Devoted to the Breaking of the Bread

We’re gonna be turning through to the Book of Acts again. Acts Chapter 2. Uh, for our visitors, we’ve been working our way through just a little verse in Acts Chapter 2, sort of laying the foundation for a church, seeking to look into what the early church devoted themselves to, so that we would understand what we ought to devote ourselves to, how we ought to act as the family of God. So we’re up to Acts Chapter 2, Verse 42, and I will just read that through to 47 again. This is God’s word for you this morning.

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and with wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions, and belongings, and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts. Praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Amen.

May God bless His word to us, and let’s ask Him for that. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we pray, we ask, pour out your blessing upon your word. Grant us eyes to see, hearts to believe, and wills to do what you declare. We pray that as we hear the preaching of your word, that we would hear the Word of Christ reverberating in our soul. That, Lord, with freshness and vigor, your word would be pressed into our hearts. That we might see Christ, publicly portrayed as crucified before our very eyes, and we might delight in him. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Well, as I said, we’ve been working our way through these devotions of the church. Uh, so far we’ve considered the church being devoted to the church, devoted to Christ, and then we sort of launched into these, this verse, 42, and we considered the church being devoted to the apostles’ teaching, because it was Christ’s teaching and they were Christ’s men. We considered the fellowship and that we were devoted, to devote ourselves to the fellowship because the fellowship was Christ’s people, right? It was Christ’s body, made up of individual believers of Christ. And, and this brings us to number 3, which is the breaking of bread. The early church devoted itself, we’re told, to the breaking of bread, and we are to do the same.

And it immediately just raises the question, doesn’t it, what does it mean by the breaking of bread? I mean, the breaking of bread could mean sort of 2 things, right? It could mean the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, or it could just mean food. And you’ll notice in Verse 46, it tells us that day by day they were attending the temple and breaking bread in their homes, and they were receiving their food with thanksgiving. So you get this impression that in Verse 46, it’s talking about regular food. Well, what’s Verse 42 talking about?

The, the word used for breaking, for breaking of bread, is, is a phrase that’s used quite a lot in the New Testament. So you remember in the gospels, in all 4 of the gospels, we get the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000, right? And what does he do? He blesses the bread and then he breaks it. Same terminology. He breaks the bread and he provides food where there was no food for the 5,000 people. Same terminology is used for the feeding of the 4,000. He prays, he breaks the bread, and he provides for the people where there was nothing beforehand.

We’re also told in Acts 27 that Paul broke bread. This is when he’s on the ship. You remember, he’s arrested, he’s on his way to Rome, and he’s on the ship and he says, “Look, guys. None of you have eaten for 14 days. You’re gonna die. You’re starving. You need sustenance. You need food.” And then he stands up in the presence of all of them, he prays, he breaks bread, and he provides for the people, and he says, “Eat. Sustain your bodies.”

And then we’re told more poignantly in Acts 20, this is that story. Remember the story where the guy falls out the window and dies? This is that story. So the church gathers together and, and straight away it says, “The church was gathered together to break bread.” And then Paul talked ’til midnight and the poor young man fell out the window and died. But, praise the Lord, he was raised from the dead, children. So it turned out to be a happy story after all. However, the breaking of bread is the same terminology.

And then, of course, the 4 most key passages is in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1 Corinthians that we read, the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Now, the breaking of bread itself does not necessarily equal Lord’s Supper, as if the breaking of bread is the, the only terminology to talk about the Lord’s Supper. However, it’s a phrase in the New Testament frequently used to talk about a moment where someone does something really important in order to provide, and what we’re getting here in the breaking of bread is a reference to the Lord’s Supper.

Why? Because in the Lord’s Supper, we see what? Christ’s provision for his people, just like when He was on the earth and he broke the bread, and fed the 5,000 miraculously, in the Lord’s Supper, Christ breaks His own body in order to provide for His people. And when the people of God come together to break bread, what are they doing? This is a remembrance of Christ’s body being broken. And so, when they’re devoting th- themselves to the breaking of bread, it is best to understand it as the Lord’s Supper. Some people take it as just meal, like they regularly had fellowship dinner together, or lunch, or whatever they ate back then, but I think it’s more realistically talking about the Lord’s Supper.

And so this affords us the opportunity to consider why it is that we would devote ourself. What, what is so special about this, about this simple thing? It’s very simple, right? I mean, it’s not like you get filled. You get a tiny little piece of bread, and the bread’s so good you kinda just want more. And you get a tiny little cup of juice or wine, and you kind of just want more. It’s not like sitting down at a feast, but we call it a feast. Why is this sacrament, this sign, so important to us?

Well, firstly, because in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or communion if you call it that, in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Christ provides, firstly, a proclamation. Christ’s provision of a proclamation. Every single time the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, Paul says that Jesus’ death is proclaimed until His return. Now, you might find it a bit interesting for me to say that in the sacrament, which doesn’t speak—Sure, I speak, but the Lord’s Supper doesn’t speak, does it? Christ has provided in this sacrament a proclamation of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. How does that happen?

Well, the, the supper is a visual gospel presentation of the reality of everything that’s Christ, Christ has accomplished, but especially as a confirmation of the verbal one. We know the gospel’s preached, right? Paul says, “Preach the gospel.” He says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” And when we talked about the apostles’ teaching, one of the things we talked about th- was that these men were men who were teaching the way of the most high God, and proclaiming life. You remember that demon-possessed girl says that. So we know the gospel gets preached, but how can this sacrament be a gospel proclamation of the death of Christ?

Well, this serves to seal—Firstly, it serves to seal and confirm everything that’s preached. This is one of the reasons we celebrate the Lord’s Supper after the preaching of the gospel, after the preaching of the Word. So, we proclaim the Word of Christ, and then, uh, once Logan’s finished – or whoever’s up here – has finished proclaiming Christ, and his work, and his person, and all he’s achieved, we then come and, and then we get this visible portrayal of the reality of everything we’ve heard.

It’s, it’s a little bit like if a lawyer calls you up and says – or a person claiming to be a lawyer – calls you up and says, “Guess what? A long lost aunt of yours died, and you’ve inherited a million dollars.” Now, you might get excited, but you’re probably gonna say, “It’s probably a scam.” But if the lawyer says to you, “I’m coming to your house today to bring the sealed proof of your inheritance,” and the lawyer actually turns up with the sealed document, stamped, signed by the court, all official, inheritance for a million dollars, you begin to get a lot more excited, right? You could imagine, all of a sudden you’d be thinking about everything you were gonna buy and what you were gonna do with the money.

And, and it works a bit like that. We hear the preaching of the Gospel, but part of the problem is we’re, we’re just like little children, right? A- and we struggle in life because we need something tangible to hold onto. We, we understand this with our children, don’t we? Our children, so often we speak to them and they struggle, but when we put something in their hands, they understand immediately what we’re talking about. You can explain to your children ’til you’re blue in the face how to tie their shoes. But what’s the quickest way of teaching your children how to tie their shoes? You hop down on their level, and you cross over, and you tuck, and you make the bunny ears or whatever it is you do with your children, and you show them, right? And you put it in their hands, and they touch it, and they feel it, and they go, “Oh, I understand now.”

And the sacrament works like that. Christ is proclaimed to us, and then we take, and we eat, and we take, and we drink, and we go, “Oh, Christ’s body and blood is actually given for me.” And, and not just for people in general, but we sit with it in our hands, and we look at it, and by faith we go, “Wow. He’s actually done it for me, for Logan.” For you as an individual person. Your name was in his heart as he broke his body and poured out his blood. Every elect child of God was in the mind of God as the wrath of God was poured out upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so, this proclamation is made, but this proclamation is also primarily made for who? For sinners. You see, this proclamation of the death of Christ happens to show us the cost of sin, the cost of our rebellion, that it is no cheap, mere thing for us to sin against God, for us to rebel against him, for us to be born in sin, so that when we take up the bread, we take up the wine, or we see it done as an unbeliever, and we hear the words of the body being broken of Christ and the blood of Christ being poured out, what we’re getting portrayed visually before our very eyes is that your sin has a hefty price, the price of death. And unless another pays your death, you shall die. And every time the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, that is declared to this world.

However, it’s not just there to show the cost, is it? It’s also there to show that an all-sufficient price has been paid, because Christ doesn’t say, “A body must be broken,” but he says, “My body, given for you. My blood poured out for you.” And Christ goes to the cross, and he has his body broken, and he has his blood poured out, and he provides it to us in the Lord’s Supper so that the world would know that there is one who takes away our sin. And so, every time this is celebrated, we hear proclaimed from the heavens through the sacraments, “Come, come, come, and I will make you whole.” We hear declared an invitation to any who would draw near to Christ that there is one in heaven who is sufficient to take away the cost of your sin. There is an all-sufficient sacrifice.

A- and we see this illustrated so beautifully for us in the Passover, don’t we, in the Old Testament? You remember that feast, children, in the Book of Exodus, when, when God was gonna come and kill all the firstborn children in Egypt? And what did the people of Israel have to do? They had to kill a lamb, and they had to take the lamb’s blood, and they painted it on their doorposts, the edges of their house? and then they had to sit down, and they eat it, and while they were eating the lamb that was killed in their place, the angel of death would come to the house and say, “I don’t need to enter here because a sacrifice has been made.” And it’s a picture for us, isn’t it? The people of Israel to, uh, to look at this and to remember, and in years to come we’re told that they were to say to their children, when their children say to them, “Why do you do this? Why do you eat this? Why do you drink this? Why do you celebrate this?” They were to say to their children, “For thus has the Lord done for me, for he passed over me in Egypt. He didn’t strike me dead like he did the Egyptians.”

And so the sacrament serves to do the same. And so, parents, let me encourage you. When you hop in your car every Sunday, remind your children of what they’ve seen. Remind your children of the fact that we saw Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament, and there is a God who provides all that you need, and that you too can be passed over if you would put your trust in the one who provides, who breaks the bread, and who pours out the wine.

And so it’s like there, those wonderful words in Isaiah 55. Remember those words that Isaiah the prophet says? “Come, come to me all ye who are thirsty. Buy from me wine and milk without money.” It’s striking, isn’t it? Buy from me without money. Why? Because Christ has paid for—Because what—The price has been paid, and so Christ stands at the table every celebration, and he says, “Eat, drink. It’s for you. Come. Will you come to me?”

See, every Sunday we have a declaration to sinners that today is the day of salvation. Call on Christ, and you may live. It’s a free off- offer of the Gospel. And this sacrament of remembrance, which is a proclamation of the Gospel, will continue to resound Sunday by Sunday by Sunday until the return of Christ, and then it will serve as a remembrance of judgment upon sinners who refuse to come, because there are so many who see and hear and refuse to come, and refuse to eat, and refuse to drink, and refuse the free offer of Christ, and will forever remember that it was freely offered, and yet they refused. Don’t be that person. If you have not yet come to Christ, come. Lay down the burden of your sin, and receive life in Him. it requires no expertise. It requires no fancy work. It requires but saying, “Christ have mercy on me, a sinner.” And the day you do, you are made new.

And so Christ in this visible portrayal provides us with a proclamation of the Gospel. But he also provides us with a participation in Christ himself. We receive a participation of Christ. What do I mean by that? do I mean by that? Well, in, in first Corinthians Chapter 10, Verse 16, Paul says, “But do you not know, brothers, that when you partake of the wine, you share in Christ? And do you know that when we eat one bread, we share in one body?” Is there—There is something in this eating and drinking which means we are participating in Christ Himself.

Now, when I say that, I don’t mean what Catholics mean when they say that. You—I trust you know what Catholics believe. Catholics believe that when the priest stands at the front—Now, he’ll always stand—This is important notice of, notice of layout. What side of the table am I standing on? This side. A Catholic priest and an Anglican priest will always stand on that side of the table, because he is the guardian of the table. He owns the table, and he will administer it to you, and he must guard it to ensure that you don’t drink the blood, ’cause only the priest’s allowed to drink the blood. And it’s his to administer it to you as a priest of God, sacrificing Christ again.

But you’ll notice, as reformed believers, we don’t do that. I stand on this ti- side of the table. Why? Because though I administer the table, as though I administer the supper, it’s not my supper. It is our table that we share together, that we eat and drink of together. And so, when we come to the table, unlike the Catholics, we’re not going to say a special word, do some magic, turn the bread into actual f- flesh while you eat it—Sounds gross—Or drink actual blood when you drink it. But rather, by faith, though you eat bread and drink wine, by faith you hear the word of Christ, ’cause what does Christ say? “This is my body. This is my blood.” And by faith you hear the word of Christ and believe that you are participating in Christ’s body and blood. In other words, you are participating in the person and all of the work of Christ.

And so you come and you eat and drink, and you share in everything that Christ has accomplished. His sacrifice is fully applied to you. You come after a week of rebellion, and sin, and wandering, and you find forgiveness again, because He says, “This is my body, given for the forgiveness of your sins.” And you come feeling dirty and unclean after a week in the world, because you’ve set your heart and mind upon things that make you dirty. And yet Christ says, “This is my blood, given to”—What? Cleanse you of all your sins. And so we participate in the forgiveness, and the healing, and the cleansing work of Christ. We literally share in it by faith, because we look there. It’s not just a simple remembering what Christ did, but it’s a fully entering into by faith.

The other thing it does for us, for the converted, is it acknowledges our unity as one people, doesn’t it? You see, because this is a table for who? For believers, right? It’s not a table for the world. It’s not a table for the unconverted. This is a table for the converted, because it requires faith and knowledge, understanding of Christ’s work, 0 on whatever mental ability, to be able to eat and drink and participate in the sacrifice of Christ. And so as we do that, we do that together, right? This is why the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechisms would say, “You don’t celebrate the Lord’s Supper in private.” They banned the work of the priests. The priests would go from house to house and give it out in little, secluded little groups. Why can you not do that? Because this is a feast of the people of God. And when we eat one bread together and drink one cup together, what we declare is that we are one people.

And this is a fabulous weekly reminder, brothers and sisters, because what does Jesus say? He says, “Leave your gift at the altar if you’ve got an issue with your brother or sister.” It’s a weekly reminder that we need to be reconciled, because we’re not one if we’re fighting, right? We’re not one if we’re bickering. We’re not one if we’re cutting each other down. And so this becomes a weekly reminder, “I’m gonna be celebrating the Lord’s Supper on Sunday. I know I’m at odds with, with Logan, because he’s just generally a jerk and he annoyed me again.” What do you do? You pick up the phone and you call me. and maybe don’t say, “Logan, you’re a jerk,” but say, “Hey, Logan, can we talk? I have a problem.” Or to one another, “My dear brother, you offended me. My dear sister, I’m so sorry in what I did to you. Forgive me that we might be one toge- that we might be at peace so that we can eat and drink together without harboring bitterness in our hearts, without harboring frustrations and anger, but eating and drinking together in peace.”

And so, we participate together in the weekly bonds of love as the people of God. It’s also a good reminder not to miss it, right? But to check our hearts before we come. Remember those words of Paul? “If you eat and drink without discerning the body and blood of the Lord, you eat and drink judgment upon yourself.” We’re to prepare our hearts to come and participate in Christ. See, this is what, this is what push- pushes back against the fear of weekly communion becoming traditional and habitual. You know? Like, just do it every week, and then it just doesn’t really matter. Well, if you eat and drink habitually, you eat and drink judgment upon yourself. So, let me encourage you every Saturday night or every Sunday morning, stop and ask yourself, “Am I ready to partake in Christ again?” Go to Him. Seek His grace. Seek His forgiveness. Acknowledge your sin. Be made right with God again, and then take and eat and drink with joy.

But then lastly, so Christ provides us with a proclamation, He provides us with a participation, but He also provides us with preparation. What I mean by that is He provides us with something to prepare us for eternity. One of the phrases that happens in, in all of the Lord’s supper accounts, that’s Ma- Matthew, Mark, Luke, 1 Corinthians, is a variation of the same phrase, “I will not eat and drink this again with you until I return.” Or, “I will not eat and drink this with you until the Kingdom of God comes,” or something like that. All of them have it. Why? Because this is a feast that is preparing us for the day when we will celebrate in the presence of the lamb.

Remember those beautiful words in Revelation 19, the marriage supper of the lamb when the people of God are gathered together like a bride adorned for her husband, and He sits and He feasts with them, and they cry out, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb.” That’s what we’re heading to, and this is a foretaste of that day. We come and we eat in part. We drink in part. We see me in front of the table, at the table, rather than Christ at the table. And what do all of these things do? They serve to prepare us by creating a longing in us, right?

Because let’s be honest. If you’d rather—Who would you rather have standing at the table this morning, me or Jesus? If you say me, you got it wrong, because I don’t wanna be at the table if Jesus is here. I would rejoice to be able to sit there with you while Jesus administered the sacrament. And yet, that’s what we’re heading for, right? We’re heading for a day when no fallen, broken minister stands before us, but the God Man Himself. And so, it creates longing.

It’s a little bit like if you’ve worked really, really hard. Have you ever had this before? You have a really hard day of work and you’re working away, you’re working away, you’re working away, and all of a sudden you’re thirsty. And you look for a drink, but the only drink you can find is a really small one. You got a little bit left in your drink bottle. And you have a sip, and it doesn’t really quench the thirst at all. In fact, it kind of just makes you thirstier. You’re like, “Ugh. I really need more water now.” Or if you’re really hungry and someone says, “Oh, here. Eat this while you wait for food,” you eat it, and now you’re just hungrier ’cause you’ve had a taste. Well, that’s what happens with this. We eat and we drink and we go, “Oh, praise the Lord. Our day is coming where I’m eating with Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus, come.”

But it also sets our hearts and minds on him, doesn’t it? And so, we come here after a week of feeding on the filth of this world, and all of a sudden, we’re face to face with Christ’s table and it reminds us that there are better things to eat and drink, there are better things to feed upon. And so our mind f- In Colossians 3, we’re told as, “Set on heavenly places.” We fix out our—fixate our gaze upon heaven and upon eternity, because by faith we’ve been given a what? A remembrance.

You remember Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance.” It’s an interesting word choice, isn’t it? He doesn’t say, “Oh, do this and remember me,” you know, because we might forget him, so we need to remember. “Oh, I forgot that Jesus died for me.” That’s not the point. See, a remembrance is very different to remembering. A remembrance is a perpetual sign that is a constant mark of something true of you right now. And you’ve probably heard me say this before, but my favorite illustration of this is a wedding ring, right? My wedding ring is not my wedding. What is it? It’s a sign of the covenant I entered into. It’s a perpetual reminder, ’til death do we part, that I am in this state of being married.

And this is exactly the same. It is a weekly constant reminder every time we take it and drink it that I am in the state of receiving the death and resurrection of Christ, that I am justified in him, saved in him, made new in him. “I am a new creation in Christ Jesus,” Paul says. But it’s also a remembrance which looks forward, looking towards the day to come when we will celebrate him.

The, the Passover, the way they celebrated the Passover was a really beautiful w-beautiful picture of this, and, and it actually relates pretty well to what we have here. You see, the, the Israelites were to eat bread, no yeast, so it’s hard, right? And the bread was to have a certain type of herb in it. I wonder if you remember what type of herbs they were to be. They were bitter herbs, remember? Why? Because the bitter, flat, hard bread was to be a reminder, a remembrance of their slavery, of their hard yoke in Egypt. And, and the bread which we eat similarly serves to remind us of our sin, our brokenness. “A body broken for you”—And, and the Israelites were to drink sumptuous wine, the best wine they could find. Why? Because it served as a remembrance of a land flowing with milk and honey. And so, as they traveled through the wilderness, they ate and they remembered Egypt, and they drunk with longing for the day of the promised land.

And so too for us. We take and eat and remember our brokenness, our slavery, our sin, and we take and drink and we remember and look forward to a day of a promised land. There’s a promised land coming, right? When all sin will be washed away, all burden carried away, and we’ll have peace with him.

You know, it’s strange, isn’t it? Because most of Christian life is about hearing. What’s the, what’s the refrain over and over in the New Testament and the Old Testament? “Hearken. Hearken to me. Hear me.” “He who has ears,” Jesus says, “Let him hear.” All through the letters of the New Testament, church is, “Hear. Listen. Listen. Hear.” And what? “Believe.” hear, believe, look, as Hebrews puts it, with eyes of faith, to the unseen things. See, as Christians, we deal with unseen things, don’t we? We are like experts of the unseen world, not the ghosty type, the spiritual type. And we live in that sphere, and yet, isn’t it wonderful that God, in his gracious kindness to his little children, has given them things to lay hold of? He has given the church 2 sacraments. He hasn’t given them visible crosses. He hasn’t given them anything else. He’s given them 2 sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and these exist as the visible, physical reminder of who we are in Christ.

And so, we take and eat, and we take and drink, and with joy, we feast upon him. Let us relish this. I can think of no better way to conclude this sermon than to take and eat, and to take and drink. So let’s pray and prepare ourselves.

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