THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF THE BREAKING OF BREAD
[p. 363] THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF THE BREAKING OF BREAD
JT There are three points in mind: the first is that the Lord Himself actually broke bread after He rose; the second that He comes into the assembly as it is convened as certain things are proceeding, including the breaking of bread; and thirdly, that He does not take part in the breaking of bread Himself. What He has part in is what is subsequent; that is, what they have, as it were, on hand. He says, “Have ye anything here to eat? And they gave him part of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb” (verses 41, 42). But the fact that the Lord broke the bread after He rose is one to be considered for a moment, because it is the spiritual side of the breaking of bread. It was not done in the assembly, but still it was done and the tidings of it were carried into the assembly by those who had part in it. What happened during the forty days of the Lord’s sojourn after He rose and before He ascended is part of the treasury of the assembly, part of what is in it; and this occasion of His in breaking bread after He rose is something to be considered; that is, the spiritual side of the matter. Chapter 22 gives us the formal or official part, where we have both the giving of thanks and the breaking of the bread and also the cup, but the breaking of bread is only mentioned here as taking place at Emmaus, but the tidings of it were carried into the assembly and the Lord comes in afterwards.
CAM Are you stressing the fact that the Lord Himself was on the other side of death?
JT That is what I thought. In chapter 22 He says, “Before I suffer”; but now it is after He suffered. But still, He breaks the bread and vanishes [p. 364] as He does it; and then the tidings of it are carried up by those who experienced the incident and the Lord comes in as they are speaking about it, as if that was the way, the spiritual side of the Lord’s supper. Then He inquires as to what they had to eat; that is, what He could partake of. In no case does He take part in His own supper, the Lord’s supper, but there is that which He does take part in. He took part in the passover before He instituted the Supper, and now He takes part in something else which they had. It is not what the Lord’s supper brings in, but what is there additionally.
RWS Is that why it is in a house setting?
JT I suppose that has to be taken account of. It was in a house, a family setting; but still, it does not say the Lord ate anything in that house. He sat at table and acted as house-father, and vanished as He broke the bread. It does not say that He ate anything there, but He does eat something in the assembly and it is not His own supper at all; it is something that is there otherwise.
CAM What you say is a wonderful suggestion. Would you say that what we partake of in the Supper is on this side of death, but what the Lord enters into in the way of partaking is when our spirits pass over to the other side?
JT Why should there be this additional thought of the Lord’s breaking bread before He left? There is no breaking of bread in the assembly, as far as is recorded, until after He went up to heaven and the Holy Spirit came down. They persevered in it, we are told, but why should this incident of the breaking of bread by Himself as risen from among the dead be introduced? It is not just the same as what chapter 22 furnishes; there we have the actual loaf the Lord Himself selected or took, and then following that, we have the cup. There is no cup at Emmaus, but there is this other thing, the breaking of bread and the Lord’s [p. 365] vanishing, which He did not do according to chapter 22. But here is the vanishing and disappearing by the Lord as He broke the bread, and the tidings of this incident carried into the assembly; and as they are speaking about it, He comes in. Is it to teach us that there is a double side to the meeting: what He did as instituting the Supper, and then what He did as risen, not in the assembly but somewhere else, and He vanished when He did it? What does that vanishing mean, and what is it as carried into the assembly, because they say, “The Lord is indeed risen and has appeared to Simon. And they related what had happened on the way, and how he was made [p. 370] known to them in the breaking of bread” (verses 34, 35)? How He was; this is a question that has come to me here for the first time, whether this is not the spiritual side of the instruction and part of the treasury of the assembly and carried down to us.
CAM Does the blessing of the loaf in the house convey anything more than the giving of thanks for it in the upper room? It says here that He blessed it.
JT “Having taken the bread, he blessed”.
Giving of thanks and blessing, I think, have the same import.
CAM I was thinking it would help us about the matter of whether the transfer from what is material to what is spiritual is not there in the breaking of bread. I mean it is the last touch really of earth. The material world of things is going to disappear for ever, but there is that secret touch to what is actually material every Lord’s day at the outset of the meeting. Then there is the transfer, and this matter of the Lord’s doing this when He was actually beyond death seems to me to show the meaning of it-how it becomes spiritual.
JT That is just what I had in mind. It is one of the incidents of a very full day. It is the first day after the Lord arose, the day on which He arose, a very full [p. 366] day. And we get this incident of meeting those two who were going in the wrong direction, and they are inviting Him into the house, and He is accepting the invitation, being constrained to go in, and as they are sitting at table, this happens. This is a risen Christ. It was not a risen Christ in chapter 22. Luke’s further account is that “He presented himself living, after he had suffered” (Acts 1: 3), but this comes in between, this incident; He not only presented Himself but actually blessed the bread and broke it in the house and then vanished. The effect on those two is that they returned to Jerusalem and told this matter in the assembly; and as they are telling it, Jesus comes in again. There seems to be instruction there that we must make room for, evidently the spiritual side of the matter. It is not formally the Lord’s supper, but a principal part of it, but there is a vanishing in this action. It must be the spiritual side here, which you can never get in the so-called ‘sacrament’ in the churches. It belongs to the assembly as linked with the forty days of the Lord’s sojourn after His resurrection.
RWS They are able to judge too, because without delay they relate what happened to the assembly in Jerusalem and how He was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
JT I was thinking of that. It is the ‘how’; whether it does not point to the way the thing happened, whether that is not what is in mind, and have we missed this side of the matter? Perhaps we have not missed it, but in this setting. It is the second breaking of bread by the Lord Himself, but it is an assembly matter, because it is carried into the assembly by those who had part in it.
FHL I suppose the vanishing at that point would intensify the thought of what is spiritual.
JT That is what I thought; that vanishing is the other end of the matter, at Emmaus sixty stadia away,
[p. 367] and links on here in Jerusalem almost immediately after the two arrived there, as if the Lord would join them. Surely there must be something for us to take up and look at and see whether we are governed by it.
TEH Is this the second manifestation? He had manifested Himself in another form already to the two, but is this a second manifestation in the assembly?
JT Mark alone calls it another form. “And after these things he was manifested in another form to two of them as they walked, going into the country”, Mark 16: 12. Mark does not tell us about this incident in the house; it is the two going into the country, as though it were a discredit to them. He is manifested in “another form”, but Luke brings all this into the assembly. Mark does not go so far.
Luke is working on the line of the assembly, and he is making an effectual addition, which is for the assembly.
The Lord is back in Jerusalem as they are talking together. They have just come in and are relating this matter, and He is there as they are saying that.
There must be a lot in that.
Rem He does not disappear when they recognise Him in the assembly.
JT No; He is here to stay, so to say, in the assembly to open up other things, but He does not stay in the house to open up anything.
Rem I was thinking of how He was made known but He disappeared; He did not support them in that position.
JT It is quite obvious He is not coming in to support them when their backs are on Jerusalem, but He is going to get them back so that the assembly will have something it did not have before. The recovery must mean something that the assembly did not have before.
Rem That would be seen when Joseph made himself known to his brethren.
JT Yes, indeed; they were a richer family than [p. 368] they were before; the enrichment of Jacob’s family is a great point in Genesis, and what came into Egypt is made a point of in the beginning of Exodus. So this matter is very important, I think, that those erring ones, as the Lord appears to them, bring something into the assembly that was not there before.
Rem They said, “Was not our heart burning in us as he spoke to us on the way?” (verse 32).
JT Just so; but then the heart-burning does not add to the assembly; it is what they are able to communicate. What the Lord said to them was so worth while that their hearts began to burn, but they were going to stay in Emmaus. The heart-burning did not bring them back to Jerusalem; it is the vanishing of the Lord that affects them.
WC On the way to Emmaus, their eyes were holden, but here their eyes were opened. Is that in view of the return?
JT Quite so: “And their eyes were opened, and they recognised him” (verse 31). It does not say who opened them. We are not told what had occasioned this. It is a subjective thing.
WC That followed the breaking of bread.
JT Yes; something happened to them; their hearts had been burning, but now their eyes were opened, which is more important.
RWS They said something that had never been said before.
JT Yes; this is a contribution that the assembly did not have, and yet they are two people that had turned away from Jerusalem. The Lord has gone after them, and this is how He has appeared to them. They are persons capable of recovery quickly; and in the recovery they bring back something for the assembly.
TEH Those at Jerusalem were saying that the Lord had appeared to Simon, and then they began [p. 369] to say something, as if one appearing would disclose another.
JT I think so. That is a feature of Christ that erring ones are appeared to; first Peter and secondly the two on the way to Emmaus, see the Lord. That is a remarkable thing, and what marks the public body is grace on the one hand in restoring a man like Peter, a serious offender, and on the other hand, that these people are also spiritual; they were very spiritual although they were going in the wrong direction.
CAM From their conversation on the journey, evidently they felt as if they had lost Christ; the One that they thought was Christ had apparently gone; but after this occurrence when there was a disappearance, they had not lost Him. They must have made a great advance in a spiritual way.
AAT The two were adjusted, were they not? The Lord was with them in the breaking of bread; in fact, adjustment had to come about before the other incident took place. Is there any relation to 1 Corinthians 11 where they were to tarry one for another?
JT Do you want to convey the thought that the brethren in Jerusalem are waiting for those two?
AAT There was adjustment apparently in Luke. And Paul gives instruction to tarry one for another, I suppose, in view of adjustment.
JT It would seem as though they might have tarried for them. They were apparently going on without them. “And they found the eleven, and those with them, gathered together, saying ...”, that is to say, they did not hold up the meeting; they were going on. “The Lord is indeed risen and has appeared to Simon” (verse 34). They heard them saying that.
They came in at that point. Why should they not go on with the meeting? But those two are going to add to it; the Lord intended that they were going to come in and augment the position. “And they related what had happened on the way, and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread” (verse 35). They were evidently late to the meeting. No wonder t They went the wrong way around, but still they got to the meeting and they got to it in time to add to it, and the Lord would not come in until they came, because this spiritual touch is certainly the point that is stressed. What the eleven and the others were saying would be from the standpoint of grace. The public assembly was to be marked by grace, but these two add the other side. They related how He was made known to them in the breaking of bread, so the question is whether we understand the meaning of how He is made known to us in the breaking of bread, not according to chapter 22, but how about this occasion?
FHL It is quite evident it was the whole company and the instruction here is carried on to Acts 2.
JT I think it belongs to the treasury, and what about it? Do we get to this side of the matter when we break bread?
RWS Should we be able to say as to how He has come in?
JT That is what I must confess simply I look for, this spiritual touch; whether you can say, He has come in; whether you can say, It is the Lord.
WC They recognised Him.
JT Yes, they did, they had their eyes open. Those two, I believe, were the saving element in the assembly; they were equal to the matter.
CAM Do you think when it says, “But they, being confounded and being frightened, supposed they beheld a spirit” (verse 37), these two were greater than that particular difficulty?
JT I should say so; I cannot imagine that they would be perturbed relative to the Lord’s coming in as an apparition. This is just the thing we are at.
FHL This would be the element in John 20 [p. 371] as rejoicing.
ANW There are three remarks made about what happened as He showed Himself: first, their eyes were opened; they recognised Him; and then He was made known to them. Are there not three touches there that would help?
JT Quite so; their eyes were opened is a subjective matter; and next they recognised Him, but it was not as a mere apparition of a spirit; it was Himself. There is no evidence they were perturbed, but they immediately set out for Jerusalem, and the Lord comes in as they put the matter into words: how He was made known unto them.
CAM I suppose, in view of the coming of the Lord, there is something in between the fact that we recognise He was a Person here on earth, unique, of course, and a divine Person as a Spirit, and it is that that you would like to understand or be able to recognise?
JT That is very good, because the question is whether Acts 1 means the public appearing of the Lord or whether it means the rapture. The two men in white robes say, “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, shall thus come in the manner in which ye have beheld him going into heaven” (verse 11). Is that a private matter or a public matter? The public matter is from His own words, “For as the lightning goes forth from the east and shines to the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of man”, Matthew 24: 27. That is a very very public thing; and “Behold, he comes with the clouds, and every eye shall see him”, Revelation 1: 7. But the two men in white stress, “In the manner in which ye have beheld him going into heaven”. What does that mean? Is that not the private side of it? There will be no doubt about it when the Lord comes for us; it is no great public matter such as lightning. It is Himself, “this Jesus”, and it seems to me that the Lord’s supper is what fits into the economy. I am only suggesting these things.
[p. 372] One would like to know what the brethren think of them; whether Acts 1 is not the private side, that is the purely personal side, “Shall thus come in the manner in which ye have beheld him going into heaven”. Whose eyes are those? Those of His own. It will be a personal matter. There will be no fear at all, as in such a thought as lightning shining from the east to the west. And it is the Lord Himself. It is a question of how things are done and the manner of His coming. In John He says He comes in among us “I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you”. And when he comes for the assembly, for us presently, there is no great display of the elements, although the cloud is mentioned, it is personal, the manner of His movements.
ANW We have often referred to the earlier verses in Acts 1 in connection with presenting Himself alive, but He was then still on earth.
JT I think the Lord’s supper must be linked on with heaven, in the sense that the Lord gave it to Paul. “For I received from the Lord, that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was delivered up, took bread”, 1 Corinthians 11: 23.
“In like manner also the cup” (verse 25). It is a question of manner, and the wording is reduced from what it was in the synoptic gospels. It is brought down to a purely assembly setting, no more. Will Paul not use that word from the Lord to the assembly as such, bringing in this personal side of the Supper and how it keeps us right in the economy until the time that He returns?
CAM And the Lord would use a servant who did not see Him to institute it.
JT No, he was not there. We cannot say those two that went to Emmaus were there. It is from the Lord Himself. “For I received from the Lord, that which I also delivered to you”, not from Peter and others, but from the [p. 373] Lord.
WC Those two going to Jerusalem, went back with a very different story.
JT Yes; it was not the matter of an exposition of the Scriptures, which perhaps was the greatest ever given to any person; they did not allude to that at all. They alluded to this one thing: how He was made known to them.
RWS Are we to be particularly alert as the brother is giving thanks for the loaf and the cup, to look for this spiritual touch?
JT I think that is a time calling for the best spiritual attention that we have got. Has anything happened? Yes, something has happened; He was made known unto them in the breaking of bread. But there is a further thought that is not here, and that is the cup of the Lord. “In like manner also the cup”. The manner in the breaking of bread is brought in here, but Paul added the cup. That is not found elsewhere. But Paul mentions it in connection with the cup in 1 Corinthians 11 as by itself, and it is reduced from the synoptic gospels; certain words taken away and certain added, as if the Lord was considerate of us. It is Paul’s ministry; that is, we have the thing directly from him, as though the Lord were to say, I said something of it before I suffered; and after I rose I spoke to My great servant Paul and he has delivered it to you. That is the position in 1 Corinthians 11, His last word on the subject, His own, indeed, unto the assembly.
TEH As a brother moves towards the table, you support him with what you have spiritually that you may receive a spiritual impression. Sometimes we become disturbed or distracted, but the Lord would help us to attend to that moment and maintain support.
JT And then when you discern Him, to be right as to that, and then the next thing: is there anything for Him to partake of? He certainly does not partake of His own Supper. It does not say that He ate anything [p. 374] at Emmaus, although He was at table, but now what is there that He can partake of? It is not what has actually accrued in His coming in; it is stock we have got on hand, the fish and the honeycomb; and the fish is broiled; it is whole.
WN I would like a little help as regards the bread broken in Emmaus. Are you suggesting the spiritual period begins from that point?
JT Yes; and that is brought in by the return of those two.
TEH How do you look upon the two persons coming in?
JT It shows how the Lord regards people who have failed, that they may be ready to be used for a new thought. When you are restored, you have a new thought, something for the assembly.
AD Those who sinned inadvertently were to add one-fifth part in making restitution.
JT Very good; when it reached the priests, they would be enriched by the sin-offering.
TEH Owing to the stressed conditions that were there as the Lord came in, how do you explain their gaining this under such conditions?
JT I think the underlying conditions were right. They were sorrowful, and we are told they did not believe for joy when the Lord made Himself known to them. “But while they yet did not believe for joy, and were wondering” (verse 41). I would say this joy being mentioned is to indicate that the conditions were such as the Lord could adjust and make normal immediately. John’s account has the same incident so we have to conclude that abstractly they were right. It is not a fixed state. They are amenable to correction immediately.
NMcC What would you say were the reasons for His partaking of the food? He did not need to take any food to be sustained in that body.
JT It undoubtedly was part of the adjusting [p. 375] element, but then we cannot limit it to that. We are entitled to consider what is it that the Lord could partake of in a meeting here today in this room? Is there anything? He does not partake of His own supper. What could He partake of? It must be in principle love among ourselves. It is in stock. It is not brought in just there. It is there, this fish is broiled, it is cooked. It is not the immediate outcome of the incoming of the Lord; it is there. It is what we have. “Have ye anything here to eat?”. It is what He says elsewhere, “Love amongst yourselves”. He can certainly partake of that at any time.
WC The fish was not just caught.
JT It was cooked fish. John gives us the fish in the last chapter, which is also a matter of recovery. The Lord had the fish on the coals and the bread, too.
WC Fish are God’s creatures, but bread can be made.
JT Fish, I suppose, would be the sovereignty of God, what there is among us from that point of view. Bread would be what we make ourselves. Bread is not mentioned here, but honey. That is a mutual matter.
ANW It says, “And they gave him part of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb” (verse 42).
JT That would mean that the Lord gets a part; He shares in what we have got. He does not take it all.
CAM It seems to be a necessity, concrete love amongst one another.
JT Yes, what you have. Love ought to be, as it were, a stock of it. John would show that: “If ye have love amongst yourselves”. Not each one loving simply, but the thing is among you. That is a necessary condition at all times in the assembly. The Lord can take part in that at any time as He comes in.
RS The Lord says to Mary, “Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended”; but here He said,
“Handle me and see” (verse 39). How do you explain that?
JT It is a question of the public assembly. John brings in the heavenly side to teach such as Mary. She supposed that He was the gardener. She would link Him on with what was here; whereas He is bringing in something new. That is, John suggests the wholly spiritual heavenly status; hence He says, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”, John 20: 17. It is to link her on with the heavenly position.
AAT If there is not a happy condition in the meeting we rob the Lord of His portion?
JT I think so; there must be a steady stock of love in the assembly. That was His point, “Love amongst yourselves”.
TEH Will you help me as to what is in mind as to the public assembly?
JT What anybody can see. Anybody can come in on Lord’s day and see the Lord’s supper partaken of by us.
TEH When Joseph disclosed himself to his brethren the fact was known: “the Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard”, Genesis 45: 2.
JT Yes; Corinthians contemplates the more formal position, anyone can come in and see what there is.
HM It is very humbling when the Lord asked the same question in John 21, “Have ye anything to eat” (verse 5), they had to say, No.
JT They had it here. In John 21, He does not use the word ‘here’; but here He does. It is a question of the assembly, whether there is an assembly stock of food, something the Lord can take part in Himself.
HM It shows that unless we are together in love, we are in some other position such as they were, and we would have to say, [p. 377] No.
JT I believe that is the state of things, alas, in all those independent bodies. They have the outward form, but where is the food? Can the Lord take part in it?
RWS The more He takes, the more we have.
WC Does this not show wonderful grace on the part of the Lord to do all this work?
JT It does. It ought to affect us as to recovery, because the enemy is coming in and there are so many casualties; how are we to meet them? These scriptures are to help us forward as to grace in recovery.