Pet Peeve--But a little more serious this time (continued from last post)

--binson". I told you! I would have included this in the previous post, but, while still a pet peeve, this is a little more serious (though not much)

Upon coming to Appalachian Bible College I realized that many fundamental, Bible-believing churches have a major difference to my home church--they do not all use the same type of bread for communion. My church has always used broken matzo bread. Yet many churches use oyster-like crackers or even rolls. This is not an important difference, nor does this affect the doctrinal soundness of a church. Yet there are several reasons why certain types of bread are more correct than others.

Jesus, when He institued the Lord's Table, was not bringing up a completely new idea. The bread and wine had been instituted for thousands of years as Passover. And as many Christians do not realize, every element of Passover pointed to Jesus. Matzo bread is important because--

• It is broken. Jesus said, "This is my Body that was broken for you." Individual crackers do not portray this.
• It is unleavened. Leaven, or Yeast, represented sin almost every time it was used in the Bible. True, it also represents the spreading of the kingdom of heaven (Luke 13:21) but in the context of Passover, it represented sin. Part of the reason was to picture the Israelites' rapid exit from Egypt, but the holiday also included a custom of sweeping all the leaven out of the household before Passover began. This represented ridding the house of sin. Many people picture the Lord's Supper with large loaves of bread, but the fact is, they were celebrating Passover, so all the bread was unleavened.
• It is striped. A little-known fact about the significance of matzo is that it is striped when baked. This represents the fact that we are healed by His stripes.

My main frustration isn't even the fact that people use other kinds of bread. It's the reaction I get when they comment on it. They say...

• "Why does it matter how Passover was celebrated? We're no longer under the law." This misconception is all-too-common--that anything in the Old Testament is archaic, redundant, and no longer applies. But the Old Testament law is a beautiful and accurate picture of what Jesus would do when He came to earth--and every element is significant.
• "Does it matter what imagery we get? We're still obeying the command." Think of baptism--an issue many Christians are very willing to take sides on. Sprinkling does not accurately picture the death of the sinful man inside us and our rebirth at salvation. Immersion does. In the same way rolls and crackers do not represent the broken, sinless, beaten body of Christ like matzo does. Yet people see Immersion as important and matzo as insignificant.
• "We use Grape Juice instead of Wine. Is this as important?" No. Grape Juice and Wine both represent the blood of Christ, because both are red. In the same way baptism does not need to be in a river, as long as it involves immersion. The important thing is what image you get.

Is this a vital doctrinal issue? No. We don't have to use matzo to obey Christ's command. But Christians should not desire only to do what we have to do. We are no longer under the law, so we need not hold Passover seders or use matzo for communion. But we should want to. Old Testament Jews had the rare gift of understanding Jesus before He even came. Jewish law gives a fantastic picture of salvation--an experience that Gentile Christians could share, but we choose not to. Some Christians even condemn Messianic Jews because they believe the Old Testament law is completely dead. But the law is still alive and real--and a wonderful way to understand God. The more we can understand this law in our vastly different culture, the better. The law pointed us to God in the first place, and deeper study of the law will bring us ever closer to Him.