Chapter
11. Touching God on Covenant.
I have talked much about the covenant and healing in
this blog. But there is more to say about these two and it would be good to
bring it together. We will do this in the context of communion, the ongoing
sign of the New Covenant,
Summary:
I have said that, in reality, there is only one
covenant between man and God, the
covenant made by God with himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, before creation
began. We talked about this out of Ephesians ch 1. This is an eternal covenant
of redemption – it is something that was never going to come to an end. God
then brought Adam into this covenant – but Adam proved to be faithless to the
covenant and it was broken. Then God began a process of redeeming man, bringing
us back into the covenant relationship he planned for us. The covenants of the
Old Testament have to be understood as stages of God’s dealings with man as he
moved to bring man back into covenant relationship.
Finally in Christ a New Covenant was sealed. This is
clearly the fulfillment of the covenant made with Adam, then with Abraham and
his seed, and with David. Jesus is the Son of man, the son of Adam, as it reads
in the Hebrew. Jesus is the son of Abraham to whom the promises belong. Jesus
is the son of David to whom the kingdom was promised. These four covenants –
Adam, Abraham, David and Christ – are all said in the Bible to be eternal.
God also brought Israel as a nation into this
covenant through Moses. This was not an eternal covenant. In fact we are told
that it was only for a time – until the one came to whom the promises belonged.
But, even so, the covenant promises and blessings
applied to the temporary covenant if one remained faithful and obedient.
The point is this – a covenant is a covenant.
Obedience to covenant brings blessing. Disobedience brings a curse.
God outlines the blessing and the curse for us and we
have read this in Deuteronomy 28. But let’s read the relevant bits for this
retreat again.
DEUT
28:1 If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands
I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on
earth.
DEUT
28:2 All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the
LORD your God:
DEUT
28:3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
DEUT
28:4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the
young of your livestock- the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
DEUT
28:5 Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
DEUT
28:6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
DEUT
28:7 The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be
defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you
in seven.
DEUT
28:8 The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your
hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
DEUT
28:9 The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on
oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways.
DEUT
28:10 Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of
the LORD, and they will fear you.
DEUT
28:11 The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity- in the fruit of your womb,
the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground- in the land he swore
to your forefathers to give you.
DEUT
28:12 The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain
on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend
to many nations but will borrow from none.
DEUT
28:13 The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to
the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow
them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom.
DEUT
28:14 Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right
or to the left, following other gods and serving them.
So this is the covenant
promise of blessing – the promise of curse for unfaithfulness follows. We will
only read a part.
DEUT
28:15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow
all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come
upon you and overtake you:
DEUT
28:21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from
the land you are entering to possess.
DEUT
28:22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and
inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which
will plague you until you perish.
DEUT
28:27 The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering
sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.
DEUT
28:28 The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind.
DEUT
28:35 The LORD will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot
be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
DEUT
28:45 All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake
you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God and
observe the commands and decrees he gave you.
DEUT
28:46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever.
DEUT
28:58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are
written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name- the
LORD your God-
DEUT
28:59 the LORD will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and
prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses.
DEUT
28:60 He will bring upon you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they
will cling to you.
DEUT
28:61 The LORD will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not
recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.
So every sickness and disease
is part of the curse. There is no exception. There is no such thing as a
sickness that is “a blessing sent by God.”
We have seen how Jesus, on the
Cross too the curse of the broken law on himself so that we can have the
blessing. In one sense the following verses is like a summary of the curse and
we can see in it that Jesus totally exhausted the curse:
DEUT
28:47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the
time of prosperity,
DEUT
28:48 therefore in hunger and thirst,
in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD
sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed
you.
On the Cross Jesus was naked, hungry, thirsty and in
want of all things, in dire poverty.
Jesus has exhausted the curse so that we can have the
blessing of Abraham, which is the gift of the Spirit and all the blessings of
God that goes with that. It was a Divine Exchange.
I want to move away from considering the curse now and
focus in on the blessing. One of the
blessings of living in covenant relationship with God is healing and health.
This is made clear in the Old Testament.
“Ohh,” some may say, “but that’s Old Testament!”
But the objection fails to understand that a covenant
is a covenant is a covenant. A curse is a curse is a curse. A blessing is a
blessing is a blessing. It doesn’t matter which covenant one is talking about –
the blessings and curses are the same – because, in actual fact, there is only
one covenant and the other covenants are simply stages of God’s realization of
the great eternal covenant he has provided in Christ. We have seen there will
be no sickness in heaven, in the perfect state. We have seen that God has provided
for our health and healing in this age through Christ’s stripes. Through the
covenant sacrifice he made on the Cross. This was an eternal sacrifice and so
its provisions are available for all time. It is the covenant given to us, the
New Covenant.
Because it is available for all time it was also
available to the Old Testament saints, but we need to be clear on the order of
things. Some teachers argue from the fact that healing was available in the Old
Testament and the New Covenant has better promises that we can expect it also
in the New Covenant. This is an argument from Old to New. But in fact, it is a
false argument. It is an argument from lesser to greater and makes the
provisions of grace dependent on the provisions of law in some subtle way. That
is not the true picture.
In fact the truth is the other way.
Forgiveness of sin under the law was in virtue of the
future coming of the Messiah who would eventually do away with sin, so the
“covering” of sin in the Old Testament was just like accumulating a pile of
IOUs until Christ came and settled the debt. The same is true with healing.
Christ provided for the healing on the Cross, and the fact that Israel was able
to tap into that was because they had faith in the future, in the coming Messiah.
So their healing was not because of anything different to their forgiveness –
it was dependent on Christ, just as ours’ is. The ground for their healing was
not any different from the ground for our healing. And because this is so we
can have faith that what they received we also will receive.
To give them this assurance of healing God gave them a
special covenant of healing and it is this we will look at first today.
Exodus
15:22-27.
Then
Moses led Israel from the
Red Sea and they went into the Desert
of Shur. For three days
they traveled in the desert without finding water. When they came to Marah,
they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is
called Marah). So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, "What are we
to drink?"
Then
Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw
it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the LORD made a decree and
a law for them, and there he tested them. He said, "If you listen
carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes,
if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring
on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who
heals you."
Then
they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and
they camped there near the water.
This is a story that is so loaded with truth that it
will take some time to bring it all out. It is hard to know where to begin.
We need to remind ourselves of the words of Paul (1 Cor
10) that the episodes of the Exodus story are types – they are symbolic
pictures of things we will encounter in our Christian walk. We will all
experience this – but in a symbolic way. Paul says, “There is no temptation, or trial or test, that comes your way that is
not common to man (1 Cor 10:13).” It’s common – we will all experience
these things. So what does it mean?
Testing is a further point of revelation. God revels
himself at Marah. When we come to a test we can do one of two things: rebel and
turn back and fail the lesson. Or we can move forward and allow the situation
to be a means of higher revelation for us.
The Water’s were bitter. The solution was the
revelation of God as healer. He revealed to Moses the basis of all healing – it
was himself: “I am the Lord who heals
you.” Rapha. The modern Hebrew word for doctor is rofe, the same word. Thus
it reads, “I am the Lord your doctor.” In every spiritual experience in which
we receive provision from God we need to look beyond the provision to the
Provider.
So let’s put it in context.
The children of Israel
had just been delivered from Egypt
through the Passover Lamb. Egypt
speaks of being in bondage to Satan in the World. Christ is the Passover Lamb
through whom we are delivered (1 Cor 5). By applying his blood to the door of
our lives we are pardoned and the penalty of death for our sin is expunged.
They left Egypt,
coming through the Red Sea, which speaks of
Baptism in Water and they were also immersed in the cloud of God’s presence,
speaking of Baptism in the Spirit (1 Cor 10:1-4).
In our story they leave the Red Sea
and they come to Shur, which means “Wall.” A cliff barred their progress and
they could go no further. In the same way God will bring us to a point, soon
after salvation, Baptism and Baptism in the Spirit where our spiritual growth
is blocked and as a result we will become thirsty for God.
Shur, this blockage, will bring us to Marah. Marah
promises water but the promise is foiled. Marah means “bitter”. The water there
was poisonous, they couldn’t drink it. How the waters got bitter we
don’t know but we do know how they got sweet. There are many (bitter) things we
will never understand in life. But the things that are revealed in scripture
are the things we need to know (Deut 29:29). They are revealed so we can act on
them.
We need to remember that God was leading them by the
pillar of cloud and fire, - he was visibly there – and there will be ways he
will be visibly there for us also. But look at their response – they grumbled
against Moses – against their spiritual leadership. God is visible in his
leadership. When people criticise their leadership they criticise God who gave
them the leader.
This is the test we are coming to. God has a plan for us
– he wants to bring us into a place where there is plenty of water – plenty of
the Holy Spirit to enjoy – and plenty of food – good scriptural teaching that
will make us grow. But he knows that there has to be a change in our inner
nature. We are rebels – and we show our rebellion by grumbling when things
don’t go right. If we are to receive from God he has a way of doing it – and we
see this later in the story. They come to Elim where there are 70 palm trees
and 12 springs of water. Food and Water in abundance. But the numbers are
significant – 12 and seventy speak of spiritual leadership – 12 apostles, 70
elders – God’s purpose is to teach us – but he is going to do this through the
leadership he has appointed. But he knows that, before we can learn from these leaders,
we have to have the power of rebellion broken in our hearts – so he takes us
first to Marah where we are thirsty and the water is poisoned – or at least
that’s what it seems to us.
Shur – the Wall – produces in our lives bitter waters
which turns our heart bitter – and this bitterness is expressed in murmuring
against the God given leadership we are under. All the while God is after
repentance – repentance from the root of rebellion in our hearts.
Behind every test there is a principle – and the principle
here is simple. Jesus gave it concerning the leaders he appointed: “He who does not receive you does not
receive me, and he who does not receive me does not receive my father who sent
me (Matt 10:40).” If we want to get the full goods from God and Christ then
there is only one way – through the leadership he has given us.
How does God engineer this crisis? It’s simple – he lets
us be offended by the leader who is leading us. At that pointy our response to
the circumstances will determine our future spiritual growth.
Moses cured the waters by throwing a stick, or branch,
or tree into the water. Tradition tells us that the stick was wormwood, a tree
that has the ability to make sweet water bitter, but here it had the opposite
effect. A true miracle. What does this mean?
The tree: It was not the tree that healed but the
supernatural power of God. But Moses faith and obedience unlocked the power.
Principle: When you want God’s miracle working power
to operate you often have to perform a very simple act. The act is like a key,
a switch.
Elisha: Salt – 2 Kings 2:19-22. 4:38-41 4:8-37. Mark
16:17-18. laying hands, anointing oil. Faith without works is dead.
Many times people fail to move out in faith because
they think, “I might look like a fool.” Nothing inhibits our faith more than
the fear of looking foolish.
The tree and the Cross. The Hebrew word “tree” is hard to translate. In Hebrew
it means a tree whether it is alive or dead, standing or cut down. Thus it is a
type of the Cross of Christ. The Cross is the whole basis of healing.
Everything in the Bible centers on the cross. The Cross is the meeting place of
human need with Divine provision. On the cross Jesus bore in his body every
burden that could come onto a fallen, sin-cursed race.
The symbol of a “branch”
in scripture speaks of Christ – but Christ in his suffering on the Cross. Thus
it speaks to us of the need to come to the Cross in a new way and allow that
old rebellious man in us to be put to death and be transformed into sweetness
by the power of Christ. If we allow this to happen then there are two blessings
that flow out of that transformation.
The first is that we can enter into a covenant of
healing with God. The second is that we move on to Elim where our spiritual
needs are met and we are able to grow up spiritually under Godly leadership.
Note: If we do not pass the test of having the bitter
waters made sweet then we do not enter into the covenant of healing, nor into
having our spiritual needs met through leadership. As a result our spiritual
growth stops and, as the writer to the Hebrews says, we perish in the
wilderness instead of entering into the provision of God.
Many Christians spend their whole lives going from
Church to church falling out with leaders as God tries to bless them with
having their rebellion broken – but they will not.
They also spend their whole lives seeking healing for
something God wanted to heal – and the only way they could get the healing was
to receive it through the man who offended them.
So to the covenant of healing.
"If
you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in
his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will
not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the
LORD, who heals you."
It is a conditional covenant and we need to be clear on
what the conditions are:
- “Listen carefully to God’s voice.” Obviously so that you know what to do next.
- “Do what is right in his eyes.”
Two simple conditions. And in case we are not sure what
they mean God repeats them in different words – he is not saying anything
different: “pay attention, keep his
decrees.”
So what decrees does he want us to listen to and keep?
Again we need to be aware of the context. Israel had not yet come to Sinai so
they had not yet received the Law. So God is not saying they have to obey the
Law – how could they? They didn’t know it.
What he is saying is similar to what he says in I John
1:7 about forgiveness: “If we walk in the
light as he is in the light…the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” Walk
in the light – this means to walk in what we know of God’s will.
Exod 15:26 lit:erally reads “I am the Lord who is healing you” – a continuous present tense.
If you are living in contact with the Lord he is continuously healing you. You
don’t have to wait to get sick to thank God for healing you as he is healing
you all the time. Gratefulness for health is a decision.
So what did they know of God’s will? That is what they
had to walk in to experience healing.
Well, first up – Passover – salvation truth. Then:
baptism in the cloud or in the Spirit. Then: Baptism in water. Then: guidance
by the cloud. Then: forgiveness at Marah. Then: submission to spiritual
leadership.
And that’s it. To get healing that’s all they needed to
know.
Now, just as it is with sin so it is for healing – as
they got more knowledge of God’s will as they moved on through the wilderness –
there was more they knew so there was more to keep for the covenant to remain
operational. But at this stage it was
pretty simple. And God is good – he adds only one thing we need to learn at a
time and doesn’t start on anything else until we have learned that. And if we
don’t learn it then we “perish in the
wilderness (Heb 3:17).” The covenant of healing won’t work for us if we
don’t keep growing in God.
As more light is added we are required to walk in the
new light to retain the blessings of the covenant of healing. Hence as God
leads us on there is a greater responsibility on our part if we want to
experience his healing and health.
Healing
here is linked with our attitudes:
(i) Bitterness.
(ii)
Rebellion / submission.
Deal with your
attitudes if you want God to heal you.
Isn’t it amazing that 3500 years ago God showed man
that often our sicknesses are tied in with our mental and emotional attitudes –
our beliefs and our reactions to people. Modern medicine is saying that
possibly 95% of all sickness is psychosomatic – it starts in beliefs and
attitudes. How modern is the Bible? Sin and sickness go together. Bad
attitudes, on the inside, are sin on the inside so will work to produce
destruction in our lives (Gal 6:6-8).
This covenant of healing became foundational to Israel’s faith
in God. It was the basis of appeal for healing on several occasions in the
ministry of Christ. This covenant gave a guarantee of healing for all who
appeal on the basis of it – and we need to remember that it is the same for us.
This covenant was not limited to Israel.
Heb 6:13 – he swore by himself –
a special guarantee that it would come to pass.
The Assurance of Covenant Healing.
In his sovereignty and love God
will heal people whether they are Christians or not. But he doesn’t have to. However
God will heal all those who touch him on covenant. God heals all those who
initiate or claim his covenant provision. Not once when man took the initiative
and touched him on the principles of covenant did Christ say no.
Forgiveness and healing - they
are the same thing: “Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits- who forgives all your sins and heals all your
diseases (PS 103:2, 3).”
Israel believed that God healed
and saved. Two absolutes: God forgives, God heals. They understood that
deliverance from sin, death and destruction came through the Passover lamb.
It’s only the church that doesn’t seem to know this.
“No one living in Zion will say, "I am
ill"; and the sins of those who dwell there will be forgiven (ISA 33:24).”
“Is any one of you sick? He should call the
elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of
the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the
Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven (JAMES 5:14, 15).”.
James is saying that if we pray
for a man with cancer God will at the same time forgive his sin. He hasn’t even
asked for forgiveness but God sees them as the same. When you remove sickness
from the picture you remove sin as well. This is sozo again.
Jesus wants to heal everyone all
the time. We need to pray and fast to get this conviction into our spirit.
Some
men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them.
Since
they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in
the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the
paralyzed man was lying on.
When
Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are
forgiven."
Now
some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why
does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God
alone?"
Immediately
Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts,
and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier:
to say to the paralytic, `Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, `Get up, take
your mat and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on
earth to forgive sins . . . ." He said to the paralytic, "I tell you,
get up, take your mat and go home (MARK 2:3-11)."
Touching God on Covenant.
Three Examples of when people
plead the covenant to Jesus and on that basis he healed them.
The woman with the issue of blood.
“Just then a woman who had
been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the
edge of his cloak. She said to herself, "If I only touch his cloak, I will
be healed." Jesus turned and saw her. "Take heart, daughter," he
said, "your faith has healed you." And the woman was healed from that
moment (MATT 9:20-22).”
She felt the anointing of
healing. She knew she was healed. Jesus felt power leave him. Her faith drew
the healing power.
It was saving faith that healed
her. Why?
(a)
Context: Under the Law only the High Priest could
enter the Holy of Holies one a year. He wore a special garment. The hem was
significant. It had tassles, bells and pomegranates that symbolized the law,
judgments and promises of God’s word. They knew that the hem symbolized God’s
authority. It was the hem of Jesus’ garment she touched. In doing so she acknowledges
him as her great high priest – the priest of the covenant God.
(b)
She had to get on all fours to touch it – risking her
life in that crowd. Why go for the hem? She was acknowledging him as her High Priest
who atoned for her sins once and for all. She was saying “I believe you are the
son of God come in the flesh. The Messiah, the king of Israel.”
It was her act of faith and
humility in reaching for the hem that brought her healing.
Blind Bartimaeus.
“Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his
disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man,
Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging.
When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth,
he began to shout,
"Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me!" Many rebuked him and told him to be
quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"
Jesus
stopped and said, "Call him." So they called to the blind man,
"Cheer up! On your feet! He's calling you." Throwing his cloak aside,
he jumped to his feet and came to
Jesus.
"What
do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him.
The
blind man said, "Rabbi, I want to see."
"Go,"
said Jesus, "your faith has healed you."
Immediately
he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road (MARK 10:46-52).”
A factor that gave him the right
to be healed.
He called Jesus “Son of David” – the messianic title –
speaks of Jesus as saviour, Messiah.
He then asked for “mercy” – this covers their sins. They
knew he needed more than just healing.
How do we know he received
forgiveness as well? He threw off his garment. In those days the Roman
government issued begging cloaks which allowed people to beg for alms. The
cloak let others know this was a bonafide basket case. The cloak gave him his
identity – he was a beggar. His garment was who he was, his identity. So to
throw it away was like saying, “I am a new man in Christ”. He knew something
more than just healing was happening to him.
A Gentile woman’s faith. Matt 15:21ff
“A Canaanite woman from that
vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!
My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
Jesus
did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send
her away, for she keeps crying out after us."
He
answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."
The
woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
He
replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to
their dogs."
"Yes,
Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from
their masters' table."
Then
Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is
granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour (MATT 15:22-28).”
Jesus said it wasn’t right to
give the “children’s bread to Gentiles
(dogs)” – those outside the covenant. Bread represents life, healing,
deliverance, God’s word and presence in scripture. Jesus is saying. “Only God’s
children have the right to the covenant blessing of healing.”
The only way to be acceptable to God is to enter into
covenant relationship with him by receiving Christ as Saviour. Then you are a
child of the covenant and healing is your bread. Part of your basic right in
the family. Matt 7:9 – the Father will never deny you bread. Matt 6:11 – “Give us this day our daily bread” – a prayer
for all the things we need to sustain us in life.
The woman knew she didn’t have a
claim on God through covenant, but she figured God had plenty of blessings to
go round.
She acknowledged Jesus as “Son of David,” thus confessing her
faith. Saving faith.
Today we are begging for crumbs
as we don’t have a revelation of our covenant rights. Just like the elder
brother of the prodigal son. He didn’t know he had access to what ever he
wanted because it was all his already. We look at ourselves and say we are not
worthy enough but the blessings are free
All three of these found saving
faith first – they recognized Jesus as Son of David. And Jesus quickly
recognized their faith. In that moment they received sozo – complete salvation
of spirit, soul, body.
Healing is a covenant right. Just
live in the branch and let the sap flow. You don’t have to do anything.
Healing
in the Lords Supper.
As we come to consider the Lord’s Supper we need to
receive it as a covenant gift from God.
Every covenant in the Bible is sealed by a covenant
sacrifice – and Jesus was the sacrifice for the New Covenant. With a covenant
sacrifice the worshipper shared in the sacrifice by eating the flesh of the
animal. They were forbidden to drink blood in the Old Testament but always had
a drink offering of wine to go with the sacrifice to symbolize the blood. And they
drank part of this drink offering. So let’s pick up where the apostle Paul
introduces this subject:
1COR
10:1 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our
forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea.
1COR
10:2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
1COR
10:3 They all ate the same spiritual food
1COR
10:4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock
that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
Jesus himself gives us the
true interpretation of these things:
JOHN
6:32 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has
given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true
bread from heaven.
JOHN
6:33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to
the world."
JOHN
6:34 "Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."
JOHN
6:35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will
never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
Jesus went further:
JOHN
6:47 I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.
JOHN
6:48 I am the bread of life.
JOHN
6:49 Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died.
JOHN
6:50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and
not die.
JOHN
6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this
bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the
life of the world."
JOHN
6:52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this
man give us his flesh to eat?"
JOHN
6:53 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
JOHN
6:54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will
raise him up at the last day.
JOHN
6:55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
JOHN
6:56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.
JOHN
6:57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the
one who feeds on me will live because of me.
JOHN
6:58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna
and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever."
This is zoe life which I have
already talked about. What Jesus is promising is that if we partake of his body
and blood we will AT THE SAME TIME partake of the very life of God, the
resurrection life of the Holy Spirit which raised the battered, broken body of
Christ from the dead and enabled it to function again as if there was nothing
wrong with it.
So the $64 million question
must be: How do we eat his body and
drink his blood? How can we have life in us?
Paul gives us the clue. Paul
takes the sacrament of Baptism and he likens it to the Israelites passing
through the Red Sea. In fact he calls the
historical episode an example:
1COR
10:6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts
on evil things as they did.
In case we miss it he says it
again:
1COR
10:11 These things happened to them as examples and were written down as
warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.
The word “example” is a word that means a model, a die, a type, a pattern.
What he means is that what happened to them and the spiritual principles they
experienced in these historical episodes we also experience. In this sense they
are our spiritual “fathers”.
Behind all of this is a very
Jewish way of understanding things. For them the annual feasts were a “remembrance” of past events, but it was
a remembrance with a prophetic edge. Through participating in the annual ritual
they believed that they were actually made to be present when the original
events occurred. So every orthodox Jew believes he was there in Egypt, he was there at the Red
Sea, he was there at Sinai, and so on. To “remember” is not just
to “think back” as we imagine it to be. To “remember” is to re-experience the
event so that you were actually there when it happened.”
This is particularly true of
the feasts and festivals and the Passover is the prime Festival. Passover is
also the basis of the communion service as it was during the Passover Meal
Jesus instituted Communion. When Jesus did was change the meaning of the symbols
of the bread and wine already part of the meal: “This bread is my body…this wine is my blood, the blood of the New
Covenant.” He was not changing the way of understanding – that a
remembrance was a re-enactment with a view to being a participant – he was just
changing what the re-enactment spoke of. It no longer would speak of Egypt and
Sinai, the Old Covenant; rather it would speak of the New Covenant.
The point is this: when we
take communion we re-enact what it speaks of in such a way as to make ourselves
participants of the original event: we were there in the upper room with Jesus
and the 12, we were there on the Cross with our head, Christ, we were in the
crowd mocking him and shouting “Crucify him, Crucify him,” we were there when
he rose from the dead and conquered every evil power – including sickness.
Let’s go back to Paul in 1 Cor
10 with this understanding of “remembrance”
that Paul is working out of. Paul goes on later in the chapter to talk about
communion, but he is building on this idea that the worshippers actually ate
part of the sacrifice and it is exactly the same for us. As we partake of
communion we mystically eat and drink of Christ’s body and blood. And that
means that we take into ourselves everything that the covenant sacrifice bought
for us:
1COR
10:15 I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.
1COR
10:16 Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation
in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in
the body of Christ?
1COR
10:17 Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all
partake of the one loaf.
1COR
10:18 Consider the people of Israel:
Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar?
Jesus said, “This is my body.”
Right in the first chapter of this blog I said Body,
Soul and Spirit are not precisely defined separate categories but are imprecise
convenient labels to describe the components of human nature. The Bible sees us
holistically. It sees the person as a single entity.
The Hebrew has no word for “body” as distinguished
from soul and spirit in the Old Testament. They did not think of the body as
having a status of its own. The word which comes closest to what we think of as
a body is basar – but this refers to the total life of a man. Therefore the idea of a disease as strictly
physical is unknown in scripture. Disease is always a result of dis-ease in the
whole man, so it has mental, physical, emotional and spiritual roots.
The New Testament does have a word for body – soma –
and it is essential to us as a person, we are naked when we lose our body in
death. So essential that God will resurrect the body. Essentially we are not
human without a body. Angels do not have physical bodies, men do. And as men we
will have a physical body in the next life.
When we hear Christ’s words we need to think like a
Hebrew – what does he mean by “This is my body”? He means, “This is the
totality of my person and life and work – I am making it available to you and
as you eat of this bread you actually/really take into yourself the totality of
my provision for your life – for your body – for your total person.”
1COR
11:23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord
Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,
1COR
11:24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my
body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me."
1COR
11:25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is
the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of
me."
1COR
11:26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the
Lord's death until he comes.
1COR
11:27 Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an
unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the
Lord.
1COR
11:28 A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of
the cup.
1COR
11:29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord
eats and drinks judgment on himself.
1COR
11:30 That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have
fallen asleep.
1COR
11:31 But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment.
1COR
11:32 When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will
not be condemned with the world.
Paul says because we have not discerned the Lord’s
body many are sick and some have died. What I want to emphasise here is the
healing power of Christ available in the communion.
The truth is this: When we take communion we partake
of the body of Christ. His body was
broken for us so that our bodies could be healed – but in saying this we are
talking about the whole of our being. In order for this to be true for us
we need to, by faith, discern the Lord’s body – understand that his body was
broken for us and by faith receive that exchange on our behalf.
The trouble in Corinth
– and in most churches today – is that we are not taught to discern the meaning
of the Lord’s body when we take communion. We read the words nearly every
Sunday but we don’t know what it means.
“Who
heals all your diseases” has been overlooked by most at communion
services today and because the church has not properly discerned the Lord’s
body many are weak and sickly today. And some have died.
Communion is a covenant meal. The bread and wine are
symbols – but they are more than symbols – they are sacraments. When we
consecrate them the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in a
mystical way. We do not believe that they actually become Christ’s physical
body and blood, but they convey to us what that body and blood speak of.
In Passover there were two things to do: apply the
blood and eat the flesh of the lamb.
Apply the blood – speaks of justification.
Eat the flesh – the lamb’s body became their body.
Everything we eat becomes part of us.
Mal 3:6 “I am
the Lord I change not.”
Mal 4:1-2 “Surely
a day is coming… for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will
arise with healing in its wings.”
