Memorials (Part 2)

I wrote the other day about remembering and the power of memories. And now today we look at the central activity of the people of God who are nicknamed "The church" in their memory prodding, the event called 'communion.' This is that ceremony in many churches where a piece of bread and a sip of grape juice or wine is used. The actual ceremony begins with a reminder of a reminder. Paul wrote this to the Corinthian believers: "Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you." (1 Cor. 11.2) By keeping a good record of what Paul taught the believers there, they received a high commendation from the apostle. Like every student who learns well, when his teacher commends him, there is great joy. And the praise of the apostle is especially good given his earlier criticisms of the Corinthians.

The apostle tells them he is glad they remember him. But, as you would imagine from a humble apostle, he switches to the main thing they remember... "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Yeshua in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 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." In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes." (11.24-26)

This idea of receiving and remembering is crucial. You cannot remember what you never heard (received) and receiving alone is almost useless if you don't remember what you have heard. So the apostle says that he received something from Yeshua (Jesus) and passed that to the believers in Corinth. And that they should remember as they perform a ceremony. The ceremony itself in fact, is the call to remembrance.

It all goes back to Passover. Yes, the Jewish seder meal which my people have conducted for over 3,000 years in homes in Israel, the US, Russia, here in Australia, and around the globe. And one particular night, about 30 CE (AD) or so, Yeshua had seder with his friends and did some unusual things. He said that the matzo they were eating had a special significance, not only in relation to the exodus from Egypt, but also in relation to what was going to happen to him the next day. He knew, but the disciples did not know, that he was going to be killed by crucifixion by Roman soldiers. And he took the unleavened bread and gave it even deeper meaning saying that it was 'my body given for you." What? A piece of bread is likened to a physical body of an adult human?

In the seder's haggadah (the prayer book and order of service we use each year), we say of the unleavened bread, "This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt." So the bread Yeshua took in hand was already a symbol of something else. And then He changed its meaning to yet another concept-- His body, which would suffer and be afflicted the next day on a Roman cross. The idea of affliction was certainly known to the Jewish people. And it was also a characteristic of the messiah to come as Isaiah the prophet declared, "in all their affliction he was afflicted....so he became their Savior" (chapter 63) Sure enough Jesus suffered deeply the next day and took on Himself the suffering of the Jewish people, and according to the story, all people.

The cup of salvation which we drink is the "new covenant in My blood."  When approached by the two sons of Zebedee, the following took place. Yeshua asked them, "Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They said unto him, "We are able". But Jesus answered and said, "You know not what you ask." The cup of baptism was really the cup of suffering. And certainly Yeshua suffered the next day, spilling His own blood to save us, each one of us, from our sinful nature and our activities of sins. As the prophet Isaiah also predicted 700 years earlier, "he was wounded for our transgressions. The chastisement for our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed." (chapter 53)

The phrase 'new covenant' is something which is used only one other time in the Tenach. Jeremiah the prophet said, "Days are coming (says the Lord) when I will make a new covenant with the Jewish people, not like the one I made with them when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. This is the covenant I will make: I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”  

The new covenant will be a memorable one and the sins of Israel will not be remembered.  God will write the new covenant on our hearts and on our minds. That's about memory. And when Yeshua took up the cup on Passover night before He was crucified, He instituted the new covenant, a perpetual memory of His forgiving us of our sins and putting His Torah in our hearts.What a Savior!

So when the Corinthians who were pretty good at sinning and envying and living wrong got the remembrance of the Messiah right, that deserved high marks from Paul. And when you get it right, God will attest to your heart that you are His. that's worth everything. Remember this. 

For more on Passover and blood and bread, see http://jewsforjesus.org/judaica/passover. 

Holy Communion/ Ordinary things

Opening Ceremony: (Holy Communion)

Message One

By Bob Mendelsohn

Given at Moscow, Russia

1 June 2014

Shalom, and thank you, to each of you who has come to join together to make a difference for God in Moscow, in Russia, in Europe, in the world God made. I hope for each of you something from heaven during this campaign. In the Bible when a Jewish boy became 20 years old, he was responsible for being a man and for serving in the army. Later in Jewish history, that age dropped to 13 years old, and like so many of us, after his Bar Mitzvah, he became responsible for being a good Jewish man. In the US where I grew up, when a boy became 21 he became an adult and could drink vodka and could marry without his parents’ permission. So now, this summer, 2014, it is the 21^st summer campaign in Moscow and no matter whether we speak from Bible or from Jewish life or from the US, Moscow is now an adult mission station, and leads the way in the Former Soviet Union, and dare I say, in the world, as Jews for Jesus and the work God has called us to perform.

Now that Jews for Jesus is an adult ministry, I take my responsibility as your chaplain very seriously. I know some of you personally, and have been your cheerleader in celebrating what you have done in service for our Messiah.  In so many ways Jews for Jesus would be much less, and would have made less impact in the world, if you were not here.  Therefore I say thank you for your two decades of service.

Others of you are new, either to Russia or to Jews for Jesus itself. All this talk of the stellar behavior of the Russian-speaking Jews for Jesus staff may be intimidating to you.  You are, after all, not one of those pillars. You are not one of those mighty men. Perhaps you think of yourself as less than everyone else.

Over the next two weeks, we will meet together in chapel and in prayer and in street evangelism, bringing God’s good news to multitudes of our Jewish people, and multitudes of non-Jews as well. And during our chapel times I will be speaking to you from the Bible book known as Judges. And if you learn anything from that book, you will learn that God calls us to be available to him, and He is unimpressed with what else we might bring to his service. He wants you, not your gifts and talents. He doesn’t need your cleverness or your brilliance. What he needs and longs for is you. Ordinary you. Plain and simple-- you. If you bring you to him each day, and live in ordinary service to God, you will find His using you to be extra-ordinary. He wants you.

Maybe that’s why I’m excited to be with you during this campaign. I don’t bring much to offer you. I love the Lord and have been saved for 43 years. The life I bring is one that God is working on and will keep working on until I join him in heaven one day. The most important gift I bring to him, and I bring to you, is my availability. I’m here. Let’s see what God will do with us together.

In a moment we will take communion together. These two elements are fairly stock standard. They are not gold or silver. They are not electronic. They were not created by a genius. They are a sip of fruit of the vine and a bite of a piece of bread. I’d say they are fairly ordinary elements of a Jewish man’s table. No meat. No fruit. No potatoes. No luscious dessert. These are nothing so special. Just what was there on Passover on that night when Yeshua met with his friends before he was killed. He took ordinary things, bread without yeast and wine and turned them into extra-ordinary remembrances. And he told us whenever we do this we should remember him.

What should we remember? That God came to earth and lived like Superman or Ironman and wielded great superpowers? No. Should we remember the healings or the walking on water? That He fed 5,000 and made water into wine? No. He tells us that every time we take the communion of the Lord we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes back. (1 Cor. 11.26) What? After all the great things God did, we are to consider only one aspect of his earthly ministry continually memorable? Yes, that’s what I’m saying. When it all comes down to the ending, the ending is what matters the most. He was born to die. He was killed and rose from the dead for our life, today and eternally.

He will come again to receive us to himself, and to judge the world. He came the first time for removing sin from individuals by his dying on the cross; he will come again the 2^nd time to remove sin from the planet. We have a duty in between those two comings, those two appearances, about which we will speak over the next couple weeks. For now

And these two elements of bread and wine are ordinary elements.

You and I are also ordinary elements in service to the King.

And when we are available to God, he transforms ordinary things into extra-ordinary servants. That’s today’s message and it will be our take-away each day after two weeks of exhaustive service. God wants to use us, as the Apostle Paul taught in his letter to the Corinthians:

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. (1 Cor. 1.26-29)

Jeremiah the prophet sounded that same warning/ consideration:

Thus says the LORD, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 9.23-24)

So I ask the people who are distributing the bread and wine to come forward. Let’s hold those two items and consider what God might do with us, yielded and available to him tonight and the next 12 days.  Then we will eat and drink together in a few minutes.

Take communion.

Music plays.

Eat together. 

What if Mr. Putin invades another former Soviet republic? Are you frightened of military intervention? What if they shut down the metro stations? What if some of the Jewish leadership in the city threatens us with governmental actions that prevent our ability to hand out tracts or to telephone contacts? What if they arrest Ilya, Igor, Maxim or all of us? We really don’t know what might happen these next two weeks. What we do know is that God wants us to be available to him. That’s it.

I remember a story a woman told me some years ago about a dream she had. It was a doctor’s surgery and the operating room was the scene. A man was lying on the table, ready for the operation. The camera of her dream zoomed in and the doctor began calling for the instruments. But instead of scalpel and sponge, instead of the other items that a doctor would use for performing surgery, he was calling for people. “Alex Johnson. Boris Cohen. ”  The doctor was God and he was looking for people to accomplish his purposes. All they had to do was to be nearby. He was looking for available ones. Is that you? I think so. That’s why we are all here. And others will join us over these days. And we are looking for others to join us in the life of faith with God, and in service to Him as well.

We take the Lord’s Supper; we take Bible history; we take ourselves to the Messiah and leave ourselves there, available to him for his purposes tonight and tomorrow. Amen?