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I s the Lord’s Supper to be Eaten as a Table Meal?

Explore the scriptural basis and historical context of the Lord's Supper as a table fellowship meal, highlighting its importance for connection, nourishment, and strengthening the bond of believers in Christ.

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I s the Lord’s Supper to be Eaten as a Table Meal?

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  1. Is the Lord’s Supper to be Eaten as a Table Meal? Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 11:17-22

  2. Jude 12Warning Against False Teachers

  3. The Lord’s Supper • Told it “should be a table meal (table fellowship),” Col. 2:23 • Memorial and communion, 1 Cor. 10:16-17; Matt. 26:29 • Table of the Lord, not of demons, 1 Cor. 10:18-22 • Described and answered, 1 Corinthians 11:17-34

  4. Jude 12What are Love Feasts? • Commentators don’t agree • Early church history • Feasts like Luke 14:12-14? • “Table fellowship?” • Our concern: The faith, Jude 3; 2 Thess. 2:15; 1 Cor. 4:17; Col. 3:17; 2 Tim. 1:13

  5. Jude 12What are Love Feasts? • Continual life of Christians as they live in the truth(1 Cor. 5:8) • “House to house,” Acts 2:46(individual, benevolent) • The Lord’s Supper • Commanded, Matt. 26:26-29 • Table of Lord, 1 Cor. 10:21 • Jude’s context, v. 4; 2 Pet. 2:13

  6. Silenceof the Scriptures • “Table fellowship” • “Fellowship meal” • Refuse to go beyond whathas been revealed • 1 Corinthians 4:6 • 2 John 9 • Galatians 1:6-9 • Revelation 22:18

  7. What is “Table Fellowship?” “The Table as a Place of Connection” “Tables are one of the most important places of human connection. We’re often most fully alive to life when sharing a meal around a table. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to find that throughout the Bible God has a way of showing up at tables.

  8. What is “Table Fellowship?” “In fact, it’s worth noting that at the center of the spiritual lives of God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments, we find a table: the table of Passover and the table of Communion. New Testament scholar N. T. Wright captured something of this sentiment when he wrote,

  9. What is “Table Fellowship?” “When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal. “I’m convinced that one of the most important spiritual disciplines for us to recover in the kind of world in which we live is the discipline of table fellowship.

  10. What is “Table Fellowship?” “In the fast-paced, tech-saturated, attention-deficit-disordered culture in which we find ourselves, Christians need to recover the art of a slow meal around a table with people we care about.

  11. What is “Table Fellowship?” “Table fellowship” doesn’t often make the list of the classical spiritual disciplines. But in the midst of a world that increasingly seems to have lost its way with regard to matters of both food and the soul, Christian spirituality has something important to say about the way that sharing tables nourishes us both physically and spiritually.

  12. What is “Table Fellowship?” “We need a recovery of the spiritual significance of what we eat, where we eat, and with whom we eat. In Matthew’s account of the Last Supper, he writes, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body’” (Matt 26:26).” Barry D. Jones, “The Dinner Table as a Place of Connection, Brokenness, and Blessing,” Dallas Theological Seminary

  13. What is “Table Fellowship?” • Eating “from house to house” is commendable, Acts 2:46 • Benevolent and joyful togetherness • It is not the Lord’s Supper, Acts 2:42 (20:7, 11)

  14. Radical Restoration(F. LaGard Smith) “A Memorial Within A Meal” “…perhaps the most universally-overlooked feature of the Lord’s Supper as practiced in the primitive church is that—from all appearances—it was observed in conjunction with a fellowship meal. That is, a normal, ordinary meal with the usual variety of food.

  15. Radical Restoration(F. LaGard Smith) “A Memorial Within A Meal” “However, unlike ordinary meals, this combined table fellowship and memorial was shared among the disciples for the special purpose of strengthening, not just their physical bodies, but their common bond in the spiritual body of Christ. Hence, Jude’s reference to their “love feasts” in (verse 12).” (128-129, emphasis mine)

  16. Radical Restoration(F. LaGard Smith) • In addressing 1 Corinthians 11:22: “Far from prohibiting a fellowship meal in conjunction with the Lord’s Supper, it is clear that Paul is saying (in current vernacular): If the reason you are participating in the fellowship meal is to feed your stomach, then you’d do better to stay home and pig out!” (131)

  17. Radical Restoration(F. LaGard Smith) He concludes, “The Lord’s Supper gave meaning to their table fellowship, and their table fellowship gave meaning to the Lord’sSupper. Each was a picture of the other” (133). “the ritual we now euphemistically call ‘communion’ (not wholly unlike the Catholic’s sacramental eucharist) doesn’t hold a candle to the

  18. Radical Restoration(F. LaGard Smith) “dynamic koinonia communion of the first-century disciples in their sharing together of the Lord’s Supper within the context of a fellowship meal” (135). “Having emasculated the vibrant fellowship meal of the early disciples and reduced it to little more than an emblematic ritual, we have already made a false start in our worship focus” (141). Mike Willis, “The Perversion of the Lord’s Supper Advocated by F. LaGard Smith in Radical Restoration”

  19. Answering these False Teachers • 1 Corinthians 11 • Rebukes and rejects the table fellowship application • No “love feasts” (silent) • Two problems: • Division (class distinctions) • Corrupted Lord’ Supper • Solution: Separate suppers, 1 Corinthians 11:22, 34

  20. Answering these False Teachers • Eating from “House to House,” Acts 2:46 • Distinguished from the local church coming together in one place, Acts 2:42 • “Breaking bread,” Acts 20:7 (11)

  21. Answering these False Teachers • New Testament Pattern: • Local churches coming together to eat a memorial meal, 1 Corinthians 11:22 • Each disciple eats in communion with the Lord (body & blood), 1 Cor. 11:27-28 • Not a meal that satisfies hunger (1 Cor. 11:34)

  22. Jude 12Warning Against False Teachers • Table fellowship doctrine is false and radically different from the NT pattern • Jude 12: No command, apostolic-approved example, or necessary inference to restructure the table of the Lord to look like the Passover table, or the table of demons

  23. Warning Against False Teachers2 Peter 2:1-3 “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” (Col. 2:8) “…which things all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men?” (Col. 2:22)

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