Dennis Tuuri

Scripture is found in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 29. Deuteronomy chapter 29 starting at verse 10. Deuteronomy 29:10-20. You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God, your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the stranger that is within thy camp, from the hearer of thy wood until the drawer of thy water, that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into his oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day, that he may establish thee today for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee, oh God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Neither with you only do I make this covenant in this oath, but with him that standeth here with us this day, before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day. For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt, and how he came through the nations which ye passed by, and you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them.

Lest there should be among you man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord your God to go and serve the gods of these nations. Lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood. And it come to pass when he heareth the words of this curse that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart to add drunkenness to thirst.

The Lord will not spare him. But then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in the book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.

We’ll continue this morning going through our series on biblical worship. We’re in the middle of a series of talks on communion. And I suppose what I’m attempting to do in these talks on communion is to build on the common knowledge we all probably have of the basic elements of communion and restore, reconstruct, restore back several important elements of communion that have been at least to some degree and in some churches in America today uh ignored or not taught or not properly understood.

Therefore, when we began this series, we talked about the necessity of seeing communion in relationship to community and the vital link that exists between those two. And I would again say, as I think I did last week, that if you did not hear that tape on communion and community, it’s quite important that you do so. I want everybody in our church to hear that tape. It is extremely important for rebuilding a concept of what we have here at Reformation Covenant Church is a covenanted community and that is what we bond ourselves to every Lord’s day during the sacrament of communion.

Last week we talked about the extent of the covenant community that it includes children and again it is on one hand a sad pitiful thing that for hundreds of years covenant children have not been nourished by the people and the parents and the churches that God has put them in the stewardship of through the sacrament of communion.

It is a dreadful thing to realize that these are God’s children and that to refuse to give those children the nourishment, the spiritual understanding and teaching that accompanies communion and the proper taking of it. We have starved quite literally God’s children in that sense.

Now, it should have went without saying, but maybe it didn’t last week and I’m not sure if I stressed it good enough. Obviously, maybe it isn’t obvious, but I’ll just say that obviously from the scriptures in the Old Testament, a person had to be circumcised before he could partake of the Lord’s supper that is the Passover of the Old Testament.

That is quite clear and the reasons for this are obvious and what we’ve been discussing the last couple of weeks and will become even more obvious I suppose this morning. But baptism replacing circumcision and the other cleansings of the Old Testament are once for all engrafting into the visible covenant community and it’s an acknowledgement of entrance into initiation starting in that visible covenant community.

The Lord’s supper is the sign of continuance nourishment in that visible covenant community. And so you can’t be nourished if you haven’t been grafted in. And it would be a violation of God’s holy word to give unbaptized people communion. And yet it occurs on a regular basis also in our churches, much of because we just have failed to understand the whole Bible implications of these signs and seals which we’ll be dealing with this morning.

This week we’re talking about the relationship of communion to covenant. And we’ve talked about it briefly and by way of around the issue somewhat in the last couple of weeks. Today we’re going to talk about it directly. What does it mean when we take communion. How does what has to do with covenant renewal? Covenant ratification? Jesus said, “This is the new testament in my blood. This is the new covenant.

What does that mean? What are the implications of that?” And again, the churches have failed to understand and necessarily appropriate this every week.

And then next week, we’re going to be talking about the relationship of communion to victory, following up on the idea of covenant, that there is covenant victory. And that is certainly lacking in many of our churches. Instead, communion becomes a dirge.

Certainly, there’s a solemnity to remembrance of our Lord’s death. But the Lord’s death accomplished things. We’re going to talk about what he accomplished in a fuller sense next week.

Okay, now we have the introduction to this morning’s talk. The covenant is of great importance to understanding communion is obvious from the scriptures that teach us about communion. In the gospel accounts Christ said as I said before that the blood was the blood of the new testament.

It was covenantal blood in that sense that they were to be partaking of. 1 Corinthians 11:25 When Paul repeats or reminds them of the institution of the Lord’s supper, he again repeats Christ saying that this cup is the new testament in my blood. This do you as often as ye drink it in remembrance of me. The tremendous importance in terms of communion on the on the idea or concept of covenant.

Now, we have a problem today. It’s not a problem that’s unknown in the ages, but I think it’s particularly true today. We have a tremendous problem when we as modern 19th and 20th century men try to read the Bible and understand what it means with the woeful ignorance we have of most of the scriptures that most of us are unfortunately in the state of today in America. What I’m saying is that people have not been brought up the children essentially have not been brought up with an understanding of the scriptures.

Most of us in this church may have had some Bible stories read to us but never a thorough grounding in the scriptures, daily devotions, daily readings from the scriptures and an absorption into the scriptures throughout our lives. Well, so we get and then on top of that the problem is the New Testament uh clearly must understood in terms of the Old Testament. Hebrews, we’ll talk about Hebrews later on, but that’s the correlation.

And what I’m saying is when we have a church today in America that uses a short Bible, New Testaments, not Old Testaments, they cannot understand what’s going on because they refuse to look at or just have not looked at two-thirds of God’s word. What I’m saying is at the end of the book, lots of things are referenced in the final chapters of a book that you need to understand the first part of the book to understand what’s said in the last part.

That’s the problem with the book of Revelation. Full of symbols that are developed throughout the scriptures and yet people become new Christians. That’s the first book they’ll start reading and talk about. They’ll start talking about heavily helicopters and all this other stuff not realizing that all this language is covenantal language is developed throughout the rest of scriptures.

Now I bring that up because we have the same problem. We have a meal with God every Lord’s day and we take wine and we eat bread and a lot of times we don’t think of the significance of these things. And so we’re going to spend some time reviewing covenant meals in a couple of minutes here.

Now catechisms are useful. But again, catechisms are short pithy answers to questions essentially that we teach our children. Those who catechize our children in this church have probably taught them by now, most of them, that a sacrament is indeed a symbol of the covenant between God and his people Christians.

But again, there may not be a full understanding of all that implies and what we should be remembering when we take communion.

So this morning, we want to consider covenant in a little more depth. We’ll start by looking at some meals in context. Then we’ll look at common elements of such covenant ratifications and renewals. Then we’ll discuss the relevance to the covenant meal of communion of the Lord’s supper.

We’ll start by doing an overview of Old Testament New Testament passages relative to covenant meals. Second part of the outline, we’ll look at Deuteronomy 29 just briefly and see there the common characteristics to these Old Testament covenant meals that are described in the first part of our outline. And then finally, we’ll look at 1 Corinthians 11 and see the implications of this for what we do in terms of communion.

Okay, this is going to be pretty fast stuff here. At first, we’re going to do an overview of various meals from the Old Covenant and look at their significance to us. What I’m saying is we come to meal with God in the New Testament, it means something in context. And God has given us a lot of information in the scriptures about it.

Now, I don’t know if you’re going to want to try to keep up with the references or not. If you do, that’s great. If not, don’t worry about it. I’ll try to summarize them accurately. You are noble Bereans in this church. You should go home and study this stuff out to make sure that what I’m telling you is correct. That’s your obligation. And that’s part of your covenant responsibilities this morning. And so it’d be a good Sabbath day exercise to go through these various scriptures I have here.

Look at the context a little more carefully. But I’m not able to do that. I’m going to go through them fairly rapidly.

Let’s start with Genesis 14:18-20. Now you’re probably familiar with this text of scripture. Abram is rescued Lot. Melchizedek comes out to meet Abram. Melchizedek gives Abram bread and wine and it pronounces a covenantal blessing on him and he blesses Abraham and the scriptures tell us the lesser is blessed by the greater.

Melchizedek is a priest of God most high and whether or not it was an actual personage or a theophany of Jesus Christ I’m not particularly concerned with in any event he was a representative of God there and he was conferring God’s blessing upon Abram and he gave him bread and wine a meal Abram in response tithes to Melchizedek he gives Melchizedek a tenth of all that he has and immediately thereafter in the same scene we have the king of Sodom And the king of Sodom says, “Oh, you can keep all these things you captured that are mine and just give me a portion.” He offers to enrich Abraham through his wealth and his goods.

I think it’s quite important to acknowledge here that in this meal that Abraham has with Melchizedek, there is a covenant obligation. There’s a covenant blessing. And in response to that, Abraham produces his covenantal obligations correctly by tithing to Melchizedek. Abram acknowledges that whatever goods he has been given to him by God. And so he tithes them. But there’s another thing that Abraham acknowledges here.

I believe in refusing to be enriched by Sodom, Abraham says with the tithe, not only that all that we have belong to God, but that what we earn must be earned in accordance with God’s laws. And so what our production must be subjected to God as well as the fruits of that finally given to him. And so he refuses. He gives God the tithe as representative of the person of Melchizedek. And he refuses to be enriched by the king of Sodom, the ungodly king, you see.

And so Abram walks in obligations to a covenantal arrangement here. And he has a meal with Melchizedek that is indeed a sealing of that covenant. God feeds Abraham, calls on him for consecration, which Abraham then performs. And that consecration includes a positive set of obligations in terms of the tithe and a negative set to avoid ungodly men and being enriched by ungodly means, which is what Sodom is a picture of.

To us in the scriptures. Okay, Genesis 14.

Now, Exodus 24:11. The context of this, we’ve read this portion of scripture several times in the last 3 months. Exodus 24 is the covenant ratification. The people are convened by God and through his representative Moses. Moses takes some blood. He puts half on an altar. He puts the other half in bowls. And he sprinkles the people with the blood of the covenant. And he sprinkles the book with the blood of the covenant as well.

And so we have a covenant obligation being entered into here quite explicitly in the case of Exodus 24. Not implicitly like the one with Melchizedek, but quite explicitly here. And there is then a meal that immediately follows immediately after the people are sprinkled with the blood. God calls for Moses, Aaron, Aaron’s two sons and the 70 elders of Israel representing the whole congregation now to come up on the mountain and to have a meal with him.

And verse 11 of Exodus 24 says that upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand, that is God. Also, they saw God and did eat and drink. And there’s a description there. Let’s turn to that just for a second there because there’s a description that we don’t want to pass without looking at, but I don’t have it written in my notes here. Exodus 24:1 and then I guess it’s verse 12 that I want to point out what he what said here also.

Verse 10. And they these 70 elders and the other representatives of the people saw the God of Israel and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness and upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand also they saw God and did eat and drink so the Bible makes wants us quite clear to understand here the result of this covenant they’ve entered into they go into God’s special presence throne room appearance here and they have a meal with God in God’s special presence and there’s manifestations of that are obvious to them and as a result also They have obligations.

Immediately after this scene, we have the giving of the law to the people. The covenant law is then given to the people who have said, “Yes, we’ll enter into covenant with God.” And that means we’re going to obey the stipulations of that covenant. And then God gives them a full-blown exposition of that covenantal law in the chapters that follow.

The people are ratified with the sprinkling of the blood and with the meal by the representatives and covenant with God. And as a result, they take upon themselves blessings and cursings and stipulations of the covenant. And those stipulations include, as I said, warnings from God about failure to obey the covenant.

Okay. Numbers 5:16-31. I suppose you know if I was going to do this right, I would spend weeks on each of these passages. And this one is one we could spend at least a good couple of weeks on. But in this passage of scripture in Numbers 5, we have what has been referred to as the ordeal of jealousy.

The situation is this: a woman is charged with unfaithfulness by her husband. He has no direct evidence of the crime. However, he brings the wife who he thinks might have been unfaithful to the priest. The priest then goes through an ordeal of jealousy with the wife. He does certain things that she must do to prove her innocence or guilt. What he does is he takes some dust off the floor of the temple.

He puts it into some water and the text says holy water. Okay? Holy water, dust from the temple, puts in there. He takes curses against a woman if she has been unfaithful. Writes them on a scroll. Takes the scroll and dumps it off in some manner or washes it off. Puts it over the mixture that he’s put together. So he puts the curse as it were, the word of God, the covenant word, the stipulations again into that mixture.

Woman then drinks the water. The idea is that if she’s guilty, the script, this is God’s ordeal. Okay, this is not some sort of odd thing. This is what God has commanded them to do. The woman, if she is guilty after drinking this water, the curse will come upon her. Says her belly will swell, her right thigh will waste away, and she’ll become a curse among the people. On the other hand, if she is innocent and if she was not unfaithful, if the husband was wrong, she is declared free and innocent.

Plus, the scriptures say explicitly in the text in Numbers 5, she’ll conceive children, covenant seed, blessing. So, we have the same idea. We have a meal here. The woman’s drinking this water. That’s the meal. And the water is a picture of covenant ratification then and covenant renewal with this woman who may have sinned and broken that covenant. And it’s a picture to her of blessings and cursings of that covenant.

You’ve got the water of blessing, life, holy water, and you’ve got dust from ashes to ashes, dust to dust. When we die, we return to dust. It’s a picture of death. And the woman is given quite clearly in these judgments to come upon her either a picture of curse that will happen to her if she’s guilty or of blessing if she’s innocent. She’ll either waste away or her belly will swell, she’ll die off, and be a curse to people.

Or she’ll conceive children. One of the greatest blessings that the scriptures has to confer upon covenant keepers. So in the context of this and this meal again, we have here we have an ordeal covenant oath being taken. What some have called a self-maledictory oath. You bring upon yourself the curses of that covenant if you’re disobedient. This is the first that I can find recorded instance of the word amen.

The priest says this is what’s going to happen if you when you drink this thing. And she’s supposed to say in response to the curse, amen. Amen. That’s part of her ordeal of jealousy here that she involves herself in. And so when she’s taking that cup, she’s affirming amen. Amen. Is what she says.

Now the next uses of the word amen in the scriptures are when the people say amen to the curses of the law. Are read later on in the book of Deuteronomy. Amen means yes, I agree. And in the context of a covenant oath, amen means I agree that when I take this oath, when I enter into ratification of this oath, when I enter into a covenant meal with God or into the rite of baptism in the New Testament, I am giving my amen to the terms of that covenant, to blessings and cursings. Okay? And the woman was explicitly called to give her amen to that truth.

Amen does then have at least as a connotation of the specific word used in the scriptures, the idea of calling upon oneself the curses of that covenant that we’ve entered into and saying yes, she’s saying yes, I agree I should do this thing and if I’m guilty, I agree that my thigh should waste away and my belly should swell and I should be a curse.

And I agree that if I haven’t done this thing that the blessings remain upon me, not by benefit of what she’s done because she’s already been placed into covenant blessings by God. That’s what she’s saying amen to. And that’s what people say amen to in covenant meals, signs of the covenant.

One other thing that you might notice as you’re reading through this, if you do this today or some other day, is that there’s a peace offering involved here, which the priest is supposed to eat, another meal element to this.

And there is a memorial aspect of this obviously pointing to some correlation between it and the memorial of the New Testament Lord’s supper. I won’t dwell on that now, but I want you to see this covenant meal, what occurs as a result of it.

Fourth, Deuteronomy 14:26 and following. We won’t read that. That is that portion of the holy scriptures. that talk about the rejoicing aspect of the tithe. We’ve gone over that any number of times in this church.

Hopefully, you’re real familiar with it. It’s important to to recognize though that in verse 26, they are told to buy strong drink whatever it is whatever thy soul desires, and thou shalt eat it there before the Lord thy God. So, in the presence of God, they take it up to where God’s special presence is in Jerusalem, knowing that God is not bound by walls or by a city. He’s omnipresent, but he chooses to manifest a special presence in Jerusalem the way he did to those elders went up to the mount of the 70 and revealed himself there to them.

He chooses to dwell in a particular place in Jerusalem. And he tells them when you come up, eat before me in the presence of God. We have a meal in the presence of God. And this is part of the tithe. And remember that the tithe, and we’ve talked about this before, we can’t take the time to develop it this morning. The tithe is a central act of covenant ratification in the scriptures. The end of the book of Deuteronomy, there’s a formula we go through and we say, “Yeah, the third year of tithing, we say, “Yeah, we’ve done what the tithe that you told us to do.” And by saying that, we affirm we’ve been in covenant faithfulness.

The tithe is not just one little element. It is a note of covenant ratification. And the use of the rejoicing tithe, the portion of the tithe that is a rejoicing aspect of the tithe to have a meal with God and to rejoice with in the presence of God that is an indication also that meal is also involved in covenant ratification because it’s part of the tithe. And so there’s a rejoicing aspect to it.

I have the next reference listed is from the book of Nehemiah, a historical occurrence of this thing. People hear the words of the scriptures. We’ve talked to about this a couple of weeks ago. We talked about it several times during this series. Nehemiah 8. People hear the words of the scriptures, they repent of their sins. They are broken by God. And Nehemiah tells them, “No, no, this is a day of rejoicing. God has forgiven your sins. He’s cleansed us. We’re brought into fellowship with him. Rejoice now. That aspect of the tithe should be used now.

Go eat the fat and drink the good things of the land and take to those people that don’t have things. Demonstrate compassion toward those without.” And as a result of that, they have meal then again in the presence of God. in a particular festival that God had called them to use a portion of the rejoicing tithe for.

So, it’s a historical event of this thing. Now, both these instances don’t have explicit curses spelled out in the context, but remember these are part of Mosaic institutions of the Sabbath, the Sabbath observances and feasts and what that was all about.

And in the context of all of that, you certainly have by way of implication to the rest of the covenant statements blessing and curse spelled out before them. If they don’t do it, they’re cursed by God. If they do, they remain in blessing before.

Psalm 116:12-19, David says, “I’ll take the cup of salvation.” Or the psalmist says, I don’t I don’t remember now if it was David who wrote this or not. I’ll take the cup of salvation.

I’ll pay my vows. Call upon the name of the Lord. What the affirmation here is that the cup of salvation, another obvious reference to eating or a meal or drinking a meal as it were in God’s presence. He’s calling upon the name of the Lord as he drinks. this cup of salvation and he pays his vows. He has obligations to the one that he affirms covenant with and taking the covenant meal of taking the cup of salvation.

And so the psalm records that we have obligations. He is God’s servant as the results of taking the cup from God and life from God. He entered into a covenantal obligation with him and he is his servant now and he must offer up the sacrifice of thanksgiving.

The text says now just briefly noting here 80 to 90% of the references to the cup God’s cup in the scriptures and in the Old Testament refer to the cup of God’s wrath.

Okay? And so this is one of the few occurrences where the cup is seen as terms of salvation and blessing. And again, I think implicitly here then we have the idea that if the person takes the cup of salvation and eats a fellowship meal with God, a covenant meal with God, that he is saying on one hand, this is the cup of salvation and I have obligations. But if I don’t fulfill those obligations, it becomes the cup of wrath from God.

The wrath of God has poured out against those people that take it and then walk in sinful disobedience and rebellion against the one they have affirmed covenant to.

Proverbs 9:5 wisdom says, “Come eat of my bread and drink of the wine which I have mingled.” Look at that just a minute. Proverbs 9 if you turn to that. Wisdom, a personification of Jesus Christ, I believe in the first and foremost place. A wisdom builds her house.

Then she says she’s made wine. She’s made a meal for those. And in verse 5, she invites those to come. Eat of my bread. Drink of the wine which I have mingled. And then she goes on to say, “Forsake the foolish and live and go in the way of understanding.” See obligations. There’s a meal. There’s a covenant. You’re going into covenant with wisdom. And wisdom tells you there are stipulations to the covenant. You to forsake the foolish.

You’re supposed to live. The obvious implication if you don’t walk in covenant obligation, you die. So the meal affirms both sides of That wisdom, as I said, calls out. And then the people that are called out to an elect of God move in obligation, move in obedience to that covenant stipulation and have communion with God and all that entails, including blessings and cursings. And the blessings are provided to us.

The curses come if we fail to walk in obedience. Sanctions are an essential element of the book of wisdom. Throughout the book of wisdom, there are sanctions. There are stipulations. Do this, don’t do this. If you do this, this bad thing is going to happen. If you do this, blessings will continue to accrue to you. What the book of wisdom is all about. And so the meal there symbolizes all that as well.

Isaiah 62:9, they that have gathered it shall eat it and praise the Lord, and they that shall have brought it together shall drink it in the courts of my holiness.

There’s a reference to God restoring his people. And he says that in terms of that restoration, a picture of that restoration is a meal in the courts of God’s holiness, coming before God’s special presence again. Having a meal and entering back into covenant with God. He has cut them off. The covenant is now renewed. They’re brought back into covenant relationship with God. And he says food and drink is a big part of that covenant ratification, the blessings of God’s presence.

Now, a few chapters later in the same context in Isaiah 65:13, it says, “Therefore, thus sayeth the Lord God, behold, my servant shall eat, but he shall be hungry. Behold, my servant shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty. Behold, my servant shall rejoice. Ye shall be ashamed. Interesting, isn’t it? Eat, drink, and be merry. That’s what God’s servants do. See, we always think of that in a negative context, don’t we?

But there’s a positive context to that. If we’re in covenant with God, and we’re God’s servants, and that’s the operative word in Isaiah 65, then we eat, drink, and be merry in his presence, not autonomously from him. If we seek to move autonomously from God and from the covenant that he’s made in Jesus Christ, we may think we’re eating, drinking, being merry, but we’re not eating. We’re going hungry.

There’s no benefit. Benefit to us. In fact, there’s curse occurs to us from that meals that we take. And so again, in Isaiah 62 and 65, God says the covenant is ratified through a meal. The meal indicates either you become full or you become hungry. And the operative stipulation there is that you’re a servant of God. And you enter into this oath understanding your obligations to the one. You’re to be his people the way he is to be your God.

And again, this happens in the sanctuary of God, in the courts of his holiness, and in his presence. By the way, in verse 8, 8 of Isaiah 62. the idea of covenant is also affirmed because it says the Lord has sworn by his right hand that all these things will happen in verse 8 of Isaiah 62. Swearing by the right hand is indication of God entering into covenant with us of course on his part.

Jeremiah 22:15 shalt thou rain because thou clothestest thyself in cedar? Did not thy fathers eat and drink and do judgment and justice? And then it was well with him.

Jeremiah 22, the first few verses there talking about you’re building all these neat houses for yourself and cedar paneled and all this stuff. Houses are to guard ourselves in. You’re doing all these things. He said, “But you’ve missed the point of this. The point of covenant with me is to eat and drink with me as your fathers did and do judgment and justice.” Eating and drinking is tied in this verse to the doing of judgment and justice.

You see, meals are not just empty things that we do. That’s the point of all this is to show you that throughout the scriptures, meals have a significance in terms of what we’re doing. And when you eat and drink with God, and these are the verses we’re going through now, the significance is that the result of that eating and drinking is to do judgment and justice and obey God’s stipulations. And then it was well with him with your fathers.

Jeremiah says there, our wellness is not dependent upon our abilities to provide for ourselves to go out and make sure we can survive any catastrophe that happens. Our wellness is in terms of our fellowship with God and the covenant which promises his protection. to us. God’s our house in a sense. That doesn’t mean we can be foolish about our providing for our family. We must do that. Of course, the point is we do that seeking first God’s kingdom and then the other things that we seek to do in terms of protecting our families etc will be blessed by God because they’re under the jurisdiction of him and his covenant.

They tried to build internal security being external security around them. But their father And this reference to Josiah here is the specific reference I believe did eat and drank and did justice. And that was to know God. And that’s the protection that God gives to those who are in covenant with him. Those who are outside of covenant. The best stronghold fortresses we have won’t protect us from the winds that blow from God if we deny the covenant stipulations we’ve entered into in the covenant meal.

Finally, Acts 10:41 says, “Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.” And what the talk here is about in Acts 10 is who Christ manifests him to self to who he appeared to after his resurrection. And he appeared to those who had or he had rather manifested himself unto the witnesses that ate and drank with Christ after his resurrection.

Okay? Christ manifest himself and the blessings of the covenant to those people that had meal with him after his resurrection and before his ascension. See, it wasn’t just getting together and oh, let’s have a little dinner together with no significance. The significance of those meals is clearly stated here. They were part of the covenant witness. And those people that were obedient to those meals, God app Jesus appears to them and he commands them then to preach his gospel.

We’ll talk about this a little later, but in first Corinthians it says, “Do this in remembrance of me. When you do this, you proclaim the Lord’s death.” Okay? In remembrance of his covenant word in remembrance of his covenant work in remembrance of his covenant blessings, obligations, and potential curses. Okay, those are some of the meals with God from the scriptures and by no means exhaustive list, just a smattering of them.

Some other meals are mentioned with false gods. Exodus 32:6, we’ve talked about that. It’s a warning to us in 1 Corinthians 10. they thought they were in fellowship with God. They had gone through the Red Sea. They had eaten the manna in the wilderness and yet They sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. They had communion with the golden calf, the idol as it were, false communion. And as a result, they were cursed because of that.

And God killed many of them.

Deuteronomy 32:38, very good passage. It says, “Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you and be your protection.” And Moses here in the song of witness is saying, if you go into the land and then you start eating and drinking with false gods,, you rely on those gods when the winds blow, will they rise up and help you?

Those gods that ate your sacrifices and drank your drink offerings, let them rise up and help you now. Well, the obvious implication of this is that God has promised to be our protector. And if our sacrifices are offered to him, then he is our protection. As we said before in terms of the passage from Jeremiah here is fellowship with unholy gods, unholy communion as it were with idols and demons. And the one we have a meal with, this text tells us, is the one who protects us.

We have a meal with the king. The king, we fall under his protection, the shadow of his wings, and he keeps us. The meal has a significance to it. It’s not an empty event.

Judges 9:27, the situation here is Abimelech has been named king, has gotten king to himself. He’s done it in a very ungodly manner with slaughtering of other people. Abimelech introduced Baal, the worship of Baal Berith, the Baal of the covenant.

It’s kind of a syncretistic merging together of the worship of Yahweh and the worship of Baal, covenant god of Israel and Baal, and kind of merging those things together. And you know, it never does good to compromise the faith. You always end up being eaten by either side. And in this case here in Judges 9:27, the true Baal worshippers come together, it says, and they go out into the fields, they gather vineyards.

They go out to their vineyards and they gather grapes. They trod the grapes and they made merry and went into the house of their gods and did eat and drink and cursed Abimelech. See, this isn’t just they got drunk and went to the house of their gods. Now, let’s get that Abimelech guy. No, no, no. This is a religious event occurring. These worshippers of Baal now having false communion as it were. They get together where they’re going to ratify a curse to go out and get a do it through a meal in the presence of their god.

That’s what it’s all about. It’s a twisted perversion of what the scriptures has given us a number of instances in which we’ve just reviewed.

So, they do that. It’s interesting here that James B. Jordan’s commentary on this portion of the book of Judges is quite good, I think. the man who arranged this and wanted to get rid of Abimelech was named Gaal, son of Ebed. And Jordan says a very literal translation of Gaal means loathsome.

And Ebed means slave. And so this was Loathsome slave son who was trying to kill Abimelech. Of course, Abimelech wasn’t much better. He was a syncretist, but loathsome slave son was a full-blown Baal worshipper and he wanted full-blown Baal worship in the land. And so the point is they did this by way of a covenant meal. Again, they covenanted together to get a in the presence of their gods.

Proverbs 9:17 and 18 is kind of the reverse of Proverbs 9:5 where wisdom calls us to eat and drink with her. And in Proverbs 9:17 and 18, the harlot, as it were, the epitome of non-wisdom, who has stolen water and bread eaten in secret, offers that to those who would commune with her. All meals really that reject God, use God’s possessions, his food and his drink as it were, and say all unholy meals are essentially theft from God the way that this theft is from God. She has stolen water, bread eaten in secret because it is stolen bread.

And so that’s another instance of covenanting with non-wisdom or the harlot and there’s a meal involved.

There’s instances there that I’ve listed for you on the outline of covenanting with kings and first Kings 1:25 is Adonijah. We won’t look at that now because of the time constraints. Daniel 1 is a very important text of scripture for this thing we’re talking about this morning. Why did Daniel draw the line at food and drink from the king.

It’s interesting because the king brought these men in and uh pagan king was going to teach them all the wisdom of their realm of the pagan realm. And that wasn’t where they drew the line. Where they drew the line was what the king was going to feed them. Food and drink of the king’s table. And it wasn’t just the king’s liking. It was the king’s food and drink. That’s what he wanted Daniel and the other Hebrew boys to take.

Why did Daniel draw the line there? I think he drew the line because that was entering into covenant with this king and he said no we can’t do that on the basis of this I would just point out to you in passing here if we think it’s important that our kids not get schooled in the false religion of the pagan nation in which we now live how much more important we agree with Daniel that they don’t enter into covenants with those sorts of things and instead have covenant with God okay and that’s the importance of paedobaptism but in any event drew the line at the meal at food and drink I don’t think because of dietary reasons or a thing to do with it I don’t think nor I don’t think was it sacrificial reasons because it some people say, “Well, it might have been unclean food.

It might have been pigs that he was trying to get him to eat.” But there’s no unclean drink that I know of. Unless there was blood involved, there’s no indication that there was anything unclean here. The point is Daniel didn’t want to enter into covenant meal with a pagan king. And if you took the food, it would be very close to doing that. It’s interesting, too, that there was a test set up then and Daniel said, “Well, we want to eat and you have the best things the king has to offer and let’s compare at the end of a period of time.” And when they compared, the Hebrew boys were sleeker and better and healthier than the other men who had eaten the king’s food.

And that’s a picture for us that those who take God’s communion and his elements and his gifts are always better and prospered more than those who even take the best of the rest of the kings of this world. Good picture there for us, the importance of covenant with God and its blessings.

1 Chronicles 29:22, the people have a meal before God and they make Solomon king. Very important again because there’s a covenant going on there. Solomon’s a type of Christ and that it happens at a meal. Eating and drinking in the presence of God.

Luke 22:30 what that meal with Solomon in the presence of God. making Solomon king pictured of course in Luke 22:30 we read that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. When we have the Lord’s supper, we have supper with the king. It’s a king’s meal.

We have it in the presence of God. He is the king and he is God as well.

Fourth on your outline under this point of various old covenant or scriptural meals, we have meals with the wicked. 1st Samuel 28, after Saul consults, King Saul consults the witch of Endor, he then eats a meal with her and he seals his fate as a way in a way by going into covenant in that sense and committing himself to her uh her evil worldview.

Proverbs 23:7 talks about the miser says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, sayith to thee, but his heart is not with thee. You’re being warned there that misers are not what they appear to be. He’s going to be deceptive to you. And the deception is he eats and drinks with you. He invites you to eat and drink his food, but he’s not with you. The implications of that is when he has you eat and drink with him, he’s supposed to be with you.

You’re supposed to be bonded into some kind of friendship here, and the miser is going to deceive you. He’s going to eat and drink with you, but then he’s not going to be with you. See? So again, the idea that eating and drinking is a ratification of a friendship, a covenant, something in common, et

Finally, in Acts 23:12, we read in the times of Paul that certain of the Jews banded together, coming in covenant together, they bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.

A little different twist on this. They enter into a covenant, the covenant’s to kill Paul. And the thing that ratifies the covenant is this curse, this oath they take one to another that they won’t eat or drink. They’re going to fast until they kill Paul. And so again, it has the idea of the self-maledictory oath because either they’re going to starve to death the curses if they fail to do what they were supposed to do which is to kill Paul or if they kill them they’re going to be blessed in their unholy alliance here by eating and drinking a meal there and so again eating and drink is part of the covenant stipulations and involves this self-maledictory oath.

Okay, those are just a real quick overview. I know you got a lot of things to think about now. You got a lot of scriptures to read and to see if all that’s true or not. But hopefully by now you see the thrust of biblical teaching on the importance of meals in terms of covenant or coming into a pact with another person.

Let’s summarize some of this. There are characteristics of meal covenants that we just went through. And we can look at Deuteronomy 29, the text we read at the beginning of the hour for these characteristics. And now this is not a meal here, but it is entering into covenant. And it is a picture of what we do when we enter into covenant.

And we have first of all the presence of the covenanting parties. The presence of God, the presence of his people. We read that you stand before God. All of you come before God knowing his presence. That’s verse 10 of Deuteronomy 29. And so, we’ve got God present. We’ve got the people present. And you remember how we went through these various stories we just talked about from the rest of the scriptures. How important it was that they were in the presence of God when they ate this meal., they were in God’s temple. They were in God’s holy court. They were with the king they made the meal with. They went over with the false gods they ate the meal with.

It’s very important the presence of both parties of the covenant are present in the ratification of covenants and in these meals also that picture these ratifications.

Secondly, there are the obligations of the covenant covenanting parties are spelled out. And in Deuteronomy 29, it says in verse 12, that you may enter into the covenant with the Lord your God and in his oath. Verse 13, in order that he may establish you today as his people.

That’s his part of the covenant obligation. You’re going to be his people. And your part says that and that he may be your God. The stipulations of the covenant are clear when covenant is entered into in these meals or these other covenant ratifications. There are obligations on both parts. They God obligates himself to the people. They obligate themselves to him. The case of the other unholy covenants, the men obligate themselves one to another with their pagan gods.

And then third, there is a self-maledictory oath. Big word. What it means is you put your name in the dotted line as it were. You agree to either the blessings or cursings of that covenant arrangement. And this is clear also in Deuteronomy 29 when Moses in verse 18 reminds them of what happens if your heart turns away from God. He points out the curses because the blessings are implied in a covenant with God.

They don’t always have to be pointed out. We don’t earn the blessings of the covenant. God gives them to us graciously. What we have to be careful of avoiding is the curses of the covenant. And so in verse 18 of Deuteronomy 29 that we read, we read that be careful. Don’t fall away. Don’t think you’re going to get the blessings automatically by being involved in this covenant and yet you can do whatever you want to in terms of your life.

He says don’t do that because then all the curses of this covenant are going to come upon you. Now he’s just prior to this in Deuteronomy 28 spelled out the blessings and cursings of the covenant. Those stipulations are obviously understood when the people come together to say amen to God with this covenant ratification. And so there is a self-maledictory oath. Blessing and cursing is pictured. You’re either going to be friends with Melchizedek or you’re going to be friends with Sodom.

You’re either going to accept the blood offered by God in covenant or your own blood’s going to be shed. You’re either going to have the water of life or you’re going to eat the dust of death as it were. Your thigh is either going to waste away on one hand or you’re going to have kids on the other hand. Cursing and blessing. You either are going to be taking the cup of salvation or you’re going to be drinking the cup of God’s wrath.

Okay, self-maledictory oath element in all these common covenants and in Deuteronomy 29 as well.

Okay, what does all this mean with communion? You can turn to 1 Corinthians 11. Now, I think this is the background we should have when we come to a portion of scripture that talks about meals, cups, breads, communion elements, covenants, etc. This is the background we need now to understand what’s said here.

First, there is a need for renewal. Now, in 1 Corinthians 11, Jesus says through Paul, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” There is a newness to this covenant. What does that mean, newness of covenant? Well, in the old covenant, there were several reasons why covenants had to be renewed.

First of all, if the head of the covenanting group changes if the head of the group that are covenanting with God changes covenant was reaffirmed. Deuteronomy 29 what Moses did there occurred because Joshua was going to take over as head of the people. Now Moses was going to die and go away. They were going to go into the promised land under Joshua. And when you have a change of succession here in terms of covenant heads, the covenant’s reaffirmed to the people. Okay? You need a new covenant. You need a renewed covenant because you got a new mediator.

And also you’re going to have a new set of circumstances. You’re not in the wilderness anymore. you’re going into the promised land, things changed. Remember, the tithe changed as we said going into the promised land. the element of Passover changed in the promised land. It was no longer required of everybody, just the men to go up three times a year, and one of those times is Passover. Laws change to meet the situation.

The law stays the same actually, but it’s applied in a different sense. And that different sense is spelled out in the new covenant arrangement. That’s one reason.

Now, additionally, the history of Israel is a history of them failing in their covenant obligations and of rebelling against God. Not just falling short rebelling against God. When you do that, covenant has to be reaffirmed. Remember the book of Nehemiah, they had been cursed, put into captivity by God. When they came back, they had a reaffirm covenant. Covenant is renewed and reratified when the covenanting party of the people involved fail when they reject God. And so there’s a need to ratify that.

And in a smaller sense, every Sabbath day was covenant ratification again, renewal, because they had sinned during the week. And they acknowledged that sin. They acknowledged they’d come to repentance. And God reaffirms the covenant to they retake the covenant oath in Sabbath services.

Okay, so those are two reasons.