The Lord’s Table (cont)

(Heb. 13: 10, 1 Cor. 5: 7-8)

 I am seeing that the Lord has an eternal table always available for communion.  We can always come to Him in that sense of sitting at a table with Him.  Years ago, having understood and entered a relationship, a fellowship, with Him, I would share meals with Jesus.  If I were eating lunch alone I would be aware of His presence.  This was in faith; no special sense was felt but I would take a conscious posture that He was right there with me.  He is omnipresent, whether we are aware or not.  How often then would His presence manifest itself in some way, and I would experience, I would know, that presence.  Read Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God.  It is a classic that keeps us aware that what is new for us, has always been.  He is the great I AM.

Paul wrote to the church that the those who follow the law have no right, no basis, to share the Lord’s table.  See Hebrews 13, especially verse 10.  To those among us who are in some measure following the letter of the scriptures, a greater reality awaits you.  An altar exists, where we eat His flesh and drink His blood.  This is what Jesus shared with those at that last meal. It is the sprit that gives life.  The entire book of Hebrews addresses the coming out of the shadows.  We are all still in this process of setting our affections fully on that which is above, which is heavenly.  We are pursuing Him as He is continually possessing us to be fit representations of Himself.  See Phil. 1:6 and 3:14.

To those at Corinth, Paul wrote that Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.  He Himself is the fulfillment of that feast.  We are told to do this, share this table and only two elements are used, bread and wine.  Where is the Lamb?  He Himself is the Lamb.  Where are the bitter herbs?  He took and ate the bitterness, absorbed all the bitterness for us.  Only bread and wine are served.  Most important to see that we live in a new covenant reality.  The words that I speak to you (rhema) are spirit and they are life, Jesus said.  The flesh profits nothing.  The tearing of His flesh and His death were to taste death for every man.  The death He died, He died once for all.  If Christ died for all than all died.  We are all (have been) dead in trespasses and sins.  He has made us alive in His life. He is bringing a people past this earthly life to overcome death.

My point here with these fragments of Jesus’ own words, and Paul’s, are to emphasize that it is the Spirit that gives life.  Jesus shared a most significant meal with those present with Him before that sacrifice was consummated.  This is that altar referred to in Hebrews 13:10.  Do you see the difference between the altar of the covenant of the law, passing away, and Christ Himself as our altar?  It is superseded by a greater reality.  It was manifest visibly in this earthly realm that we might know the love of God for us.  We are invited to that same table.  To those who are lukewarm, or asleep, He invites us to wake up and sit at the table with Him.  He knocks at the door of Laodicea, and says if we open, He will sup with us and we with Him.

In the life of David, this welcome to the Lord’s table is exemplified in the story of Mephibosheth.  David had promised Jonathan, Saul’s son, that he would always take care of Jonathan’s family.  Jonathan’s life is a unique story in itself but we must stay focused.  Mephibosheth was crippled and fearful of David because he knew that his grandfather Saul had persecuted him.  But David loved him and actually sought him out.  Sounds like Jesus pursuit of us, yes?  Before we know Him, He loves us and is pursuing, by the Spirit.  He is the good shepherd who seeks out the one who is lost.  Like Mephibosheth, we are all crippled in some way, unable to pursue Him.  That man was the crippled because of trouble in an earthly family, in this present imperfect world.  David sought him out and determined he, the crippled one, would sit at his table forever.  So it is with Jesus Christ, our David, He sets a table for us and says come and sit with Me in my Father’s house, forever.  His covenant is an eternal covenant.  His communion table is an eternal table.

The Lord’s Table

(1 Cor. 11: 17-32, Ps. 23: 4)

We have glanced at the meal Jesus shared with the 12 before His betrayal.  Later Paul wrote that He received instruction from the Lord concerning this meal, that it was to be kept.  Remember that Paul spent years away pondering and processing all he had learned as a Pharisee.  He had been taught at the feet of Gamaliel.  That man had the sense to urge his fellow religious leaders to stop fighting the outpouring of the Spirit upon these Galileans.  He was more open than the rest of those religious men.  He was not far from the kingdom; I think he was on his way.

While Paul pondered much before the Lord, Jesus Himself gave instruction to this apostle, this one born out of season.  Consider this, Jesus taught Him directly.  For all of us, as He would send us into our appointed fields of true service, we can, and must, hear His voice.  The Spirit uses the Law and Prophets to teach us.  In them, Christ is revealed in so many wonderful ways.  The tabernacle, its furnishings, the ark of the covenant itself.  But all of these are a shadow of the reality that the Spirit leads us into.  It is all that we may know Christ.  To be found in Him at the end of the day was Paul’s desire.  It must become ours as well.

The Lord has been meeting His people at a table in many ways for a long time.  Moses and the elders sat before the glory of God and ate and drank before Him.  David spoke of the table set before him, in the presence of his enemies.  The table of showbread was in the tabernacle.  David understood the lovingkindness of God so he was not afraid to eat that showbread when hungry.  A quiet joy in the gift of the Lord is ours when we commune with Him and receive the bread and the wine.  He Himself is, and becomes in our experience, the bread and the wine.  We know Him, and His great love in a deeper way.  We need to discern His body as we do this and examine ourselves, by the Spirit.

While the bread represents His body to us, we may also recognize that we ourselves are His members.  We are His body here in the earth today.  Are we loving and caring for one another as the very members of Christ?  Paul’s letter reflects on this, that they were not doing well is this regard.  Are we discerning, seeing one another, as His body?  Are our shortcomings in this a reason for weakness, sickness, and sleep (death) among His body?  No guilt or shame in this, but an encouragement, an urging for greater love and caring for one another.

Paul delivered this instruction to the Corinthians.  They needed a deeper communion with the Lord Himself and an outworking of that in a true communion with one another.  Let’s face it, they were a mess and we can be like them.  But they belonged to God and Paul called them saints, sanctified ones, knowing that nature was based on God’s working, not in their behavior, immature as it was.  They were lacking in the most fundamental ingredient of maturity, love for one another.

They needed to practice very basic ways of love among themselves.  Dragging one another to law courts, seeking their own benefits to the loss in other lives were some of the problems.  Paul instructs them regarding the Lord’s meal, that table and mentions, “in the night He was betrayed.”  Betrayed to His torturers and murderers, He was.  And we moan and groan over much less and then seek to extract a tooth for a tooth.  Will we love one another, even when we see a betrayer at the table with us?  Jude writes us, warns us, that some so-called brothers at our love feasts are like clouds without rain, those having a good appearance but no substance.

More will be written here concerning a table, a place of communion.  The underlying message is this; grace, grace, and more grace.