First Lords Supper at NMBC

10/5/01 Im sure they saw the connection between the feast of Passover and the Lamb of God. Exodus 12. Passover was the last of the ten plagues. Pharaoh would not allow the Jews to leave so God told Moses that He would send the death angel to kill every first-born Egyptian. God told the Jews to kill a lamb, take some of its blood and put it on the door and lintel of their homes. When the death angel saw the blood he would Pass over. Hence the name. The blood of the lamb became the symbol of salvation. The body of the lamb was then eaten by the people. Jesus was obviously the Lamb! In fact when John saw Jesus coming toward him at the Jordan River he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. So the lamb made sense! But Jesus wasnt holding up a piece of Mutton. He was holding a piece of bread. Unleavened bread.

The Lords Supper

The Bread of Life
1 Corinthians 11:23,24 A gentle wind moved through the 2 story window of that quiet room. The heat of the Middle Eastern day had finally yielded to the dry cool night. Thirteen exhausted men circled a table. They lay on the floor in various positions. The gentle aromas of roasted lamb and fresh bread still hung in the air. One of the group wiped the grease from his chin and stabbed at the meat between his teeth with a bit of wood. One of the others rubbed his feet, pondering the embarrassing lesson on servanthood hed just been given. Outside the city was unusually still. The night was holy and virtually every person was indoors with their family reenacting the ancient ceremony of Moses called Passover. The only sounds were a passing voice or two, the rattling of pots and the wail of a dog howling at the spring moon. Back inside Jesus fumbled with some of the remaining bread. He slowly lifted it into view and tore off a piece. He looked at his men, said a Prayer and then presented the bread to them in one more of his many object lessons, This is my body which is for you; do this in remembrance of me! 1 Corinthians 11:24 Twelve brains churned to make sense of that. Theyd been with Jesus for three years. They were quite familiar with His word pictures and parables. Most of the time theyd misunderstood them. They didnt want to blow it again, so they worked hard to solve the puzzle. Bread . . . Bread. How is the bread like His body? Think what it must have been like to hear those words for the first time. Work on it. Feel with them. Dont take it for granted just because youve heard it a thousand times. They must have struggled to sort it our, This bread is my body! Does he mean that the bread is actually His body? Surely not. I can see him right there and his body is still there! So it couldnt actually be His body. It must represent His body. But how? Why? 1
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The Bread Meant Purity

Exodus 12:15 The unleavened bread went back to that same ritual started by Moses. ON the first day of the Feast of Passover the Jewish women scoured their homes for any leaven. They were told to remove the leaven from their homes. This signified the purification from sin. After the Passover Sacrifice the removal of leaven. The symbolism for the Christian life is easy to see. Passover is salvation. After salvation we allow the Holy Spirit to search our lives for sin and get it out. We see it now. But remember they were the first audience to get this lesson. Unleavened bread. Whats he saying? Is he saying, Im holy, pure. Thats it. But that couldnt be all of it.

The Bread Meant Fulfillment

John 6:35. I am the bread of life. No Hunger. Context. People following Jesus. Interesting side not. Bethlehem. Beth, Lahem. House. Of bread. The bread of life was born in the house of Bread. So if means fulfillment.

First Lords Supper at NMBC But it means even more.

10/5/01 Ill. . .Walter Wangerin wrote an intriguing little book entitled, The Ragman. He said there was once a ragman who would go through the city and cry out, Give me your rags. Wangerin describes the ragman as a large fit man, 64 with arms like trees and muscular hands. As he went through the city he would cry out, Rags, new Rags for Old. I take your tired rags! Rags! So the person telling the story followed the Ragman on his daily rounds. A woman came sobbing. She handed the ragman her rag and immediately her shoulders stopped shaking. Her tears dried up. She was free of whatever pain made her weep. The ragman, on the other hand was crying uncontrollably. We went on through the city crying as he pushed his cart of rags. A girl with a bloody bandage on her head came next. The ragman gave her a new rag and the bleeding stopped. He put the bandage on himself and his head started to bleed. Next came a man missing an arm. They traded coats. The arm was restored. The ragman was armless. Then came a drunk. The ragman took his blanket and left cloths. Listen to the way Wangerin described it: And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old, and sick, yet he went with terrible speed. On spiders legs he skittered through the alleys of the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed beyond. I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such hast, perhaps to know what drove him so. The little old Ragman he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And then I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. The he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket, and he died. Oh, how I cried to witness that death! I slumped in a junked care and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.

The Bread Meant Substitution

When Jesus held up that bread and said, This is my body for you, he meant, I will substitute my body for yours! The KJV inserts the word Broken. This is my body broken for you. But in the original language the word, Broken isnt there. The word is hyper. It meant on behalf of. Literally, this is my body on behalf of you. You can supply the verb that fits, which is given, broken or will die. They took the notion of broken because he broke the bread. NASV translates it which is for you. . . In the gospel of Luke the same statement is translated, This is my body given for you. I apologize if this sounds like splitting hairs, but it is important. Wrapped up in that little expression is the whole idea of the substitutionary atonement. His life, substituted for ours. Christ gave his body for YOU! The unleavened bread demonstrates that the life he gave for you was a sinless life. The only suitable sacrifice. You had to have a sacrifice because you were under judgment! The doctrine of judgment is like the old threadbare joke youve probably heard. The doctor calls the patient and says, I have some bad news and some really bad news which do you want first? The man says, Give me the bad news. The doctor replies, You only have 24 hours to live. The guy says thats terrible, what could possibly be worse than that? The doctor replied, Well. . . I tried to reach you all day yesterday. Sin and judgment are like getting bad news and worse news. The bad news is that the wages of sin is death. Every sin will be judged. There is no level or degree to sin. And even one is enough to earn a death sentence. Thats the bad news. The really bad news is that all have sinned. All includes every person walking on the planet who has reached the age of accountability. All people will sin. So everyone, including you, is under the judgment of death! But unlike the bad joke, there is good news about judgment. The good news is that God loved you so much that he sent a substitute to take your place! Jesus is your substitute. When he lifted that bread and said this is my body for you, he meant, I am about to take on your pain. 2

First Lords Supper at NMBC 10/5/01 I did not know how could I know? that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night, too. But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence. Light pure, hard, demanding light lamed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow nor of age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness. Well, then I lowered my head and, trembling for all that I had see, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice: Dress me. He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a 1 wonder beside him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ! Thats what Jesus meant when he lifted up the bread and said, This is my body given for you. He took the full consequences of your sin upon himself. He became sin and all its pain instead of you. By using the bread Jesus said, My life for yours.

Walter Wangerin, The Ragman and Other Tales of Faith.