One of the things I love most about celebrating the Lord’s Supper together is that it presents so many different aspects of Jesus – past, present, and future. It is certainly appropriate that we use the Lord’s Supper as a reminder of what Jesus did for us when he died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. The bread and cup are a powerful object lesson that remind us of the price God paid in order for us to have a relationship with Him.
There is also the present aspect of the Lord’s Supper that causes us to reflect on our own relationship with God and to make sure that we have dealt with the sin in our lives so that we would not take the elements in an unworthy manner. I hope that you have developed a habit in your life of constantly bringing your life before God, not just to prepare for the Lord’s Supper, but to maintain your fellowship with Him on a consistent basis.
Perhaps the most neglected aspect of the Lord’s Supper is the future element of the observance. And so that’s where I want us to focus our time together this morning.
We’ll begin this morning by reading Matthew’s account of the Passover meal that Jesus shared with his followers shortly before His crucifixion:
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
Matthew 26:26-29 (ESV)
Before we begin to pass the bread in just a moment let me share a word of instruction and warning. The Bible is quite clear that only those who have committed their lives to Jesus as Lord and Savior are to partake of the Lord’s Supper. So if you’ve made that decision, regardless of whether or not you are a member of this church, we invite you to join us in taking the bread and the cup.
However, if you have not yet made that commitment in your life, we ask that you refrain from taking the bread and the cup. We certainly encourage you to participate otherwise. In fact, it is our prayer that God will use this time to draw your heart to Him.
Matthew records that on that night, Jesus took the bread, blessed it, and then divided it among His followers.
[Elder prayer]
Pass the bread (recorded music in background)
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”
Eat bread.
We’re going to take a little more time to focus this morning on verse 29 where Jesus told His disciples that He would not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the day when He would drink it with them in His Father’s kingdom. What exactly did Jesus mean by that and how should that impact the way that we live our lives right here and now? And most importantly for us this morning, how should this impact the way we observe the Lord’s Supper?
As I think I’ll be able to demonstrate quite clearly this morning, there is little doubt in my mind that Jesus is referring in that verse to what is known as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, which is described for us in Revelation 19:
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,
“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”
Revelation 19:6-9 (ESV)
It would be real easy for us to get caught up today in a number of issues related to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Things like when exactly it will occur and other similar details. But that would only serve to distract from our worship. We’ll deal with those issues at the appropriate time in our study of the Book of Revelation. But this morning I want us to merely focus on the connection between the Lord’s Supper and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
In order to do that, we need to understand the nature of a Jewish wedding in the time of Jesus. It was much different than the typical wedding that we experience in our culture today and if we don’t understand those differences it is going to be impossible for us to make the connection between the Lord’s Supper and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
The Jewish Wedding Process:
1. The contract
The marriage process began with the establishment of a contract which was negotiated between the families. Included in the contract was the “bride price”, which is similar to a dowry. In that culture the “bride price” represented an appropriate amount to compensate the parents for raising their daughter as well as being an expression of love of the groom toward his bride.
2. The acceptance
Once the contract was agreed upon, the young groom would pour a glass of wine for his beloved. If she accepted the marriage proposal, she would drink the glass of wine to indicate her acceptance. If she did not drink the wine, the marriage contract was immediately cancelled.
3. The betrothal
Once the bride drank the cup of wine, the betrothal period commenced. The betrothal was legally binding and it required a divorce, based on proper grounds such as infidelity, in order to break the contract. We see this in the account of Mary and Joseph when Joseph decided he was going to divorce Mary even though the wedding itself had not yet taken place.
The betrothal period would normally last between one and two years, for some reasons that will become apparent in a moment.
4. The preparation of the wedding chamber
After the acceptance, the young groom announced that he was going to prepare a place for his bride and that he would return for her when it was ready. He would then return to his parents’ house where he would build a wedding chamber or honeymoon room there. The room had to be constructed well and get his father’s approval before he could return for his bride. So if someone were to ask him the date of the wedding, he would reply “only my father knows.”
In the meantime, the bride would also be preparing herself for the wedding. She would partake in a Mikveh, or a cleansing bath. She would purchase expensive cosmetics and learn to apply them in order to make herself beautiful for her husband. Her mother would teach her about what would be expected of her as a wife. During this time, she was consecrated, or set apart, and she had to wear a veil whenever she was in public so that others would know that she was betrothed.
Since she didn’t know when the groom would return for her, she had to always be ready. Because the groom would typically come for her in the middle of the night, she had to have her lamp and her belongings ready all the time. And her sisters and/or bridesmaids, who also had to be virgins, also had to have the wicks trimmed in anticipation of the coming of the groom.
5. The wedding
When the wedding chamber was ready, the groom could go to claim his wife. As I mentioned, this typically took place in the middle of the night. As the groom, along with his friends, approached the house of his bride they would shout out and blow the shofar, the ram’s horn to let her know they were approaching so that she would be ready.
When the wedding party arrived at father’s house the newlyweds went into the wedding chamber for a seven day honeymoon and the groom’s best friend stood outside waiting for the groom to tell him that the marriage had been consummated. The family and friends would celebrate for the seven days while the bride and groom enjoyed their honeymoon. At the end of that period, the husband would bring out his bride and introduce her to the community.
6. The marriage supper
After the seven day honeymoon, the wedding process concluded with the marriage supper. This was a time of joyous celebration and feasting. It would have been at such a marriage supper that Jesus performed his first miracle by turning water into wine.
As I’ve described this process, if you’re anything like me, you’ve had a number of Scripture passages come to mind that are directly related to this process and that can only be understood correctly by keeping this process in mind.
Obviously, we can’t even begin to scratch the surface on all those passages, but we will be coming back to many of them in the weeks to come. So what I want us to do this morning is to focus more narrowly on how this process helps us to understand Jesus’ comment in Matthew 26:29 and how that ties in with the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19.
Implications for the Lord’s Supper
Although the primary context of the meal Jesus shared with His disciples was the Passover, His followers would have also been familiar with the Jewish wedding process. And when Jesus offered the cup to them there in the upper room, they understood the symbolism of the cup both in the context of the Passover and the marriage process.
Jesus had established a contract with His followers and He was about to pay the “bride price” on their behalf as an expression of His love for them. And when He offered them the glass of wine, they now had to choose whether or not they were going to accept the contract. And if you read the gospel accounts carefully, you will find that one of the twelve never did drink of the cup. After dipping his bread, which would have occurred in the Passover meal prior to drinking the cup of redemption, which occurred after the meal, Judas left to betray Jesus, so he never accepted Jesus’ offer. But the other eleven did exactly that when they drank the cup.
And at least part of what we do each time we take the cup is to acknowledge to Jesus that we, too, are accepting the salvation that He has offered to us by paying the “bride price” on our behalf.
And when Jesus said that he would not drink of the fruit of the vine again until He would drink it with them in His Father’s kingdom, He clearly has the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in mind. And His disciples, even without the benefit of having the Book of Revelation which describes that feast, would have understood what Jesus was saying based on their familiarity with this prophecy of Isaiah:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
Isaiah 25:6-9 (ESV)
In that prophecy, Isaiah described a time when God would prepare a great feast for the people of all nations who He has saved through the shed blood of Jesus. And at that feast, Jesus, along with His followers, will once again drink the well-aged wine for the first time since He ascended to be with the Father after His resurrection,.
So this morning, as we take the cup, it is also to be a time of anticipation, as we look forward to that time when Jesus will invite us to the table to partake of the cup in His presence.
Implications for our present lives
But there is an important implication for us right here and now as we await that day. Let’s return once again to Revelation 19, focusing this time just on the end of verse 7 and verse 8:
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
John is describing us in that passage. We are the bride of Christ and we are to be preparing ourselves for the time when the groom, Jesus, returns for us. And in this verse, we find what is required of us during this time of preparation.
This passage is one of the clearest in the Bible that describes the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s volition. On one hand we, as the bride are to clothe ourselves with the fine linen that represents our righteous deeds. But we are only able to do that because we have been granted the ability to do that by God. Notice that “it was granted to her to clothe herself”.
A couple other familiar passages that reinforce that same principle come to mind:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (ESV)
The entire process of salvation is a gift from God. Even our ability to have faith in Jesus is not of our own doing. But as a result of being given that gift, we have a responsibility to choose to use that gift for the purpose of carrying out God’s work here on earth – or as John describes it in Revelation, as the “righteous deeds of the saints”.
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Philippians 2:12, 13 (ESV)
We see the same principle at work here. It is only God working in us that gives us both the wisdom to know what pleases Him and the power to carry it out. But we are the ones who are responsible to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling as we carry out the “righteous deeds of the saints.”
So, as we take the cup today, we acknowledge Jesus’ work in our life and the gift of salvation. But there is also a sense in which we are also making a commitment to Him to live our lives in a way that we consistently carry out the “righteous deeds of the saints” to the very best of our ability while we await His return.
[Elder prayer]
Passing of the cup (recorded music in background)
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Drink the cup
