Breaking Bread: Understanding Communion

You're listening to the Bible guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. We're back. We are back better than ever. We never actually went anywhere, well we did. I went home after the last year. Year. Yeah, wrap exactly. But we're back now, back in the studio, in the studio, excited talk about the Bible with you guys, and then also to do this segment. That's right. So this is is we're talking about today the last supper you know, in the in the scripture. That's right. So Desiree says, my question for you both is this what would you want to have as your last meal? Oh? I gotta tell you that's a tough one. First of all, that's like a death row question. Well, that's exactly it. When if you read somebody on death row, you always go last meal. Yeah, what would you like to order? I don't know. She is like from anywhere anything. I mean, I mean, I guess if it's a death row question, you're allowed to request anything, allowed to request anything. Okay, So my default is something with mashed potatoes. That's my that's usually. But if it was my very last meal, I think I would want Connie's pizza from Chicago, so of all the Chicago style pizzas, Conniess is my favorite, and everybody else says that Connie's isn't the best, it's just dumb. And then I would want to add to that a Ricabines bread and steak sandwich. And they're rayed across, like just down the street from each other, so you could get them both for me. Wow. Yeah, it's amazing. The bread and steak sandwiches. They take an Italian roll, they slice it. They take a pounded piece of steak that's really good, and they bred it and then fry it, roll it. Yeah, and then they put sauteed onions and peppers in a mozzarella melt on top. It's so good, and then they throw it under the broilery real quick, put it back out. But oh and the breaded steak is dipped in marinara. It's unbelievable sandwich. Wow. Yeah, as a matter of fact, you be an Italian. It's all the things you like, right, it's just not in the meatball, that's right, right. Wow, it's fantastic. So that's me. So I would imagine that if I was on if I were on death row, that the most significant meal for me would be a meal that brought me back to my childhood, just my favorite meal as a child. So if my wife were alive, I would request her to make it homemade. But if that situation wasn't possible, and I would imagine if I'm on death row, maybe it wouldn't be accommodating. But if she were willing to make it my last meal, I would request homemade wedding soup for my wife. Yeah, that's good soup. Who's who makes my moms? Who makes my grandma's? Uh? And then also home made ravioli with some homemade met bolls. You've mentioned ravioli a bunch of times. Yep, yeah, soul it was it was the it was the meal of our youth. And so Christmas Christmas meal or Thanksgiving Christmas meal. Yeah so uh so I would you know, spaghetti more oftentimes than that. But but I would say, and then also if if my wife weren't available because I was on death row, because I perhaps maybe you know, murdered her, brilliant that's why you're on death row. Maybe I don't know. So if she's not, you can't just be an old man in the hospital. Note, you're on death row because he killed your wife. That may be indicative, That may be indicative of what's going on inside of scenario. And you said, yes, it's a death this is going to turn into a true crime podcast is going to do? Uh? If my wife was not available for my last meal, I would do it from Anton's from Youngstown, Ohio, who has phenomenal items that I've just described. Okay, all right, which, by the way, Antone's would be the place that I went the day I was saved. Oh well, so the start of my start of my well, I just want to go on the record to say, because I know Liz listens to this show, I think Liz is more likely to kill you than you are to kill this Yeah, that's a good call. That's a good call. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't go home today if that's so funny. What do you mean today's Valentie. I got to go home, not for our listeners. Vale great fun So watch out, Liz, I guess. So yeah. Wow. The good news is I'm not going to spoil Valentine later. Yeah, that's right. You're gonna get in trouble later. Still be fine. That's that's right. She won't know. I won't. I won't tell her. That's hysterical, that's funny. Hey, listen, if you're watching YouTube, would you do us a favor? Would you subscribe to it? Would you definitely put a thumbs up? What would you share with somebody? Because it'll really help us with the metrics, It helps us in every way, and also it exposes our podcast to those who who knows might want to listen to it, So we appreciate that very much. Well, we are going to be reading today talking about what we call the Last Supper, and this is where the idea of communion comes from these passages, and there's also betraying here. So there's a lot to cover, that's right. So we're going to get ready to it. There's a lot of verses to read. Yep. But I think everybody understand why because it's Matthew, Mark Luke, and John we cover all these things. Yeah, and rightfully. So it was a pretty important event. When it was evening, Jesus sat down at the table with the twelve disciples and while they were eating, he said, I tell you the truth. One of you will betray me. Greatly distressed, each one asked in turn, am I the One? Lord? He replied, one of you who has just eaten from this bowl with me will betray me? For the son of man must die, as the scriptures declared, long go, how terrible it'll be for the one who betrays him. It'll be far better for that man if he had never been born. Judas, the one who would betray him, also asked, rab i, am I the One? And Jesus told him, you've said it. As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it, and then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, take this and eat it, for this is my body. And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them and said, each of you drink from it, for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It's poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many. Mark my words. I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. Then they sang hymn and went out to the Mount of olives. That was Matthew chapter twenty six, verses twenty through thirty. Mark chapter fourteen, verse seventeen says in the evening, Jesus arrived with the twelve disciples, and as they were at the table eating, Jesus said, I tell you the truth. One of you eating with me here will betray me. Greatly distressed, each one asked him in turn, am I the one? And replied, it is one of you twelve who is eating from this bowl with me. For the son of man must die, as the scriptures declared long ago. By how terrible it will be for the one who betrays him, would be far better for that man if he'd never been born. As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it, and then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, take it, for this is my body. And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it, and he gave it to them, and they all drank from it, and he said to them, this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It's poured out as a sacrifice for many. I tell you the truth. I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new in the Kingdom of God. And then they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives. Luke chapter twenty two, verse fourteen says when the time came, Jesus and the apostles sat down together at the table, and Jesus said, I have been very eager to eat this passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won't eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God. Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, take this and share it among you, for I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come. He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, this is my body which is given for you do this to remember me. After supper, he took another cup of wine and said, this cup is the new covenant between God and his people, an agreement confirmed with my blood, which has poured out as a sacrifice for you. But here at this table, sitting among us as a friend is the man who will betray me. For it has been determined that the son of man must die. But what sorrow awaits the one who betrays him. The disciples began to ask each other which of them would ever do such a thing. Then they began to argue among themselves who would be the greatest among them. And Jesus told them, in this world the kings and great men lorded over their people, yet they are called friends of the people. But among you it'll be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant, who is more important the one who sits at the table, or the one who serves the one who sits at the table. Of course, but not here, for I am among you as one who serves. You have stayed with me in my time of trial. And just as my father has granted me a kingdom, I now grant you the right to eat and drink at my table. In my kingdom, you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And then in John thirteen, verse twenty one, it says, now Jesus was deeply troubled and he exclaimed, I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me. The disciples looked at each other, wondering whom he could mean. And the disciples the disciple Jesus loved was sitting next to Jesus at the table. Simon Peter motioned to him and asked, who's he talking about? So that disciple leaned over to Jesus and asked, Lord, who is it. Jesus responded, it is the one to whom I give the bread I dip in the bowl. And then when he had dipped it, he gave it to Judas, son of Simon, his carriot. When Judas had eaten the bread, Satan entered into him, and then Jesus told him, hurry and do what you're going to do. None of the others at the table knew what Jesus meant, since Judas was their treasurer. Some thought Jesus was time him to go and pay for the food or to give some money to the poor. So Judas left at once, going out into the night. Wow. Yeah, that was a lot. Yeah, and so a lot of significant moments here. And where do you want to start? Man? We should start with explaining what this passover is perhaps, yeah, because all the other elements are built around this passover. Yeah, sure, well g is so, I mean it comes from Exodus chapter what was it, I don't know, fifteen or so. I don't know when the tank commandments are given in chapter twenty, So it's before that where the children of Israel were delivered out of Egypt. And it was really a symbol of the last plague. The last plague was God said he's going to come down and he's gonna take the first born unless you put the lamb over the door. So they basically kill everybody, killed a lamb who believed and actually put it on the posts on the side and across the top. And then when I don't know, it was God who actually went through that, and actually when he saw the lamb, he would pass over them. When he saw the blood of the lamb spilt, he would pass over them. And so that was a picture of Jesus, right, So the picture of Jesus is blood on the posts of the cross. When his blood is shed and sacrificed, just like the sacrificial lamps, then the judgment for sin will be passed over us because it's paid for and sacrificed for by the blood of the lamb. So here they are celebrating this, I mean, just thousands of years later, and still it carries the significance. And so imagine that. So this thing gets put into place thousands of years earlier, but for God, who exists out of time, for him, it's a blip, right. But yet his children, you know, his children, the children of Israel, they've celebrated this for thousands of years. And then appropriately Jesus has come about to give his life and he's pouring out communion and only he realizes the significance of this moment. That's right, that's right. It's crazy. Yeah, So that lamb had to be the perfect lamb, right, had to be without blemish. And then this idea was when the death Angel came, that he would pass over the homes to whom you know on the door posts and on the mantle above which kind of forms a cross by the way, which is an interesting thing, and he would pass over those homes. But the homes that were not covered in the blood, then the firstborn would die and that was the judgment of God. And then this symbolized their freedom because this was when Pharaoh finally surrendered and said, okay, God's people can go. And he now instead of just letting them go, he demands they leave. And so then freedom comes because of what happened here. So the instructions from God it passed over was that they were supposed to sacrifice this lamb, use the blood, you know, use a branch to put the blood on the door posts, and then they were to roast the lamb, and then they were to make this very specific meal. They made the bread without any leavin in it. They didn't have time to let it rise, right, so you're not going to take hours and hours to make it. You're gonna make a flat bread essentially, And so they made a flat bread, and then they had these different bitterers essentially, these different kinds of herbs and things in the meal. And so it was a very precise meal that for thousands of years, that passover style meal was exactly the same without and they still do it today, right, and so it was very very precise. So this meal for them would be similar. It would be the celebration of the fact that they were free, freed by God. It was a celebration of the fact that the lamb paid the price so that the people didn't have to die all those things, and it was celebrated as enthusiastically as we might celebrate Thanksgiving right, right, and you would look forward to it. So every family has their traditions as to the foods you have at Thanksgiving, and you look forward to those same foods. You know, you know what the meal is going to be. When I go to my mom and Dad's, I know what we're having. I can already tell you before you go, and I get excited about it. I look forward to it. Because so the passover meal for every family was basically exactly the same. So when he takes this bread and he breaks the bread and then he passes it to everybody, this would have been like a flatbread or maybe even closer to a cracker, right, But a flat bread and no leaven in it. Well, Jesus has already given other illustrations where the leaven represents sin. Right. That's why he's saying, this bread represents my body. I'm sin less, right, So when you eat this bread, you're remembering that I gave my body for you. My body was sinless, which meant I could pay the price for your sin because I never did sin. Right, and then the same thing the blood, the wine pours out that represents my blood. I'm paying the price for you, just like that last passover, Lamb paid the price, which is consistent with what John had said earlier at the very beginning of jesus ministry, and he said, behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. It's pretty amazing this picture that God has been creating. He created it thousands of years prior, and all this time they were reminding themselves of what it was, but they didn't understand it. And then finally Jesus shows up and fulfills every element of the picture that God was trying to tell the people all along. So when I was in Bible College, I wrote one of my last, you know, thesis papers on this idea of communion and so, and we don't normally tackle what different denominations believe, but communion is generally the one thing that is practiced by almost all churches as an ordinance, and some people are pretty confused by it. So I just want to make a quick reference. So there's a fancy word called transubstantiation that or priests would believe or maybe another religious leader might believe that they have the power to turn the literal bread and and and uh and cup into flesh and wine or flesh and blood, which is a very different belief than what I believe. And so literal flesh of God, I mean, I mean, I don't want to be too lighthearted about it, but that that's sort of like we're all vampires, right, So so but that was what I sort of grew up believing and practicing and things like that, uh and and And it's based on the fact that Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood. But you know, Jesus was speaking in metaphors of course, because you know, he literally refers to it as wine. Even after he says that he says, I want to drink of this wine again, right, I will not drink of wine again. He doesn't say blood again, right right, So so that argument falls apart. But you know, just remember this that Jesus spoke in metaphors all the time, and so I always I always say that's when I teach communion. But I always say, Jesus said I am the door. But Jesus was not a physical door that you cannot open him and close in with a doorknob. Right, Jesus said, I am the gate. He was not a gate. Jesus said, I am the rock. Jesus was not a rock, right, And so it's just all those different kinds of kinds of things. So when Jesus said, you know, this is my blood, he was referring to the cup representing the symbolism of what the blood means, in the same way that the rock had representation and sort of the gate and sort of the door. So so anyway, all that to say, you know, when we observe communion, what we do the purpose of communion is to reflect on because he says, as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me. And what he's saying is the purpose of communion is to remember the sacrifice that has made you know for you, his blood was shed for you, right, like there's a price for your sin, right, and it's been paid. You know, there's there's a price that was paid for your sin by his flesh, you know, being torn up and and being ripped apart, just as he's ripping this bread. And so Jesus sacrificed for you. And then my last thing to teach communion would be frequency because he says, as often as you do this, which means it is left up to you, as as a body of believers, how often you wish to observe it. Because he doesn't give frequency, he says, as often as you do this. Yeah, his assumption would be because he's talking to Jewish Men, his assumption would be it would be every passover, every passover. So there's some people say, oh, no, you have to do it every Sunday. Some people say you have to do it once a month, right, Some people say you have to do it every quarter. Some people would say just whenever you want to do it. Jesus assumption for these guys would be next passover, just remember passovers all about me, and then your next passover, just remember passovers all about me. It was it was an annual event for them, right, which is once a year, certainly, and so and so, Yeah, there's no so if you do it more than once a year, that's it's not what Jesus was thinking at the moment, right, But it happens to fit inside of the statement as often right whenever, whenever you do it? Yeah, And for and for people who grew up with a tradition of once a week. They'll come to and since our church and they'll be like, we don't do it often enough. And by the way, just as a side note, if you do attend Heritage our church. The last couple of years, we've been doing it six times a year, so every other month on the average. There's no exactness to that, but we do it when we feel like we can really utilize and really teach on it and actually plan around the moment. So the Last Supper or the Lord's Supper or Communion is all built on the Passover. Right, So it was an event. It would be like Thanksgiving dinner. It would be like fourth of July, it would be like Christmas, right, and so you don't celebrate Thanksgiving dinner in February, right, right, So for these guys, these guys, these twelve, they would not have thought of it as anything other than next year when we do Passover, we'll get it. The bread represents Jesus body, right, and the wine represents Jesus blood. Yeah, because because even today if and we're about to do this with the elders, right, when you have a person for instance, it was always for us the Jews for Jesus where they come and they lay out a perfect passover meal, and then you begin to understand the significance of the rituals that everything laid God or God laid out in that in that meal now has representation. They're connected to they're connected the prophecies, and they're connected to everything that Jesus fulfilled and represents. And then you know not to make light of it, but it does mention that Jesus says, hey, one of you is going to betray me? How devastating is this? Right? Oh yeah, And they're all whispering, is it me? Is it? Me? Is me? And I love John right? So of all of them. So, so all four books, Matthew is writing from Matthew's perspective. Mark is writing from Peter's perspective. Right we we've already established that he was probably Peter's secretary. Luke is writing from an investigative reporters perspective, so he he's followed up and interviewed people to be able to write this story. John's writing from his perspective, and he goes in the disciple Jesus loves right right, which is him? It is so funny, is right, right, He can't say and I right because and he tends to do this when Peter is also mentioned, which is so funny. So John is the youngest and Peter is the oldest of the disciples. Yes, and so it's so funny. Here he goes, so the disciple Jesus loved was sitting next to him at the table. As a matter of fact. In the original Greek it says he was reclining on Jesus boosom, right, So he was leaning up against Jesus, right, right, They would have been sitting on the floor, that's right. So they're sitting on the floor, and he's leaning up against Jesus, you know, and whatever. And Peter goes, hey, what was he talking about? You mean John? Yeah? No, no, no, Peter, Peter, Simon. Peter motion to him, who's he talking about? And Peter John goes, I got I got this right, Yeah, Hey, Jesus, who is it? So? And then Jesus answers him. Jesus is like, okay, I'll give you a hand, the one who I dip the bread and give it to, right, And then it's Simon. It's Judas is Scariot. And another version tells us that it was called sop, right, which is where you basically it's like it's like a dip. It's like something that it's like being at Carabas and they put the little spices in with a little bit of oil and you take it and you dip it in. Well, this probably would have been more with like a bitters is what they had, So it would have been oily and like an oil with a bidder to it. Hey that sounds Italian, yeah yeah, and so yeah. So then he dips it and he gives it to Judas and then he says it would be far better for them not to be born. So there's a heavy statement, and it says that Satan entered into him in that moment. Right. So it's interesting everything that Judas has done up to this point, while Satan might have been tempting him, he was choosing to do it himself. This is his own choice. And then at this point the Bible says he's possessed. Well, I almost what you're gonna do, go do quickly, and I almost you know, my mind goes to the spiritual realm, you know, in the battles where it's like it's like Satan's observing maybe perhaps, and then all of a sudden he finds out Jesus knows right, and he's like, I'm not going to let this opportunity pass. So Satan takes over and says, this is happening. Yep, right, yep, So yeah, I mean, I don't I don't know. I just I'm supposing obviously. And now we're kind of racing through these stories. So tomorrow Jesus is going to predict Peter's denial, and yeah, we're going to hitdle all these stories that you know about the end of jesus life here on Earth before his resurrection. Yeah, well that looks like our time, And so we covered a whole heck of a lot, didn't we We did. Yeah, just we kind of really just kind of skimmed it is what we did. Yeah, we did. But we'll see you next time on the Bible, guys,