Today's reading is from Matthew 26 verse 26. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, This is my body. Let's pray. Oh Father, we thank you for the bread of life. Father, we thank you for feeding us from heaven.

Father, what a wonderful thing it is to be called your children. Lord, we pray that you would use now the preaching of your word. Lord, use the foolishness of preaching, Lord, to convict hearts to convert souls. Father, that You would build us up and edify us. Father, we pray that You would do these things.

Bless every word that comes forth from this pulpit today and send it forth with power. Father, we pray these things for Your glory. Amen. We're now in the midst of a series of sermons on the Lord's Supper that come out of Matthew chapter 26. And last week, our focus was really on the beginning of the Passover, the imagery, the type of the Lord's Supper, the Passover.

And we spent most of our time dealing with that. This is the first issue that Matthew brings forth in the instruction that he presents on the Lord's Supper. And today we're going to focus all of our attention just on one verse. When was the last time that ever happened? Verse 26.

And then next week we'll move to the remaining parts of this text. And we have to recognize, I think, some cultural and historical realities. The Lord's Supper is not really a great matter of controversy today. It's not something that we think about that much. For many churches, they celebrate it once a month, once a quarter, maybe once a year, maybe never.

Christian churches today are like that. But if you went back 500 years, you would find that this was one of the most talked about, one of the most controversial, and one of the most dangerous subjects that you could engage in. We have to recognize that martyrs like Cranmer and Latimer and Ridley and Hooper, they were all burned at the stake for rejecting the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. So while it's not such a controversial subject here today, it is an important one. And it's one that we need to delve into.

And this whole subject, particularly the focus today on the bread, has been such a blessing to me. The most pivotal thing probably that ever happened in my life was a man who asked me. He challenged me as a very young man, just getting into high school, to read the Gospel of John. And I read the Gospel of John, and I was so amazed. I couldn't believe what I was reading, that there was a shepherd of the sheep, that there was the light of the world, that Jesus says, I am the door.

And he said, I'm the bread of life. I'll never forget those days of reading the Gospel of John. And so I've been taken back to those days of just the new discoveries of the sweetness of salvation. You know, the waters of life, the bread of life, you know, what a blessing it is to be a child of God. It takes me back to those days.

And here as we consider the words of the Lord Jesus Christ about the bread It have to have ringing in our ears. You know I am the bread of life He who comes to me shall never hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst In that verse alone is really an explanation of the whole doctrine of the Lord's Supper. And it also brings forward everything that was ever said about bread and drink in the Old Testament. And so here we are to learn more about the Lord's Supper. We celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday here and It's such a blessing to do that to just recount the gospel over and over again Particularly for me after preaching to be able to immediately go into the Lord's Supper is such a help and such a blessing and I was reading Matthew Henry in a book that he wrote on the Lord's Supper and he dated The beauty of it so well he said this Fountains of life are here broken up, wells of salvation are here opened, the stone rolled away from the wells mouth and you are called upon to come and draw water with joy.

The well is deep, but this ordinance is easy to draw upon. Let us not forsake these living streams for the stagnant water." So here we are before the doctrine of the Lord's Supper and these verses appear in the final moments of the Lord Jesus life at the climax of His ministry just two days before His going to the cross And here he's living out his mission. The Bible says that he passed through the heavens. And he is the bread sent from heaven. He's demonstrating that before his disciples, who understood the imagery.

And so you find in these verses the final moments of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what does he do? He prepares a table for his sons And he extends his hand of love toward them. And he helps us to understand the meaning of his coming. Why did God send his son to die on the cross?

And it was to prepare a table, to bring living bread to people who were dying. And so in this passage we have the imagery of the Passover, which of course was a celebration of the release of bondage from Egypt, where the children of Israel were groaning under the harsh taskmaster of Pharaoh, symbolizing the harsh taskmaster that sin is, how hard it is to kick against the goads, how the disappointments just flood your life when you reject God. And you live under Pharaoh. And he never lets you rest. He just asks for more and more and more and you get less and less and less.

And he buys you off like he did Judas for 30 piddly pieces of silver. And he gives you that kind of a reward. And the Lord Jesus, of course, is setting himself against this imagery. But this imagery of the Passover, and then the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Lamb without blemish who stands and takes the punishment for the sins of the people, calling back the picture of the priest with his hand on the goat, symbolically transferring the sin, his sin and the sin of the people onto that goat and then sacrificing. The imagery of the bread of life and the cup of blessing is just full of all of these images that are so important to understand what the Gospel is all about.

And to take the disciples back in the celebration of the Passover to that night when the death angel passed over the children of Israel because the blood was spread on the doorposts of the house and there is crying everywhere and Weeping yet not with the people of God because they were kept safe in the arms of God as a result of the protective power of the blood that was spread there. And so here, when we come to this passage, here, this one verse, we're confronted with the imagery of bread. And it's the most common thing that we do. Here the Lord brings something that really must happen every day. It's the most common thing that we do.

Everyone eats, everyone must be nourished. And here the Lord uses An amazingly simple image to help us understand what his gospel is all about. You just have to ask, what's the meaning of bread, really? What's the meaning of food? We could make a long list of what is the meaning of food.

The meaning of food is dependence. That there's something from outside of you that has to come into you to keep you alive. That you really can't keep yourself alive. Something has to come from God. Something has to come from out of his ground that he created.

We haven't figured out how to create food on our own. We have to use the things that God has already created in order to make food. And so food, at least, at minimum, takes us to the reality of how dependent we are. We're dependent on sources of help outside of ourselves. That's a great part of the meaning of the bread from heaven.

That we need bread from heaven. We need something outside of ourselves to save us. We could never save ourselves, or nourish ourselves, or refresh ourselves. Anything like God can, He is the One who's the source of nourishment and refreshment. And both these images, the bread and the wine, are these two images that bring us to the whole matter of nourishment and refreshment.

So we're brought to an image that takes us right to the bottom of our own dependence upon God. Something that we have to do. Something that we need provided for us by somebody else. Isn't that amazing? God calls his rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

And he pours out his blessing. Why does he do that? Why food? Food is designed by God to teach the human race that they need something. They need something from heaven And every time a person eats They ought to think oh lord You provided something from heaven for me to stay alive And it's amazing that God would do that to the human family to remind them every single day that they're dependent But of course men are insensible to it.

They're dead to it. They have no idea. They just keep consuming. They just keep eating. There's a story I heard long ago of a theologian who went to a diner.

He sat down. He was sitting beside another man and they were eating. And this man was a Christian and he bowed his head and he prayed and the man next to him, you know Bumped him. He said what are you doing that for? He says well, I'm giving thanks.

He said who you giving thanks to giving thanks to God Well, he says well, I don't give thanks to anybody I get myself up in the morning and I go to work and I make my money and I make my bread." And the man who prayed said, well that's exactly what my dog does. And that's exactly how people live. They live completely insensible to the gift from heaven. They just go and consume it and they have no idea that there is a God in heaven who feeds all the people in the world and This is the imagery that we have the imagery of bread bread from heaven the Lord Jesus Christ as the living example of bread from heaven, as He passed through the heavens to come and as bread from heaven for mankind. So, first of all, I want us to notice, you have an outline in front of you, the sequence of the Lord's Supper that's here.

I'd like for us to try to walk through some of these details. What we read in verse 26 is, as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. Now if you go almost anywhere in the world you'll find this exact same sequence being practiced Because we're following Jesus. We're doing what Jesus did and That's what the church is supposed to do and what you see here is sort of the sequence and the timing of the Lord's Supper. It says it happened as they were eating.

So they were eating and they were doing that common thing. They were doing something that was symbolic. They were eating. You know, Eating is symbolic. Everything that we do is symbolic, really.

I'm not sure there's anything in the world that's not symbolic, that doesn't point to God, that doesn't draw the eyes back to God. This is one of the most wonderful things about living in the world, isn't it? You're always reminded. Even this morning, with the snow on the ground, the Lord Jesus in His Word has said a few things about snow. Though your sins be as scarlet you shall be white as snow.

And here God has put snow in the world just to remind people of something greater than snow. Every time you go through a door, remember Jesus said, I am the door. Every time you open up your eyes in the morning and you see light, What does that mean? What's the meaning of light? It's that Jesus said, I am the light of the world.

The Lord, He puts thousands of things in our way to help us to see Him. He says, I am the vine. You see a vine and you're reminded of this life-giving source that makes a vine produce fruit. And then the blessings that come from that fruit, the refreshment that comes from it. You see a rock And you're reminded that Christ is the rock in 1st Corinthians chapter 10, and you see a tree and You recognize what trees are all about in Scripture and you See a sheep or a dog or you see feasting and you know they all mean something Everything means something this is not a meaningless world at all This is your father's world and he has laid in it with imagery and visions of heaven to encourage you to show you how beautiful He is, to give you shadows of His magnificence.

You think water is wonderful, wait till you see what heaven will be like. You think light is good here, Think of the heavenly light. There is something greater Always that stands behind all the things that we do including the most simple Repetitive thing that we do and that is eating the most common commodity first the sustenance of people is bread And here the Lord Jesus uses this imagery so that when people pick up a piece of bread it would just remind them of how wonderful He is. That He's the bread of life, that He passed through the heavens. And here in this passage, these three words, He took bread.

He took bread. What happens when you take bread? Or what happens when you see light, or what happens when you drive by a tree, or what happens when you look at the snow, or what happens when you see the rain, or the clouds, or the thunder, or the lightning. It all declares the glory of God. And here, the simplest, most repetitive thing is used by Jesus Christ just to declare the goodness of His name, the beauty of His kingdom, the kindness of His nature towards sinners.

It's all right here in this imagery. It's beautiful imagery. So it was as they were Eating as they were eating Doing just a common thing. They're celebrating the Passover there in the upper room And so how did this happen? There was a meal and then there was the Lord's Supper.

This is my understanding of this passage of Scripture. When the Passover meal was completed, Jesus instituted a replacement meal. Now Luke says that the Lord's Supper happened after supper. Likewise, in Luke, he says, likewise, He also took the cup after supper. So while they were eating, while they were dipping and doing the things of the Last Supper, the Lord Jesus Christ instituted a replacement of the shadow.

And that replacement actually would be a shadow of something else, the marriage supper of the Lamb. So you have the Passover, you have the Lord's Supper, but there's even something greater coming and that is the marriage supper of the Lamb. And so here, the Lord Jesus is abolishing the feasts. He is taking the shadow away. He is fulfilling the law in this sense, and he is now establishing a new ordinance for the people of God and So the old pattern of the Passover celebration of Israel the type would now be replaced And so my understanding of this passage is that the meal was taking place and then the Lord Jesus presents a different kind of meal.

And we have to ask ourselves, you know, how much of the Passover right should we take over into the Lord's Supper? It's a good question. But we definitely know that Jesus did these particular things to establish the ordinance of His Supper and we set aside the ordinances of the Old Testament Passover. But the imagery exists, the meaning still continues on. You know this sequence here where you have a meal and then the Lord's Supper.

There's a friend of ours in Florida, Jeff Pollard, there at their church, Mount Zion. They follow this sequence in their Sabbath worship services. First of all, they preach the Word of God and then they have a large meal together. And then after that meal, in the same room, they gather around tables and they celebrate the Lord's Supper just in trying to keep with this sequence that's here in this passage of Scripture. So you have the sequence first and then you have the meaning of the Lord's Supper here.

You know, what does it mean? And I want to give you a number of things to help you understand what this means. I want to give you 12 statements that explain the contours and the colors of the Lord's Supper because it is a symbol here. The first thing, it is an ordinance. There are two ordinances given to the church.

Baptism and the Lord's Supper. We have the great privilege of being involved in both of them today. It is also a sign, it's an outward sign of an inward reality. It's a sign that someone has been fed from heaven and refreshed, cleansed by God and nourished by God And they're drinking of the cup of blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a visual representation of the person who is eating and drinking in Christ.

And it just becomes part of his whole life part of his whole body in the same way that you eat anything it becomes Part of you if you eat a lot of something it'll really become a big part of you Everything you eat becomes a part of you, And that's the whole imagery. It's an outward expression of an inward reality that you've taken Christ into your heart, into your whole being. And so it is a sign, it's a visual drama that the eyes see, the hands touch as the bread is broken. There's taste involved. The mind contemplates it.

It's a complete engagement of the senses that God has given, of the eyes and sense of touch and sense of smell and sense of taste. Everything is involved in it. It is a sign. And then thirdly, it is a supper. It's a meal.

It's a fellowship meal with Christ Himself. And it presupposes friendship with Christ. Have you ever noticed if someone's angry with you, they don't want to eat with you? And on the other hand, if someone loves you, they want to eat with you. This is the kind of fellowship, friendship kind of a meal it is.

There's desire, there's enjoyment, there's relaxing together. As the disciples were there around that table they were reclining and that reclining position was a declaration of their freedom and the peace that they had because it was a fellowship meal where they were together in fellowship with their Lord Himself. And it was a joyful meal. You know, when we get to the cup we'll see that it was a cup of blessing and the term that's used, yukorosteo, to give thanks. This happy family supper is what it is.

Number four, it's a foretaste. It's a foretaste of a marriage feast. And that marriage feast is a declaration, you know, of I am my beloveds and he is mine. He owns me. I love him.

I've renounced my devotion to all of my other lovers I have a single-minded devotion to Christ there is no other it's a marriage when you're married you are married to one person marriage is not an image of lots of partners marriages an image of one partner and one king, one Lord and one bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a foretaste of a marriage feast and a wedding ceremony. And then number five, it's a memorial. This is why in the scriptures we read that the Lord Jesus says, do this in remembrance of me. Do this in remembrance of me.

So the Lord's Supper is a memorial to remember. That's what memorials are for, right? You set up a memorial to remember. You remember a person or an army or some amazing event that happened. That's what memorials are.

You look at them and you remember. So this is a memorial to help you remember. Remember what? Remember me. Remember the Lord Jesus Christ.

How can you forget him? How can you forget that he is your shepherd? How can you forget the light of the world? How can you forget the waters of life, the tree of life? How can you forget that He is the door that opened before you and you walked in?

How can you forget His person? How can you forget his deeds, his words, his suffering, his death, his resurrection? And now he's stationed at his Father's right hand, always interceding for you. Unstoppably interceding for His people. Someone comes up to you and says, well, how was your day?

How could your day not be absolutely wonderful because you have your Savior praying for you all day long? He never stops praying for you. How was your day? I don't know how your day is. But those who know the Lord Jesus Christ, their days are going quite well because their Savior is controlling everything from heaven.

Their Savior is praying for them from heaven. Their Savior is executing everything after the counsel of His own will for them. How could it go bad? Now it might look bad to you, but He's glorifying Himself even in all of your sufferings. But it's a memorial to remember Him, to remember who He is and what He is doing.

And so we do it in remembrance of Him. So it's a memorial. Number six. It is also a confession. It's a confession where we identify with the body and the blood of Jesus Christ.

And we're declaring the effectiveness of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. When we read John chapter 6 earlier in the service. You remember what happened when the Lord Jesus said, He who drinks my blood and eats my bread. Well people abandoned Him. They left Him Because they did not want to confess the power of his blood and The goodness of his bread they could not do it and so they left him they did not want to eat his bread and Drink his cup because this is actually a confession that you make.

And in the Lord's Supper, you confess two main things. First of all, you confess that God is Judge, and you examine yourself, and you repent of your sins, and you also confess the blessing of His mercies toward you. Those two things work together in the Lord's Supper. And it's a confession of those things, and your desire to enter in both to His judgment and to His mercy through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's a confession.

It's a confession that He is a merciful and a faithful high priest who judges the living and the dead. And then number seven, it's a proclamation, because we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. That's what the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11. You do this to proclaim the Lord's death until He comes, which means that it's part and parcel of our proclaiming the power of the cross of Jesus Christ. It helps us to keep the center of our lives there.

The cross. The cross. And to say like the apostle Paul, God forbid that I should boast but for the cross of Christ. And so it takes us to the cross. It takes us to proclaim the cross.

So we gather together every Sabbath day to proclaim the power of the cross until He comes. We proclaim His death. And that's the central message of the Christian. We do it here and then we take it to the streets. And we proclaim His death until He comes on the street as well.

The condemnation of the law toward all sinners and the salvation that is in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our message. So it's a proclamation. Number eight, it's also a covenant. It marks the inauguration of the new covenant.

The heart and the soul of the new covenant is this, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. The mechanism for initiating the new covenant is to repent and to believe in the gospel and to throw off your idols. It's an establishment of a covenant. It's a covenant where you trust in His sacrifice and you devote yourself to Him and you relinquish everything to Him. And He becomes your Lord and His Word becomes your only guide in life.

And His people will be your people. And His God is your God. His Father is your Father. And His children are your brothers and sisters. It is a covenant.

And this covenant of love binds us together in covenant as a church. So it is a covenant. And then number nine, it's an act of dependence. Because as we read here, the bread and the cup are given to us. We didn't create the bread or the cup.

It has to be handed to us. It has to be given to us by someone else. It's a gift from heaven. It's not something that you can make yourself good enough to make for yourself. It has to be given to you.

So it's an act of dependence. It makes you realize that a man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. It makes you realize that you're completely dependent on him for your salvation. It makes you realize that you can only come to Him if He draws you and if He gives you His cup. It's the only way to come to Jesus Christ.

So you have to ask yourself, has Christ drawn me? Has He given me His cup? Or am I still trying to fill my own cup and make my own way in this world? Am I independent or am I dependent upon Him? So it's an act of dependence.

And number 10, it's an act of obedience. Because he said, do this in remembrance of me. He made all the preparations. He brought all the things together necessary to celebrate the supper. The house was filled.

The table was set. The participants were drawn together. The master is present, and the food is provided. And then, because the Master has done all that's necessary, then He calls them to obey. He calls them to obey to keep this ordinance.

So it's an act of obedience. But he's done so much in preparation for the obedience that he calls for. And then number 11, it's an ordinance that divides. It is an ordinance that divides. It divides the repentant from the unrepentant.

It divides those who take the Lord's table in an unworthy manner, those who take it with the worthiness of Jesus Christ. It's symbolic of the great judgment at the end of the age. And the Lord Jesus has given it to us so that we would never forget that there are only two categories of people in the world. And as the church gathers together, they always need to know that there are sheep and there are goats. It can be hard for people sometimes to be reminded that they are goats.

But the truth is we've been given an ordinance that we practice weekly that always divides the church. And if you don't want to divide the church, then don't celebrate the Lord's Supper. Because you can't celebrate it faithfully without dividing the church. You can't even read the words of institution without dividing the gathered church. When I say church, of course I mean there's the true church and then there is that which is not the church but looks like the church.

So it divides. It's an ordinance that divides. And then it is an ordinance that comforts. It is for your comfort and for your joy to help you see the magnitude of your sin, but not leave you there, but to take you out of the despondency of seeing your sin. To lift you up out of the pit.

Somebody said that the commands for self-examination during the Lord's Supper are not primarily meant to drive you from the table. They're meant to drive you from your sin. That's what they're meant to do. To draw you. He says, no.

He says, take, eat, come. And so often People, I believe, they let the cup pass and they don't obey the Lord to take it. He's bid you to come. He's bid you to separate from your sins to renounce them there before Him. And often people sin and they let the cup pass when they should be embracing the cup.

And recognizing the great mercy that Jesus Christ has for them. His loving kindness. His water that washes you completely. His snow that makes you white and takes all of the crimsonness of your sin and makes it pure. He is the spotless Lamb.

You are not. He is. He is the substitute. He's the substitutionary atonement. He's the one that stands and is punished for your sin.

When we come to the time of the Lord's sake, we'll just make sure that you're not resisting His coming because you think more of your sin than he does. Because you think your sin is more defiling than he does. He came to cleanse us from sin. At the same time, there is a time when hardness of heart prevails. If you cannot repent, if you cannot turn to Him, if you see no evidence that you've really turned to Him, then you should let the cup pass.

And you should let that drive you to your knees to cry out to God that you would be holy, That you would have more hunger for holiness in your life. These are 12 statements that explain what this Lord's Supper is all about. Now we read these three words, Jesus took bread, literally one loaf. And then He says in Luke chapter 22, do this in remembrance of me. So He took the bread, he took the most common thing you can imagine and He said do this in remembrance of me And this is why the church always does it in the sequence that we have it here.

And then he broke it. He broke off a fragment. Now I'd like to talk about bread for a while here. And, you know, back when we were preaching through Deuteronomy, when we got to Deuteronomy chapter 8, where Moses repeats this statement, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. I wanted to do this then, but we didn't do it.

So I'm going to do it now. I'm going to walk through from Genesis and walk through the many places that this whole idea of bread exists. Why? This symbol of bread is so wonderful, it's so helpful, and we can't miss the fact that God created his salvation to be explained, at least one aspect of it, in bread. Bread exists for one reason, and it's not just to keep you alive, it's to show you that Jesus Christ is your life.

That's why God created bread. He didn't create it, first of all, for something pleasurable to eat. He created to teach you about His salvation. In Genesis, we learn that God makes a world where men will labor for bread by the sweat of their brow, And then he gives them bread from heaven Bread is the resource that's used in the curse in Genesis 3 19 in The sweat of your face you shall eat bread in the beginning of the world man is working for bread And there's a reason that God has him working for bread, so that he can see later on what bread really means. Now, it was not revealed to Adam the meaning of bread, except for that he had to work for it.

We know more now, don't we, about bread. But that's all Adam knew, was that he had to work for his bread. And then God would have it in the New Covenant that bread from heaven would come down but even before that there would be Other expressions of bread that would have meaning bread was used for worship in Genesis 14 18 the bread and the wine were used for Melchizedek. Bread was used for hospitality in Genesis 19, verse 3. Lot made the two angels unleavened bread.

Bread was used, of course, in everyday life. It was used as a means of life and a common element in the meal. You see that in a number of places in the book of Genesis. Bread is meant to express blessing. And bread is used in the blessing of Jacob on his son Asher in Genesis 49, verse 20, where we read, "'Bread from Asher shall be rich, and he shall yield royal dainties.'" And we get to the book of Exodus, we even learn more about bread.

Bread is used in the Passover in Exodus chapter 12, unleavened bread. And then the Israelites are now, after having been set free from their bondage of Pharaoh They're in the wilderness and they're complaining that they do not have bread in Exodus 16 Exodus 16 is one of the critical passages on bread Where are the big texts on bread? Exodus 16, John 6, this passage that we're in, and of course, 1 Corinthians 11. Those are the big texts on bread. If you want to learn about this matter, that's where you go.

But what God says when the children of Israel are complaining, He says, I will rain down bread from heaven. I will rain it down. It was nothing but a picture of Christ coming through the heavens as bread from heaven to come and rescue his bride. They ate bread in the morning in Exodus 16, 8, and they did not gather bread on the Sabbath because God had already provided for them so that they did not have to work for it on that day. God uses manna instead of bread and he calls it bread from heaven.

Manna is a symbol. Manna shows us what the Lord's Supper is all about. In the sacrifice of the tabernacle in the book of Leviticus, they offer leavened bread with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offering in Leviticus 7 verse 13. The bread is used in the ceremonies of the tabernacle in Leviticus chapter 8 particularly And the bread is actually burned in Leviticus 8. It's called the bread of your God in Leviticus chapter 21.

In Leviticus chapter 21 verse 17 we read this speak to Aaron saying no man of your descendants in succeeding generations who has any defect may approach to offer the bread of his God. You could not even offer the bread with any defect, which is what it is like today in the New Covenant for the Lord's Supper. When you come to the Lord's Supper, you come without defect, you come holy, but it's the holiness of Jesus Christ it's his holiness it's his righteousness that you come before God possessing in the same way it was in the Old Testament in Leviticus chapter 24 interestingly enough, the frankincense is on the bread. In the book of Numbers, there's complaining against the manna, and they call the bread from heaven worthless, which is what people do. They call bread from heaven worthless.

Just like those people in John chapter 6 they fled When Jesus said eat my flesh drink my blood in Deuteronomy we learn the reason of manna We learn the reason of their hunger in the wilderness. In Deuteronomy 8, 3, we read, so he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know. Why? That He might make you to know that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Their hunger was meant to teach them this lesson, that man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And to be satisfied from His bread from heaven.

So often, you know, the people of God become dissatisfied with what He provides as they did in the wilderness. The abundance in the Promised Land is also connected with bread. In Deuteronomy 8, verse 9, you shall eat bread without scarcity in which you will lack nothing a land whose stones are iron and Out of whose hills you can dig copper Here Moses is saying the promised land is a place where there will always be enough bread Of course the promised land is a picture of heaven. It's a picture of the true Christian life, where there's always enough bread. You will be amply provided for.

And then bread was incorporated into this national feast called the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Deuteronomy 16. And Jesus is celebrating it right here in the upper room as well. The manna, the bread, is a symbol of Christ. It was a gift. It was undeserved.

It came from heaven. The manna was white as snow, like the purity of Christ. It was sufficient for all their needs. God provided it. It came from heaven.

It passed through the heavens in the same way that Jesus Christ did to rescue his bride. In the book of Judges, Gideon uses unleavened bread. In Judges 6 verse 19 and there Amazingly in verse 21 the angel consumes Gideon's unleavened bread I don't really understand what that's all about, but the angel is eating the bread In Ruth You get in the book of Ruth the great book of love the foretelling of marriage and what it means to be married to your Savior. Bread is the reason why Naomi returns. Do you remember that?

Bread is the reason she came back. It was bread that drew her back in Ruth chapter 1 verse 6. For she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited His people by giving them bread. It was the bread in the land that caused her to come back, that facilitated this marriage between Ruth and Boaz. And then Boaz blesses Ruth with bread in Ruth 2.14.

Drawn by a longing for bread. Every time you get hungry, it just should remind you of your need for spiritual food from heaven. Hunger is such a good thing. It teaches us that we need bread from heaven, and we're given that hunger. We should experience hunger probably more often than we do.

It's so good for us. It centers our thinking. It helps us to remember how good the bread of life is to eat. In 1 Samuel, Hannah sings of bread. She says, the hungry have ceased to hunger.

Even the barren has borne seven, And she who has many children has become feeble Here it's it's all about God's provision that God is absolutely in control And she's singing of bread as a provision from God David eats the holy bread in 1 Samuel 21 to satisfy his hunger. In 2 Samuel, in one of the most amazing stories of reconciliation and love toward your enemies, bread was used to show kindness to the household of Saul. Remember what kind of a father-in-law Saul was. You'd hate that kind of a father-in-law. You'd hate his whole family, but not David.

That's not what David did. David Drew Mephibosheth to eat bread at his own table. Here's what David asks in 2 Samuel 9.7. These are some of the most wonderful words of reconciliation, and a heart to love even those who have been affected by your enemies. David said to him, ''Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father's sake, and will restore you to all the land of Saul, your grandfather, and you shall eat bread at my table continually." Here, bread is offered as a means of reconciliation.

This is what God has done for us. Here, take, eat. I'm reconciling with you. I'm drawing you come eat at my table when David says that Mephibosheth His whole family had sinned against him against David and yet he says no Come come eat at my table. It's an expression of love toward enemies.

Bread is distributed to the people when the ark returns to Jerusalem. In 2 Samuel 6, verse 19, in verse 16, we read, now as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David me Michael Saul's daughter looking through the window saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord and she despised him in her heart and then Brett is distributed to all the people as an act of kindness toward them. In 1 Kings chapter 17, bread is brought to Elijah by the Ravens. The Ravens coming out of the air, symbolizing, I believe, the bread from heaven coming, passing through the heavens in order to rescue a bride. Bread from heaven to Elijah by the ravens, no less.

Then Elijah helps a woman who had no bread. In 1 Kings 17, verse 10, he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he went to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he said, could you give me some bread? She said I don't have any bread and Then God filled her house with everything that she needed Bread came from heaven in first Kings chapter 18 After Jezebel massacred the prophets of God, Obadiah took 100 of the prophets and hid them into a cave and fed them with bread and water.

God feeding his prophets with bread in the same way that the Lord Jesus Christ is bread for all of His prophets. Nehemiah remembers the scene of bread from heaven in the wilderness in Nehemiah chapter 9 verse 15. In the Psalms we have multiple citations of this. God gives His people bread in Psalm 37. I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor His descendants begging bread.

The righteous will have bread. God will provide bread he'll be faithful to them And even in the Psalms the Lord's Supper is prophesied in Psalm 41 verse 9 Even my own familiar friend whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. And then you find the blessings of the bread and the wine in Psalm 104. He waters the hills from his upper chambers. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your works.

He causes the grass to grow for the cattle and vegetation for the service of man. That he may bring forth food from the earth and wine that makes glad the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread which strengthens man's heart." Psalm 104, verse 15. This, I believe, is a prophecy. It's a foretaste of the Lord's Supper itself, as both the elements are presented there. You find it in Proverbs, you find it in Ecclesiastes, you find it in Isaiah, especially Isaiah 55, for as the rain comes down in the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater.

Here God presents Himself as the one who feeds His children. And He cries out to them and He says, Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread? Why do you buy all these things that don't satisfy you? Why do you just fill your life with empty things instead of bread from heaven? Remember, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And so the prophet confronts the people of Israel because they're spending their money on what's not bread at all from heaven. In the book of Hosea, Hosea's wife eats another man's bread. She said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water and my wool and my linen and my oil and my drink Here you have a picture of apostasy and how that works, how you want your bread from another source than God Himself. When God says no, drink water from your own cistern. In the book of Amos, We learn of a famine, a famine not of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine from hearing the Word of God.

That's the worst kind of famine that can come upon any church, any house, any nation. A famine of the Word of God. This is absolutely the most devastating famine. This is the famine that exists in our land today. Americans are fat.

They are obese. But they are in a time of famine. Their souls are parched. Their souls are skinny. You don't want the days of Amos to come.

And then finally, when we get to the New Testament, of course, we get to Matthew chapter 4, where Jesus is tempted through bread as he's led up and tempted by the devil and he's hungry after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights and The tempter comes And he says if you're the son of God command these stones that they become bread and the Lord Jesus answered it is written Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God And then the Lord Jesus teaches his disciples to pray and by saying give us this day our daily bread and they would be reminded and then his Whole life would be surrounding matters of bread feeding thousands with bread Taking a loaf and making it feed tens of thousands of people that surrounded him and then this wondrous Text in John chapter 6 that we already read, do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal on him. And then you find in the book of Acts how the breaking of bread was part of everyday Christian fellowship.

How you find that the Apostle Paul speaks to the church about removing the leaven from among you to identify the sin, to discipline, to excommunicate, in order to make the separation, in order to drive sin out of the church. And then the Apostle Paul speaking of the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11. So what is all this about bread? All throughout the Bible, it's there. And it seems like it's always coming out of the heavens.

What's that all about? It's always nourishing. It's always keeping people alive. It always comes from God. And there are these dramatic moments where God hands bread to His people in such a miraculous way just to show them that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Bread means something. Every time you eat bread, remember this. And so he even centers his church around bread. And this ordinance that includes bread. And the cleaning out of the house of all leaven and the cleaning out of the church of all leaven.

And then God finally cleaning the world out of all of its leaven at the final judgment. So these words, He took bread filled with meaning from Genesis to Revelation. And then finally, at the very end of the Bible, what do we have? A marriage supper of the lamb and bread a Wonderful feast a Feast of marriage and then you find the events of the Lord's Supper in these four verbs that are listed here That he took it He took the bread To Christ as the head of the household. This is the Lord's Supper.

And Christ is distributing the bread to His people. This is a celebration of His people with Him. All of them together corporately as a family looking up toward Him. That's the picture of the church. He took it and then it says He blessed it.

That's the second verb. He blessed it with a prayer of thanksgiving giving thanks And then he broke it And he said this is my body which is given for you He was bruised for our iniquities The expression breaking of bread for curse five times in the book of Acts. It's interesting looking at them all. And then He gave it. It was a gift.

They did not give it to themselves, but He initiated it. It came from God. It came from heaven. And then He instructed them what to do with the bread. He gave it to the disciples, and He said, take, eat.

This is my body. We're not going to talk about the doctrine of transubstantiation today. We'll shift that to next week. But he says, this is my body. And very simply, the bread and the wine are symbols.

They don't become flesh, and they don't become blood. Anybody who's ever done it knows that. And it's metaphorical, just like the vine, just like the door, just like the light. And so here we have this wonderful ordinance to be drawn by cords of love, to be given something from heaven, something from outside of you that you could never manufacture on your own. That's meant to tell you something about how needy you are of Jesus Christ, how much your soul needs Jesus Christ, how nourishing Jesus Christ is, how refreshing Jesus Christ is, how good He is.

And there in these two images, the bread and the wine, they stand in the midst of all of these other images to teach us the glory of the Gospel. As we enter into the cup of blessing this morning, as we take that bread, let's be so aware, let's let our minds be so tuned to sing the praises of what God has done. To remember this remedy from all of our miseries, the washing of all of our impurities, the sweetening of everything in life, the opening up our eyes to see the glory of God absolutely everywhere. And He lays expressions of Himself in every place. And in this one, when we take the bread today, we'll see just one single image of His great love, that He feeds you from heaven, that He loves you, that He asks you to take it.

And He wants you to take it, because He loves you as you examine yourself before Him, recognizing the enormity of your sin, but the super enormity of His grace. And that's the meaning of the bread. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for your bread from heaven. You are the bread from heaven.

How you came down and how you were raised up and You continue to give bread from heaven. Oh Lord. Thank you I pray you would give us such an ability to celebrate that our hearts would be so knit to you that you would take us further in our love for you that our meditations of You would be sweeter and better and clearer and more intimate and more passionate as we celebrate it today, that You would take us to a whole other way of celebrating Your Supper as we meditate on it today. Oh, Lord, we ask these things in the name of this bread that you sent from heaven our Lord Jesus Christ amen.