We need to Prove Ourselves, Discern the Table, and Enjoy Christ with God at the Lord’s table

The enjoyment of Christ as our peace, especially at the Lord’s Table, should be kept from all uncleanness and death, and we all should enjoy Christ in His love and strength. When we come to the Lord’s Table meeting we should prove ourselves and discern the Table, not coming to eat the Lord as our peace in an unclean way but cleansing ourselves and staying away from death and uncleanness.

Our God is training us, His people, to live a holy, clean, and rejoicing life, and for this He provides us with Christ as the reality of all the offerings to be our all-inclusive provision. We need to enjoy Christ as the reality of the peace offering at the Lord’s Table to present the total picture of God’s economy.

When we come together at the Lord’s table, we need to leave all other places – leave our flesh, our self, our natural man, our mind, our emotion, and our will – and come to the place which God has chosen, our mingled spirit, where we can offer God the worship that He desires.

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship on spirit and truthfulness. We need to be in our mingled spirit on the Lord’s Day as we gather to eat the Lord’s supper, and we need to offer Christ to God for His satisfaction; we need to offer the Christ which has been wrought into our being through our experience of Him as the reality of all the offerings.

God desires to have only Christ, for only Christ satisfies God and brings pleasure to Him. We need to daily enjoy Christ, participate in Christ, and experience Christ, and we need to bring the top portion of Christ to the Lord’s Table meeting to offer to God for His satisfaction.

We need to be saved from any kind of hypocritical routine at the Lord’s Table, and have Christ as our genuineness and truthfulness. The Lord’s Table is the only meeting that the Lord Himself initiated and commanded us to eat and partake of it until He comes.

It is what He wants us to do until He returns, for the Lord’s Table is a bridge between His first and His second coming. From His first to His second coming, all we do as believers is eat the Lord, drink Him, experience Him, and bring Him to the Father for His satisfaction.

Here at the Lord’s Table we enjoy Christ as our peace offering, and here we see a complete picture of God’s economy in the elements on the table and the spiritual reality they represent.

The peace offering signifies Christ as our peace with God that we may enjoy Him with God and with man in fellowship and joy (Lev. 3:1-17; Num. 10:10; Deut. 27:7).

The peace offering is fulfilled primarily in our enjoying Christ at the Lord’s table in the breaking of bread for the remembrance of Him and in the offering of Christ to the Father for the worship of the Father (Matt. 26:26-30).

Hallelujah for the Lord’s Table, the reality and fulfilment of the peace offering! May we learn to discern the table and prove ourselves as we come to the Lord’s Table, being cleansed from any uncleanness, so that we may eat the Lord in peace and not be condemned.

Proving Ourselves, Discerning the Table, and being Cleansed from Uncleanness when we Partake the Lord’s Table

The enjoyment of Christ as our peace offering at the Lord’s Table should be kept from all uncleanness, and Christ as the peace offering should be eaten by a clean person (Lev. 7:19; 1 Cor. 11:28).

On the one hand the Lord’s Table is the best and highest meeting of the week, filled with the enjoyment of Christ and praises to the Lord for all that He is to us. On the other hand, the Lord’s Table is a very serious matter, and we need to discern the Table and prove ourselves when we come to enjoy Christ as our peace offering.

After Paul speaks of how the Lord instituted the table, he gives us this word of warning in 1 Cor. 11:27-29, So then whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and in this way let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not discern the Body.

The unclean person who partakes of Christ as peace, as at the Lord’s Table, shall be put aside from the fellowship of the enjoyment of Christ (see Lev. 7:20-21; 1 Cor. 10:16-17). Eating the bread or drinking the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner brings judgement to us, which is not a condemnation but the Lord’s temporary discipline (see v. 32).

Therefore, when we come to the Lord’s Table, we need to examine ourselves, put ourselves to test and have ourselves approved, meeting the prescribed specifications which the Lord has given us concerning His Table.

We should cleanse ourselves from any uncleanness, and not consider the Lord’s Table as something common.

Any sinful person should not partake of the fellowship at the Lord’s Table; furthermore, we need to deal with any dirtiness of death, not touching anything of death as we come to the Lord’s Table meeting, for the dirtiness of death spoils the significance of God’s enjoyment of Christ.

God hates death and doesn’t want to look upon anything related to death (Lev. 7:24). We should not touch anything dead or of death when we come to the Lord’s Table. There should be no element of sin or of death.

We see that in the church in Corinth some did this – some did not discern the table and did not prove themselves when they came to the Table Meeting, and they were disciplined, some were sick and weak, while others have even died.

We need to deal with all the problems between us and God and us and one another prior to coming to the Lord’s Table. It is a serious thing to take the Table and have a problem with another member of the Body. We need to prove ourselves and discern the Lord’s Table.

Lord Jesus, thank You for ordaining the Lord’s Table for us to eat You, enjoy You, and partake of You as the reality of the peace offering. May we be those who prove ourselves and discern the Table so that we may enjoy You in cleanness and peace, with much rejoicing and joy. Save us from being in uncleanness as we come to enjoy You at Your Table. Oh Lord, we want to remove any sin and uncleanness, and we want to stay away from any death. May nothing spoil the enjoyment of Christ, and may there be no death in our Lord’s Table meeting!

Offering God the Excellent Christ and Enjoying Him in His Loving Capacity and Strengthening Power

Again and again in Lev. 7 God told the people of Israel to NOT eat the fat; whether the fat of animals that they ate, or the fat of the animals they offered to God, the fat was to be for God.

Especially the priests, the serving ones, and the ones who offered the peace offering, they were not allowed to have the fat of the animals they offered, for only God was to have it.

The fat, the top portion of the offerings, must be offered to God for His satisfaction.

Humanly speaking we know that the fat is not healthy for us to eat; spiritually speaking, God wants to enjoy the fat of the offerings. What does this mean?

The fat refers to the excellent Christ, the excellent part of the person of Christ, that is only for God; only God can enjoy the excellent Christ, and we need to offer this wonderful One to God.

Especially at the Lord’s table, we need to fellowship and enjoy in Christ and with God, and we need to offer God the excellent Christ.

The breast and the thigh of the peace offering was for the priest, and the flesh was for the offerer, but the fat was for God.

We who take Christ as our peace offering should offer the excellent part of Christ (typified by the fat) to God for His satisfaction, while the loving part of Christ in resurrection (the breast as a wave offering) and the strong part of Christ in His ascension (the right thigh as a heave offering) is for the serving ones’ enjoyment (see Lev. 7:29-34; Exo. 29:26-28).

In our enjoyment of Christ as the peace offering, God has allotted the loving capacity and the strengthening power of Christ to us, the New Testament priests, as our eternal portion for our enjoyment in serving God (see 1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:5-6; 5:10).

We all are priests to God; we all can and should function as those who offer the excellent Christ to God for His satisfaction, and who enjoy the loving part of Christ in His resurrection and the strong part of Christ in His ascension together with the saints, the fellow priests.

We all can testify that, after the Lord’s Table where we enjoyed Christ, ate Him, and rendered Him worship in spirit with the Christ we have experienced, we feel that we are filled – we are nourished with Christ as love and strength.

We are then ready to face a new week, ready to go into battle again, for we partook of the bread and the wine, we ate the breast and the right thigh – we took Christ as our feast in love and strength – and we are now well-fed to continue our service to God as priests.

Hallelujah, in the New Testament there are no clergy and no laity! All believers are serving priests – we all are the priestly body (the priesthood), the offerers, and the congregation, and Christ as our peace offering is our food in a rich way in His love and strength!

Father, we offer You the excellent part of Christ for Your sole satisfaction. We enjoy the loving part of Christ in His resurrection and the strong part of Christ in His ascension for our supply and nourishment. Oh Father, what a rich Christ we have! What a loving Christ in resurrection and what a strong Christ in ascension we enjoy! May our experience of the Lord’s Table be enriched and uplifted, being filled with the offering of the excellent Christ to God and the feeding on the loving Christ in resurrection and the strong Christ in ascension!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Leviticus, pp. 242-245 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (1), week 12, Enjoying Christ as the Reality of the Peace Offering at the Lord’s Table to Present the Total Picture of God’s Economy.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Lord, teach us to discern the spirit / That we may never set our mind / Upon the flesh but on the spirit, / That sin and self no more may bind. (Hymns #746)
  # I have come to the Fountain of Blood / That for guilt and uncleanness doth flow; / I have washed in its sin-cleansing flood / And my garments are whiter than snow. (Hymns #523)
  # How sweet to eat the wave breast, / The all-embracing love / Of Christ in resurrection! / It sets us all above. / What strength to eat the shoulder / Of the ascended One / And with the cake be nourished / To walk as He has done. (Hymns #1104)