This biblical teaching is a production of The Walk Ministries with Pastor Jeno Shaw. You can watch the video below, and then read the teaching notes that follow.
Teaching Notes
Okay, get your elements ready. While you’re doing that, I want to talk to you about what happened at my job.
We have four different 12-hour shifts at work. There was a guy—let’s call him Carl—well, all of a sudden, Carl disappeared, and the other shifts noticed, “Hey where’s Carl?”
So word got out that Carl was running two machines and decided to go outside and start a fire. He then put out the fire, but then he had black soot or ashes on his soles. He tracked it back inside. You could follow the trail he had left. He got caught and was fired on the spot. Everyone was thinking that Carl was a weirdo!
Time passed, and everyone was talking about it. Finally, the supervisor goes, “That’s not what happened.” What happened was Carl brought his phone out onto the plant floor. It was in his pocket, and the phone got extremely hot, so hot that he went outside, and the phone caught fire. He got fired because we’re not supposed to have phones, number one, and, number two, that was a safety hazard since we work with gas!
But see how that whole thing got twisted?
Did you ever play that game in a classroom where the teacher would say, “I ordered some red roses to be delivered on Saturday,” and each person would whisper that into the next person’s ear. By the time it went around the classroom full of 25 students, the teacher would go to the last student and ask them what was whispered in their ear, and it would be something like, “The red elephant ate the roses on a rainy Saturday.“
Well, this is what happened in the early church. Jesus said, “You must eat of my flesh.” Somehow this got turned into cannibalism, and people were accused of cannibalism!
Imagine if you were in your home with the windows open, and you said, “I drink you, blood,” as someone was passing by, and that’s all they heard. They would go, “What? They’re eating someone in there!”
This is how the early church got persecuted because of these rumors of eating flesh and blood.
John 6:56
“Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”
If we eat plants and get nutritional value from it, how much more from communion with Christ?
Mathew 26:26-28
(26) “As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, ‘Take this and eat it, for this is my body.’ (27) And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them and said, ‘Each of you drink from it, (28) for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many.’”
There was an opportunity here for Jesus to say, “This is like my body,” but he never said that. He said, “This is my body. This is my blood!”
Back to John 6:56 – the word “eat” is used. The Greek translation has two words for eat:
- ESTHIO – metaphorically to devour/consume
- TROJO – means to actually crunch, chew, to actually eat!
Here, they used TROJO! To actually eat! So this was no mistake!
Now, let’s look at how Jesus turned the volume up! When you look at the Old Testament vs the New Testament, Jesus didn’t do away with the commandments. If anything, he turned the volume up. Old testament is thou shalt not kill. New Testament is if you are angry with someone you are subject to judgment. Wow. One was if you committed the crime, but now Jesus says even if you think it or have it in your heart, then that’s the same thing as committing that same crime.
Mathew 5:21-22
(21) “You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ (22) But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment!’”
Okay, now it was one thing to talk to someone out in the street, but to invite someone to eat at your house was considered next level. Jews considered eating at a table with someone a very intimate way of life, unlike today. The company who you ate with could also indicate if someone got a promotion because then they were eating with the politicians, whereas before they weren’t. So it was a big thing when Jesus ate with sinners. It just blew their mind.
But look, Jesus didn’t stop there. Just when you were sitting at the table thinking, “It doesn’t get better than this,” Jesus said, “Eat me!”
Jesus, again, turned the volume up.
Now, let’s take communion!
