PLEDGE TO LAMB (REVELATION 12:11)–This morning The Lord God Almighty, The Ancient of Days Majestic in Holiness, Endless of Days has invited us to eat at His Table.
We have almost all of us eaten with Him before. We usually know THE WHY – to remember His death, body, blood, covenant, triumph, and so much more.
But do we know the "WHAT"? What He expects from us, what He waits for, what He wants to hear?
An early way the 1st century Christians described the Lord’s Supper was by the Latin term “Sacramentum”. Long before religion obscured that word with various and confusing meanings, they took it in its original and purest form.
Sacramentum was the Military oath of Roman soldiers of Caesar’s Legions, the most powerful institution of the 1st century.
Spread across the ancient world, they were the personal representatives of the Emperor.
Bound together with a life-or-death allegiance, they were invincible.
In Israel an occupied country, and in all the New Testament cities of Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and so on, they were known and seen daily.
So to our forbears, the Lord’s Table was a time to renew their supreme loyalty to our Master, Lord and King. They like us wanted to be continually reminded of our absolute allegiance to the Lamb of God.
When the early Christians came to celebrate the Lord’s Table, it was in its original meaning. It was to them much like the oath of loyalty taken by soldiers entering the Roman Legion. A Roman Soldier’s oath was to solemnly swear to several personal commitments:
"to obey the commands of his general,
serving him to the best of his ability at all times,
always following the written words of the Counsel (Roman Imperial Warfare Guide),
that he would never leave the gathered regiment and flee from any battle and finally
that they held the Emperor’s well being as most important to them and
that he was to be held dearer to them than themselves or their children".
• After the centurion or first soldier repeated this oath, all the others were to say one by one: "the same for me".
• To a Roman soldier this pledge was a declaration of loyalty above which nothing could be more far-reaching.
• From start to finish this oath was a solemn promise of complete and absolute and even sacrificial loyalty.
Thus the Lord’s Table is a time we stand as God’s people and with the pictures of Jesus in our hands and on our lips, we declare a pledge of absolute loyalty to our Lord Jesus Christ!
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