people to be protected, they have to follow a particular observance. And here's what the observance is.

He said:

"On one particular night you're to choose a lamb–a male lamb, one-year-old, perfect, without blemish. You're to kill it as a sacrifice. And you're to take the blood of that lamb, and you're to sprinkle the doorposts–the door frame–of your house with the blood of this lamb.

And then after that, on the night that the angel of death comes, you're to celebrate or share this special meal."

So you're to eat the lamb–cook it, roast it by fire, not boil it. You're to eat it along with bitter herbs–very bitter tasting–and you're also to eat unleavened bread.

Now the Jews did that. They killed the lambs, took the blood, went over the posts, prepared the meal, ate the bread–they did all of this.

And on that night the angel of death did come. In every single Egyptian home–and in every single barn–the firstborn of every family was destroyed.

The next morning there was a great grief in the land of Egypt when the people awoke to find out the destruction that God had put on their land. And finally the king let them go. Finally he let them go.

Now a little later on, when the Jewish people were out in the desert–and that's a whole other story–God said to Moses:

"From here on in, every year, once a year in the springtime, you will repeat this commemorative meal. You'll kill the lamb, you'll eat the unleavened bread, you'll eat the bitter herbs as a reminder of your freedom–every year in the springtime."

And that is the idea of the Passover. You know, "pass over"–the angel passed over the homes of the Jewish people.

Now when Jesus was with the apostles, he was a Jew, right? He was a Jew. And so he was celebrating the Passover meal like a good Jew–once a year.

However, when Jesus celebrated it, in the middle of it he transformed that meal into something very special.

From Passover to Communion

It's an interesting song, "There Is Power in the Blood." We're talking Passover, and the Jewish people understood this idea of power in the blood because for them the life was in the blood.

So the Passover meal was rich in symbolism. The idea of killing the lamb and putting the blood on the doorposts over their homes signified the idea that they were covering over their homes with a life. Their lives were saved because the animal had been killed. The life of the animal was covering their life.

Not only was the animal and the blood significant or symbolic, but everything that they ate on the table meant something.

For example, the bitter herbs: we were smelling the herbs before in our class when we had the table out here, and it really was very, very strong. For them the bitter herbs represented the experience of slavery. When they ate those bitter herbs and tasted that bitterness, they were supposed to remember their bitter experience in Egyptian slavery.

And the bread–the unleavened bread–that's interesting too. When you bake bread, you know it takes a certain amount of time for bread to rise, and it's the leaven in the bread that causes it to rise.

Well the Jewish people were in such a hurry to leave Egypt on that night that they didn't bother to put any leaven in their bread. They just ate it without leaven. And that's the significance of the unleavened bread.

Now these same ideas were present when Jesus was gathered with his apostles. I said before: Jesus was a Jewish person, and of course so were his apostles.

So when they gathered together to celebrate the Passover, the apostles were thinking about Egyptian slavery. They were going to eat that lamb thinking about when they were freed. They were good Jews. They were going to celebrate this Passover and remember the great freedom that God brought to them through Moses and the miracles that happened in Egypt.

However, Jesus–a good Jew–also ate the Passover, but he was eating it with another thing in his mind, because he knew the true significance of the Passover wasn't only the things that happened in the past to a small little nation. He knew that the Passover meant a whole lot more.

For example, he knew that the entire world was in slavery.

The thing I'm trying to explain here is this: the Jewish nation is a microcosm–there's a three-dollar word. A microcosm is like a small model of what really was happening in the entire world.

It wasn't just the Jewish nation who was enslaved in Egypt. They represented the whole world that is enslaved to sin. And Jesus knew that.

So when he was eating the Passover, he wasn't thinking just of the past, but he was thinking of the present–the whole world enslaved to sin.

Jesus also knew that one day there would be a great angel of death, as it were–but it wouldn't just come to one particular country. He knew that one day God's judgment would come on the whole world, and those who did not have a protective covering would be destroyed.

And he knew that this time you couldn't just offer an animal, because you really can't exchange the life of an animal for the life of a man.

Jesus knew this. He knew that this time a perfect sacrifice was needed–not just an animal sacrifice, but a perfect human sacrifice.

Let's face it: man destroyed his life with sin. He destroyed it. He gave it away. He put himself into slavery.

And when Jesus came, on the night he was having the Passover meal with his apostles, he realized that to open the door to freedom, a life had to be exchanged–not the life of some poor animal, but a perfect life, a perfect human life, had to be exchanged for the lives of all those who were imprisoned by sin.

So this time Jesus eats the Passover remembering the past, but also with the image of his own sacrificial death in front of him.

I wonder what that's like. Well, I guess I'll never know, will I? I'll never know. And neither will we ever know what it's like to know that you're going to die for other people–and they don't even know.

They're eating away and they're saying, "Pass the bitter herbs, please," and they don't even know what's going on. And Jesus knew.

And he ate it with them.

And there's that wonderful story of how he washed their feet and so on and so forth. We don't even have time–it's a wonderful story of how Jesus loved them right until the end.

Matthew 26

¹⁷Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?” ¹⁸And He said, “Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, “My time is near; I am to keep the Passover at your house with My disciples.”’” ¹⁹The disciples did as Jesus had directed them; and they prepared the Passover.

- Matthew 26:17-19

So this is what we've been talking about. Jesus said: go prepare the meal–go slaughter the lamb, go get the unleavened bread, go get the bitter herbs, get the table ready–just like we saw here.

Except they had cushions, and they would sit on the floor. They wouldn't sit in chairs. They had no knives or forks, things like that.

Can I make a little parenthesis again? You know, there's that great painting where it shows Jesus sitting in the middle–he's got like a halo around his head–and all the apostles are sitting alongside of him.

Well, that's a wonderful painting, very reverently painted and so on and so forth, but it's not accurate to Jewish tradition.

In Jewish tradition they sat in a U-shaped situation, and the person who was the most respected was sitting at this end of the table, and he would pass the food along this way–not in the middle.

That's just a little parenthesis. Now this is the meal we're talking about. Jesus says, "Go get this ready. We're going to share the Passover together."

²⁶While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” ²⁷And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; ²⁸for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.

- Matthew 26:26-28

So now they've eaten the meat. They've eaten the bitter herbs. They've cleared out the table, and it's near the end of the meal.

Now Jesus kind of sets aside all of this stuff, and he brings forward the plate with the unleavened bread on it, and probably a bowl–we're not sure–with the wine. And now he's going to distribute this among them.

You see, there's no more lamb to eat and there is no more lamb to sacrifice, because he is the Lamb. John the Baptist says he was the Lamb of God, right? So there's no more lamb to eat. He is the Lamb. He is the perfect sacrifice. So we eliminate that now from the commemorative meal. And there's no more herbs to eat, and there will be no more herbs to eat, because now the bitter experience of slavery to sin is gone after he makes his sacrifice. You see what I'm saying? He eats it for the last time, and that's the end.

Now he will be the perfect sacrifice: no more bitter memory, no more sacrificial lamb. Now the only two elements left on the table are the bread and the wine. And now he gives a new significance to these two elements.

First of all, the unleavened bread–broken and given to each apostle–represents now his broken body on the cross, given for every single sinner that will accept him. And the wine, which once was a cup of blessing (they used to take it as a cup of blessing and offer a blessing or a song), now becomes the cup representing the greatest blessing that God has ever given to man–and that is the living blood of his Son Jesus Christ to pay the debt of all sins.

So the eating of the sacrificial lamb at Passover was given by God to the Jewish people to help them remember their freedom from Egyptian slavery.

And now Jesus, the Son of God, gives to all of his disciples the bread and the wine to share, in order to help them remember his body and his blood–sacrificed on his behalf.

Questions About Communion

A lot of people ask questions about communion. I think the first question–the question most asked–is this one:

Does the bread actually become the body of Jesus Christ, and does the wine actually become the blood of Jesus Christ?

Now a lot of people think this. And of course they think this because they were taught this based on a particular passage of scripture in Matthew chapter 26. You know the passage we read: Jesus says, "This is my body," and then he says, "This is my blood."

And the big argument– theologians argue together–some theologians say, "Well that means that now the bread becomes the body and the wine becomes the blood," and that gave rise to a certain type of communion service and a certain type of thinking. I don't agree with that. I'm not afraid to say I don't agree with that. I think that's incorrect. And the reason I think it's incorrect is because the Bible often speaks symbolically.

Have you ever seen places where the Bible speaks symbolically? Sure.

How about John chapter 10:9? Do you know that passage? Jesus says, "I am the door." Now does he mean he's a door? You know, with a knocker, doorbell, handle? "I'm a door, and if you want to go to heaven, you've got to open him up"? No. He's speaking figuratively.

Which one of us for a moment would think that Jesus actually is... you know, "We have a special service here today. Every Wednesday we have a service where Jesus turns into a door." No, it doesn't make any sense. Right? It's not true.

Another passage of scripture: in John 15:5, Jesus says, "I am the vine, and you are the branches." Does that mean Jesus magically becomes a branch or a vine, and we become weird branches and twigs and little leaves and flowers and things? No, of course not. We know he's speaking symbolically. He is the source.

Well, is it too hard to believe that he's saying "This is my body" symbolically? No, I don't have a hard time. It's simple: it's a symbol. So when he's saying that, he's saying: this is my body–this represents my body. And when he says, "This is my blood," it represents his blood.

And so for many, many centuries now people have been gathering together to do what? To eat his flesh? No, of course not.

To remember.

What did Jesus say? The famous scripture: "Do this in remembrance of me." So when we're sharing communion, what are we doing? We're remembering. We're remembering his death on our behalf.