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Scripture Reading: Mark 14:1-26
In this message I would like to give a further word on 14:1-26. In particular, we need a further word concerning the Lord’s instituting His supper as part of the preparation of His disciples to enter into His death and resurrection.
Mark 14:1-42 is concerned with the Lord’s preparation of His disciples for His death. In this section of the Gospel of Mark concerned with the Lord’s preparation, there are two feasts in addition to the feast of the Passover. The first feast was prepared for the Lord by those who loved Him. The second feast was the Lord’s supper instituted by Him immediately after the feast of the Passover. The Lord’s supper was prepared by Him for His disciples.
Throughout the centuries, much has been said concerning the feast set up by Simon to show his love for the Lord Jesus. During this feast, a woman anointed the Lord as a display of her love. Many messages have been given on the Lord’s being anointed by the woman in Mark 14. However, it is much more difficult to get into the depths of the significance of the Lord’s table. This matter is very profound, far beyond the ability of the human mind to understand.
The significance of the feast prepared for the Lord by certain of His disciples is shallow compared to the significance of the Lord’s table. In the feast prepared by the Lord’s disciples, we have the matter of appreciation of the Lord’s preciousness, worthiness, and loveliness. Simon, the leper, having been cleansed by the Lord, prepared this feast as an expression of his appreciation of the Lord’s mercy, grace, and preciousness. The anointing of the Lord Jesus was also an expression of appreciation of the Lord’s loveliness and worthiness. However, in these matters there is little that could be regarded as deep. It seems that nothing initiated by us has much depth.
The supper instituted by the Lord Jesus, on the contrary, is extremely deep. This feast is a sign, a symbol, of the entire New Testament economy of God. God’s economy in the New Testament age is involved with the Lord’s table.
I do not believe that any of the Lord’s disciples understood the significance of His table when it was instituted. Peter, for example, participated in that table, but he certainly did not see the significance of it.
When the Lord Jesus instituted His supper, “He took bread, and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, Take; this is My body” (14:22). Then He took the cup, gave it to them, and said, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many” (v. 24). Hence, the Lord’s table includes a loaf of bread and a cup.
According to biblical usage, bread signifies life. The Lord Jesus said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). This indicates that in the Bible bread is a matter of life.
Furthermore, according to biblical usage, a cup signifies a portion of blessing. Hence, the cup is called the cup of blessing. The bread is of life, and the cup is of blessing.
To be sure, this life is the divine life, and this blessing is the divine blessing. Actually, both the life and the blessing are the Triune God, God Himself in Christ through the Spirit. Do you know what eternal life is? Eternal life is the Triune God. Do you know what the divine blessing is? The divine blessing also is the Triune God. Both the divine life and the divine blessing, therefore, are actually the Triune God Himself.
How is it possible for the Triune God to be our life and blessing? It is not a simple matter for something to become our life. For example, the food we eat and digest becomes our life supply. In order for anything to be our life or life supply, that thing must be organic. If you swallow a stone, that stone cannot become your life supply, because a stone is not living and organic. Only something organic can be digested by us and then assimilated into us to become our life supply. In a similar way, in order for the Triune God to be our life supply and even our life, He must come into us to be digested and assimilated by us. To be sure, the Triune God is living and organic.
According to chapter six of the Gospel of John, Christ is a loaf, the bread of life, for us to eat. The Lord Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever,” (v. 51). Then He went on to say, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me shall also live because of Me.” (v. 57). Any believer who eats the Lord Jesus as the bread of life will live by Him. When we eat this bread of life, He comes into us to be digested by us and to be assimilated into us organically. This is the only way the Triune God can become our life. The Triune God becomes our life supply and our life by entering into us organically to be assimilated into the very fibers of our spiritual being.
Taking in the Lord to digest and assimilate Him that He may become life to us is signified by the eating of the loaf on the table. Whenever we come to the Lord’s table, we see a loaf. That loaf is not merely for display; it is for us to eat. When the Lord Jesus instituted His supper, “He took bread, and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, Take; this is My body” (Mark 14:22).
According to Luke 22:19, the Lord Jesus said, “This is My body which is given for you; do this unto the remembrance of Me.” This verse speaks of remembering the Lord. For years, I remembered the Lord at His table merely by concentrating on His incarnation, His life of suffering, His death, and His resurrection. I had not been told that the proper way to remember the Lord Jesus is to eat Him. The real remembrance of the Lord is to eat the bread and drink the cup (1 Cor. 11:24, 26), that is, to participate in, to enjoy, the Lord who has given Himself to us through His redeeming death. To eat the bread and drink the cup is to take in the redeeming Lord as our portion, as our life and blessing. This is to remember Him in a genuine way.
One day, more than thirty years ago, I was seeking to define the significance of the Lord’s table. As I considered the bread and read the verses in the New Testament concerning it, light came to me regarding what it means to remember the Lord at His table. I saw that to remember the Lord is not merely to think about Him, not merely to recall what He experienced. Rather, to remember the Lord is to eat Him. The Lord clearly said, “This is My body which is given for you; do this unto the remembrance of Me.” By this we see that the proper remembrance of the Lord is to eat Him, to take Him in as our life supply.
The bread on the table is not for us to analyze or merely think about; the bread is for us to take in, to eat, as our life supply. This bread should be digested and assimilated by us to become our very being. The significance of this is profound.
Eating the bread of the Lord’s table indicates that the Lord comes into us as our life supply and then actually becomes us. If we consider the matter of eating, we shall realize that the food we eat eventually becomes us. We may say not only that the food becomes us, but even that we become the food. Not only is there an organic union between us and the food we eat, digest, and assimilate; we are mingled with the food we assimilate into us.
It is a serious mistake to say that mingling is not scriptural. How could anyone reasonably deny the fact that we are mingled with the food we eat, digest, and assimilate? In fact, assimilating food into our being goes beyond mingling. We do not have the words to describe this. However, we do know that we are mingled in a deep way with the food we eat. In a similar way, when we take in the Triune God as our food, we are truly mingled with Him. In order for the food we eat to become our life, it must be mingled with us. The principle is the same with taking in the Triune God as our food.
We have pointed out that eating food involves something much more than an organic union between us and the food. Actually, eating, digesting, and assimilating food involve an intrinsic mingling of the food with our being. What we eat actually becomes part of us. Hence, this is not only a mingling; it is also a becoming. The food we digest and assimilate becomes part of our very being. For this reason, after we have thoroughly digested and assimilated our food, it is impossible for it to be located within us, because it has become a part of us. We use this matter of assimilating food to illustrate the deep significance of eating the bread of the Lord’s table.
We have seen that the cup of the Lord’s table signifies His blood. In the Old Testament there was a prohibition against drinking blood (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:10). In God’s economy there is only one kind of blood that is good for us to drink, and that is the blood of the Lord Jesus. In principle, drinking the blood is the same as eating the loaf: whatever we drink saturates us and becomes our being.
The body of the Lord Jesus is signified by the loaf, the bread, and His blood is signified by the cup with its content. Here is a picture of the Lord’s blood separated from His body. This separation signifies death. Hence, in 1 Corinthians 11:26 Paul says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you declare the Lord’s death until He comes.” The Greek word rendered “declare” means that we proclaim, announce, display, the Lord’s death. To take the Lord’s supper is to declare and display the Lord’s death.
In order for the Lord Jesus to become our food, entering into us as our life supply, it was necessary for Him to pass through death. If He had not been crucified, He could not be our food.
Much of the food we eat day by day must first be put to death. For example, before you can eat a chicken, that chicken must be slain. Eating a chicken requires the death of the chicken. In like manner, in order for us to eat Him, the Lord Jesus had to die. Whenever we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s table, we declare the Lord’s death.
We have seen that the Lord’s table signifies the Lord Himself, His death, His resurrection, and His mystical Body as His increase. How is the Lord’s table related to His resurrection? We may say that whenever we eat the Lord and digest and assimilate Him as our life supply, we experience an inward resurrection. We may use eating physical food as an illustration. Often before dinnertime I am tired and weak. But after eating a nourishing meal, I am revived. I would even say that I am “resurrected.” The food I eat contains a life element that causes me to be revived. In a similar way, when we eat the Lord Jesus, He becomes the resurrection life within us.
The bread of the Lord’s table also signifies Christ’s mystical Body as His enlargement. This enlargement is for the producing of the new man. In addition, it is also a matter of the development of the seed, the gene, of the kingdom.
In chapter four of Mark we have the seed of the kingdom, but eventually we shall have the full development, the manifestation, of the kingdom, and its full development will be the full growth of the new man. This means that eventually the new man will be the kingdom of God.
Furthermore, the kingdom of God is certainly not a matter of organization. No, in its totality the kingdom of God is an organism, the new man, produced by Christ’s replacing us through His death and resurrection. How marvelous! If we see this, we shall realize that as the Lord was instituting His supper in Mark 14, He was preparing the disciples to receive His death and resurrection.
