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The main
teaching on the Lord’s Supper is found in
1 Corinthians 11, starting with verse 17. In chapter
11, Rabbi Paul deals with the problems the Corinthian
congregation was having in celebrating “The
Lord’s Supper.”
But
in giving this instruction, I do not praise you,
because you come together not for the better but
for the worse. Rabbi Paul is not able to
complement the Corinthian believers, because when
they came together as a community, it resulted
in more and more conflict, and more problems.
How awful to be in a situation that when Messiah’s
Holy Community of Jews and Gentiles comes together,
it results not in the people being built up, encouraged,
but instead it results in more divisions, more
disagreements, more fights, so that they left
torn down and discouraged. We have enough disunity
in the world, don’t we? God’s people
need to be built up and encouraged and unified
when we come together.
When
you come together as a congregation... “How
often did they come together as a congregation?”
Yearly? No. They came together as a congregation
on a regular basis - weekly, or more often. This
is a regular meeting of the community. They are
coming together as a congregation - they are not
coming together for a once a year Passover Seder!
This is a congregational gathering, but Passover
does not primarily take place at a congregational
meeting; rather each family observes it by themselves
in their own home. The Lord’s Supper is
not the same as the Passover Seder.
Therefore
when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's
Supper. When they met together, weekly or
daily, one of the things that they did was eat
Aruchat Adonai - the Lord’s Supper. The
Lord’s Supper is not a Passover Seder, although
it has some relationship to Passover. The Lord’s
Supper is a meal that belongs to the Messiah.
It is Aruchat Adonai - the Lord’s Meal.
It is a special meal in which we look to Him,
and remember Him, and remember our unity with
Him and one another. We remember that He is the
living Host of this meal. We are in His presence.
He has risen from the dead. He is alive. We live
in Him and He lives in us.
It’s
a very nice thing to sit down and eat a meal with
someone. It is the height of chah-vay-root - fellowship,
unity, peace, family, brotherhood. Our living
Lord invites us to have a meal with Him, and He
wants to dine with us. He has extended His invitation
for us to join Him for His Meal to all of us -
Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rich and poor,
black and while. The Lord is our Host, and all
of us who are participating are His honored guests.
But there
was a problem with the Corinthian Believers. When
they met together as a congregation, they should
have met together to eat Aruchat Adonai - the
Lord’s Meal, but the things they were doing
and the attitudes that they expressed prevented
them from truly eating Aruchat Adonai. By not
approaching the Lord’s Supper in the right
manner, with the right attitude, they nullified
its true meaning. For in your eating each
one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry
and another is drunk. When the community
assembled from all over Corinth, they would worship,
they would pray, they would sing, they would hear
from the Word of God. They would also bring food
and drink with them and have a meal together.
They had a congregational meal together - very
similar to the Kiddush, eating the bread and wine
on the Sabbath, or an Oneg - a congregational
meal that many synagogues have. But in Corinth
the wealthier Believers were bringing lots of
food and drink, and the poorer believers and the
slaves had next to nothing to eat. They weren’t
eating at the same time. Some were drinking too
much wine and getting drunk, which tells us that
drinking wine - not grape juice, was the norm
for this meal.
Paul was
not pleased with the way they were selfishly conducting
themselves during this ceremony designed to bring
them into closer unity with the Lord and with
each other, as we see in verse 22: What! Do
you not have houses in which to eat and drink?
Or do you despise God’s congregation and
shame those who have nothing? What shall I say
to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not
praise you. The main purpose for meeting
together as a community is not for eating and
drinking - you can do that at home. The purpose
of this special meal is to draw nearer to the
Messiah, and to one another. If you want to focus
on good food and good wine, you should do that
at home.
What they
should be focusing on is that they were a family,
and Messiah Yeshua is the Head of the family.
During the Lord’s Supper, they were to honor
Him by doing things His way, which means honoring
one another. Can you imagine being part of a family,
with a mother and father and brothers and sisters,
and you sit down for a meal together, with the
father presiding over the meal, at the head of
the table, and some are served heaping plates
of delicious food and delicacies, and others are
served a slice of bread and some water? What kind
of family unity would that family have? And how
would that behavior reflect on the head of the
family? It would reflect very badly on him.
Because
of their selfishness, and inconsiderate behavior
toward their brothers and sisters, they were not
celebrating the Lord’s Supper. The Lord
Yeshua never acted that way, and they were not
reflecting Him.
So, Rabbi
Paul reminds them of the origins of the cup and
the bread. They are rooted in the selfless sacrifice
of the Messiah which took place on Passover. The
way the Messiah conducted Himself at His Last
Passover Seder is used as the model of how we
are to conduct ourselves at our congregational
meals. For I received from the Lord that which
I also delivered to you, that the Lord Yeshua
in the night in which He was betrayed took bread;
Paul got this information from the Lord - either
directly through a special revelation, or by some
other means. But either way, it is authoritative
and reliable.
And
when He had given thanks, He broke it and said,
“This is My body, which is for you; do this
in remembrance of Me.” How did Yeshua
conduct Himself at His Last Meal? Did He greedily
eat the bread, before His disciples did, knowing
that He needed that extra nourishment more than
the rest of them, for the trials He was about
to endure? No. He broke the bread and gave it
to His disciples. He was thinking about the welfare
of His friends - not about His own welfare. He
was giving His life, that they might live. What
does the bread represent? Messiah’s broken
body - His sacrificial death for us.
In
the same way He took the cup also after supper,
saying, “This cup is the new covenant in
My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in
remembrance of Me.” In the same way
He took the cup after the Passover supper. In
the same way - what way? Selflessly, sacrificially.
He gave them the cup. He didn’t greedily
drink it Himself. The wine we drink represents
Messiah’s blood that He shed, His life that
was given, that enables us to enter into the new
Covenant, that new relationship with God, wherein
we our alienation from God ends, we are reconciled
to Him, and we are granted atonement, forgiveness.
We come close to Him, and we become His beloved
sons and daughters who will live forever with
Him, ruling and reigning with Him throughout eternity.
Yeshua’s
Passover Seder, followed by His death the next
day, still on Passover, is the supreme model of
selflessness and sacrificial love, that we are
to imitate, especially during our meals together
as a community.
Aruchat
Adonai - the Lord’s Meal, the Lord’s
Supper, is connected to Passover, but it is not
identical to Passover, and it doesn’t replace
Passover. The cup and the bread have a connection
to Passover, but they are not limited to Passover.
Bread,
even though it is made with leaven (which is a
symbol for sin), is nevertheless a good symbol
- not a symbol of evil. Would Messiah say, “I
am the Bread of Life” if it were a symbol
of evil? Bread is eaten all the time during the
year, except for Passover, and so should we, when
we eat our congregational meals together during
the year as part of the Lord’s Supper.
For
as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.
Whenever we eat this bread, whether it is the
matzah at Passover, or regular bread the other
51 weeks of the year, and drink the wine, whether
it is the third cup of the Passover Seder, or
the wine on Shabbat when we come together as a
congregation, we are proclaiming the Lord’s
death. We are telling the whole world that here
is the Supreme Sacrifice. He who is the Prince
and Author of Life, and the Living One, died so
that all of us might truly live. His sacrificial
death repudiates all sin and selfishness, and
so should we.
Therefore
whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the
Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of
the body and the blood of the Lord. We can
eat the bread and drink from the cup in a worthy
manner, or in an unworthy manner. We eat it in
a worthy manner my by participating in a reverent
way, and by focusing on the sacrifice of the Lord,
and our love for one another.
We eat
the bread and drink from the cup in an unworthy
manner by thinking of ourselves, our needs, our
desires, our wants, our pleasures, and losing
sight of the fact that we are part of a new family,
with unity, oneness, and brotherly love. We are
here to serve our brothers and sisters, more than
being served. We are here to give to our brothers
and sisters, more than being given to.
Rabbi
Paul tells us we should examine ourselves, so
we can prevent ourselves from an unworthy participation
in the Lord’s Supper: But a man must
examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat
of the bread and drink of the cup. Examine
yourself - your heart, your attitudes. What does
being a disciple of the Lord really mean to you?
What is your life really about? Personal enrichment
or selfless service?
There
is a proper time not to participate in the Lord’s
Supper. If you are in sin, out of unity with the
Lord, or in disunity with another member of the
synagogue, first get right with the Lord, and
get right with your brother or sister, and then
participate in the Lord’s Supper. But to
withhold yourself from participating in the Lord’s
Supper for any other reason is to withhold yourself
from fellowship with that body of believers, and
disrupt the unity of that fellowship.
For
he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment
to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.
If you don’t participate in a worthy manner,
by emulating the Lord’s selfless love for
the saints that He died for, then you are in danger
of bringing God’s judgement down upon yourself.
This is very serious, and this is no place for
religious hypocrites, who are using religion to
impress people, but who are unwilling to die to
self, pick up their cross and follow the Messiah.
For
this reason many among you are weak and sick,
and a number sleep. Paul was able to discern
that God had been bringing judgment upon many
of the Corinthian believers for their sinful attitudes.
The judgment of the Lord who kills and who makes
alive had allowed many to become weak, and sick,
and various people died.
God can
and does bring weakness and sickness and death
to sinful believers who aren’t heading His
correction. Why was God doing this to them? Because
He is a cruel? Because He doesn’t care about
our suffering? No - quite the opposite - He was
judging them so that they would be corrected,
and not keep on going in the selfish, worldly
direction they were headed, demonstrating themselves
to be fit for Hell like the rest of the world.
But
if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be
judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined
by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along
with the world. The Corinthians Believers
were not judging themselves. They were satisfied
with their sins and comfortable with their selfishness.
But God wasn’t satisfied with the way they
were, and like a good Father, He was disciplining
them.
So
then, my brothers, when you come together to eat,
wait for one another. This doesn’t
make sense in the context of Passover, when the
family eats togther in their home. It only makes
sense in a congregation meal where people bring
their own food. The Corinthians should show respect
for their brothers and sisters by waiting for
each other and eating together.
If
anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that
you will not come together for judgment.
If they come only to satisfy their physical craving
and not to eat and drink in the presence of the
Lord and in the presence of His people, then they
should eat their meal at home, for otherwise God
will judge them in some way.
It’s
never wrong for a congregation to assemble together,
eat bread together, and thank God for Messiah,
the Bread of Life, drink wine, and remember Messiah’s
blood that was shed.
It is
my understanding that from very earliest times
the Church understood that the Lord’s Supper
was part of a regular congregational meal.
It is
my understanding that the majority of the Messianic
congregations in Israel celebrate the Lord's Supper
once a month. Normally, the first Sabbath of the
month is chosen. An almost equal number of groups
observe the Lord's Supper either every week, or
every second week.
As often
as we eat together, it’s appropriate to
eat bread, and remember Yeshua, the Bread of Life,
the Living Bread that God sent from Heaven. When
we drink wine at our congregational meals, it’s
right and proper to remember Messiah’s blood
that was shed for us on Passover, enabling Jews
and Gentiles to enter into the New Covenant relationship
with God, and to thank God for Messiah, and bless
Him with this cup of blessing.
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