Friends, it has been some time since I shared with you last. However, PhD work is demanding, and my time away has been fruitful for my research. Today I’d like to share with you all a study I put together for a men’s breakfast at my local church, looking at Scripture’s frequent meal metaphors as they apply to the life of the Christian and the work of Christ. Stick with me here, as there is much that is surprising along the way, and even more that is edifying to your faith in these passages. As you read remember the context of my address (sitting at a table together with fellow Christians, sharing a meal); you can even imagine yourself at a meal-table of your own, with your own community of Christians surrounding you.
“This morning, as we gather around this table to share food and drink, and fellowship together, we are going to talk about the setting at God’s table. I do not strictly mean the communion meal, though it is surely relevant; no, I mean the Bible’s metaphorical language surrounding that life in God to which Christ invites you, as an invitation to a meal. Now each one of us sit here at this table together only because we are those who have been invited to sit at the Lord's table. There is little chance that we would all find one another, each sitting across from the other, if we had not first been made partakers of the bread of life (Jn 6:35), served and gathered together by Christ Himself.
And in fact, the life of the Christian is in many ways like a meal. We arrive at the meal by invitation only, as I've said, and we come with expectation that we will be fed. Christ as our host serves us with himself and with his words, but we do not merely dig into this meal greedily, but instead we serve one another, we pass the elements of this meal (the truth of the gospel applied) to one another, even dishing up second helpings for those who have need. It is the same with the word of God given to all Christians and intended directly for their sustenance in this world. Christ says in John 6 "My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink," and without these morsels we are also without life (Jn 6:53).
The life that we share in Christ is therefore a true meal. Even as prayer is the first concern of every meal, giving thanks and making petitions of God, the life of the Christian is to be one lived in unceasing prayer. We even admit strangers into this meal, this life in Christ, when we bring them to the table and offer them the words of Christ, the truth of the gospel, to feast upon (cf. Dt 8:3). Christ fills up the cup of such traitors, rebels, and thieves as us, and passes it full to the brim with good wine (cf. Jn 2:10). Now, don't be put off by the fact that this cup passed to you is covered in blood, because the cup that is passed to you is far better than the cup that has passed from you. Again, the cup that is passed to you, bloodstains, gore, and all, is far better than the cup that has been passed from you. For even the image of a bloody cup is beautiful when compared with ugliness of that cup, deserved by the wicked, that the Lord has taken away from us at His table.
This is what I mean. The cup of the Lord in the Old Testament was far different from the cup of the Lord that we are used to. We are accustomed to anticipating the cup of the Lord in communion, and well we should, but the cup of the Lord has not always been anticipated with joy, but instead with fear. The cup of the Lord in the Old Testament was something that no one dared to drink, and which even the boldest would tremble to be served.
Psalm 75:8 says "For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs."
Psalm 11:6 says "Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup."
Isa 51:17 says "Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering."
In Numbers 5, curses are written down for infidelity, and then the ink of those curses is washed into a cup of bitterness which would inflict those written curses when a person drank from that cup.
Jeremiah 25:15 says "Thus the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 16 They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them.” In that passage, for all the nations who drink of that cup, God brings upon them disaster and death.
Ezekiel 23:31-34 says "31 You have gone the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand. 32 Thus says the Lord GOD: “You shall drink your sister’s cup that is deep and large; you shall be laughed at and held in derision, for it contains much; 33 you will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow. A cup of horror and desolation, the cup of your sister Samaria; 34 you shall drink it and drain it out, and gnaw its shards, and tear your breasts; For I have spoken, declares the Lord God."
So, for our brothers and sisters living in the Old Testament, being offered the cup of the Lord meant terror, judgment, and death. The word cup grammatically stands for one's deserved portion in the OT. This cup was not anticipated with joy, and after reading what was declared to them by God, we can see why. Even Jesus trembles, sweating drops of blood, at the thought of having to drink the cup of the Lord. So, too, when the disciples asked him to sit at his right hand he says "you don't know what you're asking, can you drink the cup that I will drink?" Jesus prays repeatedly in Matthew 26, "Lord please let this cup pass from me," but in that same chapter Jesus takes a different cup, at the last supper, and he calls it the cup of the new covenant in his blood, and he sets it before all the disciples to drink, adding that he himself will not drink of it until he is with us in His Father's kingdom. Jesus passes his cup to others, traitors and cowards like us, and he himself trembles to drink the cup of wrath instead. Yet what does he say? Not my will Father, but yours be done. And he drinks that cup of wrath on the cross for the joy set before him in bringing many sons to glory. It is no coincidence therefore that in John's Gospel, chapter 19, it says "when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said it is finished", and of course immediately afterward it says a soldier puts a spear in his side, and blood and water flow from it, which for us fills up this cup of the new covenant in his blood.
However, even in the Old Testament, there were a couple strange passages about the cup of the Lord, at his table, that invited readers to think of a better cup, one well worth drinking, from the hand of the Lord. The sparse passages look forward to the cup that Christ will provide for those whose faith is in him.
Psalm 23:5-6 "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever." (Note how strange it would be in the OT to desire to sit at a table, having a meal with one’s enemies! That environment would be ripe for betrayal and poisoning. Yet Jesus is said to have dined with many sinners, enemies of God, and ultimately some of those with whom he dined (the Pharisees) end up killing him.) In this Psalm, safety is assured at God’s table, and blessings are given from his hand even to those in the most dire circumstances.
Psalm 16:5 "The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup"
And this one, anticipating Christ pouring out his life into our cup. Isaiah 53:12 "Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He has poured out His life unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors."
There is assigned seating at the Lord's table. Did you know that? In Revelation 3, Jesus speaks about giving us his seat on the throne, and he says this in the immediate context of dining with those who believe in him, sharing a special meal together, “I will come in an eat with him, and he with me” (Rev 3:20-21; cf. Ps 16:5; Lk 14). For us, we are numbered among the wicked, and we have deserved our place at the end of his table, the lowest seat, and though we are served, our deserved portion is less like a meal and more like a last meal, more tribunal than banquet, and the morsels we must partake of do not go down easily. But at this scandalous meal it is Christ, the Master of the feast, who takes the seat rightly assigned to us, with its portion of cursed wine, poured out like sulfur and scorching wind, and he drains that cup down to the last dregs, until that cup is finished. However, if that were not enough to inspire wonder, the master of the Feast, Christ Himself, has pulled out his own chair for us to sit in, he has given us his seat at the head of the table as he says in Lk 14, and we eat the good portion which had been set in front of him, the portion he deserved, that good portion which, by his glad design, ends up in many undeserving mouths instead. The portion we receive is, decidedly, disproportionate to our deeds.
And just as each of us sit here at this table, only because of our place at the Lord's table, I submit to you that your enjoyment, your excitement at going day to day into this meal that is the Christian life will be directly proportional to your acknowledgment of the table's rich setting, just as each of us gets excited for our favorite meal and perhaps disappointed at the thought of eating something which disgusts us. Therefore, consider always that cup of foaming wrath which, though set before you as your deserved portion, was passed from you to Christ; and consider that cup of mercy, the cup of life, which was passed to you by Him. The bounty of Christ's table, the cup placed to our lips; it is Christ's joy to give to us these blessings always.
And so we go unto each of our lives, even with all the difficulties and pain which that may entail, in such a way that we are always behaving as those who have just enjoyed the most wonderful meal, and who anticipate the perfect portion coming to us at that next heavenly meal, because our place is always set in Christ, and we have always in our hand the cup of blessing. So drink deeply, invite others to the head of the table with you, and share this common cup of Christ, with all the uncommon blessings that spill from it, with all who are thirsty. Amen.”