Reconsidering The Lord's SupperExemplo

Meals as Historical Turning Points

Let’s give a short synopsis of how Scripture’s storyline and historical turning points are built around meals:

• God’s blessing began in the garden with a meal (GEN 1:29).
• God gave Adam and Eve a choice to eat of blessing or curse, symbolized in the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
• The curse, fall of mankind, and Satan’s temptation happened over a meal (GEN 2:16-17).
• The first family struggle, over a food offering, resulted in murder. Cain and Abel (GEN 4).
• In the Flood, God preserved animals and food for Noah’s family as blessing and destroyed everyone else as a sign of curse (GEN 7:1-3).
• The first burnt offering & declaration of clean & unclean food (GEN 9:3-4).
• The beginning fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham is made over a meal (GEN 18:2).
• Jacob deceives Esau over food (GEN 25).
• Joseph’s rise to power is during a famine, and Joseph’s wise reign leads to provision for all (GEN 37-52).
• God’s work in freeing his people from the Egyptians is remembered in the Passover meal (EXO 12).
• God provides manna for his people in wandering (Numbers).
• Ruth, through whose lineage would come King David, was provided for, betrothed, and kept alive by Boaz through gleanings of wheat (Ruth).
• Daniel refused to eat from Nebuchadnezzar’s table, and asked to continue in his freedom to eat as God had instructed (DAN 1:8).
• God’s sovereign rule and the deliverance of the entire Jewish nation in the Book of Esther comes over a meal (Purim—Esther).
• Jesus enters his ministry and is tempted with food (LUK 4).
• Jesus’ ministry is spent attending Jewish Feasts (JHN 2) and feeding people (MRK 6:30-44).
• When “all authority in heaven and earth is given to Jesus,” in his last moments before the cross, he chose to hold the Last Supper (LUK 22:7-23).
• The church begins, forms, and grows over meals (ACTS 2:42).
• Meals are used to symbolize fake religion or true freedom (COL 2:20-23).
• Weak and Strong faith is contrasted through the metaphor of eating (ROM 14).
• Heaven on Earth (The Final kingdom) is portrayed as Table Fellowship, around a Tree of Life, at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (REV 19:6-9).

Every time God initiates something in the timeline of history, it is done in and around a meal. The remaining days in this study will explore why.