Bread and Wine - Nazaryah

T H E T W O - S T A G E S A L V A T I O N

Bread and Wine

How the body and the blood carry the believer through two stages of one deliverance

Entry by favor through the Blood --- Consummation at the Judgement through the Bread

Deliverance is one work in two stages. We enter it as a free gift, by favor, through the blood of Yahushua --- the wine. We are then carried through it, and brought to its end at the judgement, by walking in the commandments of Yahuah --- the bread. Modern Christianity has kept the wine and thrown out the bread, collapsing a lifelong walk into a single moment. Scripture keeps both.

Three people set this study in motion. I will introduce them now and leave their words with you --- because we are going to come back to all three at the very end, and by then they will not look like three separate conversations at all.

The first was a member of my own family, who had been walking with Yahuah longer than I had been alive. She kept one line close, a saying from her church that she repeated like a refrain: the remnant will keep the commandments of Yahuah and hold the testimony of Yahushua (Revelation 12:17).

The second was a friend from church, who could quote the apostle Paul better than anyone I knew. He would bring up one passage again and again --- Ephesians 2:8—9: by grace are ye saved through faith… not of works.

The third was a friend from work, who said one thing so often it became a kind of motto: we are no longer under the bondage of the Old Testament. We are under a new covenant, he would say, not the old.

Three people. Three comments. On their face they have little to do with one another --- one about the commandments, one about grace, one about being free from the old. Hold them loosely for now. I am not going to tell you yet how they fit, because the whole study is the answer. I only ask that you keep them in the back of your mind. At the very end, we will set the three side by side and watch something happen.

What I can tell you now is where they led. These three drove me back into the Word for months, and it all came together at one table. On the night before He died, Yahushua took two elements --- bread and a cup --- and told His talmidim what they had meant all along. Salvation, it turns out, is not a single moment. It is one work in two stages: an entry you receive freely, by favor, through the blood --- and a walk you live out afterward, by the bread, all the way to a coming judgement.

A Key Before We Begin

One thing will make the whole study easier to follow. Two sets of words run through it, and inside each set the words are interchangeable --- because they are all naming the same one thing. Whenever you meet a word from the first set, picture the cup. Whenever you meet a word from the second, picture the loaf.

The first set --- the entry, Salvation by Favor: favor (the word your King James Bible prints as grace), the blood, the wine, the doorway into salvation. The free gift that washes the past away. You receive it; you could never earn it.
The second set --- the walk, Salvation by Judgement: the bread, the body, the law, the entrance into the whole house. The commandments of Yahuah walked out across a lifetime and weighed at the judgement. You do not earn the doorway by it --- you walk the house by it.

Grace, blood, wine, doorway --- one cup. Bread, body, law, the house --- one loaf. Keep that key in hand, and the rest of the study will open.

This study follows that pair --- bread and wine, body and blood --- from the first priest who ever carried them, through the altar at Sinai and the long wilderness walk, to the table in the upper room, and on to the judgement at journey’s end. Over a hundred passages that once read flat will stand up in three dimensions. And one habit will repeat throughout: we state the matter from the Old Testament first, then bring the New Testament to confirm it. The New is always backing up the Old --- never replacing it.

P A R T O N E

The Pair at the Table

“And as they were eating, Yahushua took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup… saying, …this is my blood.” Two elements. Two meanings. One Messiah. Before we trace the pair backward and forward, we have to be clear about what each element is.

1.1 --- “This Is My Body” --- the Bread

When Yahushua held up the bread and said this is my body, He was not reaching for a brand-new image. He was reaching for the oldest definition of bread in the Scriptures --- the one He had quoted in the wilderness when He was tested.

DEUTERONOMY 8:3 --- KJV

And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna… that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD (Yahuah) doth man live.

Bread, in Yahuah’s own definition, is the word that proceeds out of His mouth. His commandments. His instruction. His Torah. When Yahushua was tested, He answered with this exact verse: man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word (Matthew 4:4). So when He later says this is my body, He is saying that He is that word --- the Word made flesh, the living embodiment of the commandments of Yahuah. The bread is the body. The body is the Word. The Word is the Law. They are one continuous line.

This is the part of salvation that you walk. You do not eat bread once and never again; you eat it daily, all your life. The bread is the commandments lived out, the body of the Messiah worked into your hands and feet day after day.

1.2 --- “This Is My Blood” --- the Wine

Then He took the cup: this is my blood. And again He was naming something Scripture had already defined.

LEVITICUS 17:11 --- KJV

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

Blood is two things at once: it is life, and it is atonement. The life of the flesh is in it, and it is the thing that covers sin. So the wine is the blood, and the blood is the life of Yahushua poured out and the atonement that washes the past away. The writer of Hebrews spends an entire chapter on this --- that without the shedding of blood there is no remission, and that Yahushua entered the true Holy Place by His own blood, once for all (Hebrews 9). The wine is the testimony of His life and the price of His death, together in one cup.

This is the part of salvation that you receive. You cannot earn blood; it is given. The cup is the free gift --- the entry.

1.3 --- Commandments and Testimony --- the Pair Named Outright

Put the two elements side by side and you have the exact pair that the book of Revelation repeats again and again to describe the people of Yahuah:

The commandments of Yahuah --- the bread, the body, the Word walked out.
The testimony of Yahushua --- the wine, the blood, the life and witness received.

That doubling --- commandments and testimony --- appears four times in Revelation (12:17; 14:12; and the same pairing in 1:9 and 19:10). It is not two unrelated traits. It is the bread and the wine, named outright, describing the saint who has both received the blood and walks in the commandments. That family member’s favorite line was holding both halves of salvation in a single sentence the whole time.

Bread is His body --- the commandments of Yahuah, the Word you walk by. Wine is His blood --- the life of Yahushua, the atonement you receive. Keep the commandments and hold the testimony: that is the whole of it, on one table.

P A R T T W O

The Pair Behind the Pair

The upper room did not begin the pattern. It revealed it. Bread and blood run the entire length of the Scriptures --- from the first man called a priest of the Most High, through the offerings at the altar, to the table where Yahushua finally put His own name on both elements.

2.1 --- Melchizedek’s Bread and Wine

GENESIS 14:18 --- KJV

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.

The first man Scripture ever calls a priest of the Most High does not appear with a knife and an altar. He appears with bread and wine. Long before Sinai, before the Levitical system, the priestly pair is already set: bread and wine in the hands of the priest-king of Salem. The book of Hebrews makes Yahushua a priest after the order of Melchizedek --- which means the bread and wine He lifts at the table is the same bread and wine the first priest carried. The pair was waiting for Him from the beginning.

2.2 --- The Levitical Pair --- Zevach and Minchah

At Sinai the pair is built into the worship itself. Two offerings stand together again and again: the zevach --- the blood sacrifice --- and the minchah --- the grain or bread offering.

The minchah (Leviticus 2) is the grain offering --- fine flour, unleavened bread. The bread on the altar.
The zevach (Leviticus 3; 7:11—21) is the blood sacrifice, and Leviticus 17:11 tells us the blood is the life and makes atonement. The wine, the blood, on the altar.

These two are not random rituals. They are the same pair Melchizedek carried and the same pair Yahushua lifted --- blood for atonement, bread for the walk --- institutionalized in the worship of Israel so the people would handle the pattern with their own hands for over a thousand years before the Messiah came and told them whose body and blood it had always been.

And the prophet Daniel marked the very moment the pair would be fulfilled. In the midst of the seventieth week, he said, the Messiah would cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease (Daniel 9:27) --- and those two words are the same two offerings: the sacrifice is the zevach (the blood, the wine) and the oblation is the minchah (the grain, the bread). At the cross, in the middle of that final week, these are the two that were put to rest --- not abolished, but brought home to the One they had always pointed to, who had now become both. The Hebrew for cause to cease is built on shabath, to rest --- the very word the companion study carries in its name.

From Melchizedek to the altar to the upper room, the pair never changes: blood and bread, wine and body. For where the verb shabath falls on this pair --- where the shadows finally rest in their substance --- see the companion study, Shabath: The Sabbath of the Finished Work.

P A R T T H R E E

Two Stages of One Salvation

Now the pair does its real work. Bread and blood are not only two elements on a table --- they are the two stages of one deliverance. Paul says it in two short verses, and the whole framework is hidden in plain sight inside them.

ROMANS 5:9—10 --- KJV

Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

Read it slowly. Two different things in two verses. Justified by his blood --- past tense, already done, the entry, the wine. And saved by his life --- future tense, still ahead, the walk, the bread. The blood secures the entry; the life --- His life lived out through us as we keep His commandments --- carries us to the end. One deliverance. Two stages.

3.1 --- Salvation by Favor --- the Blood

The first stage is pure gift. You did nothing to earn it and you could not have. This is the verse the friend from church loved, and he was right to love it:

EPHESIANS 2:8—9 --- KJV

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.

By favor, through trust, as a gift --- not of works. This is the blood on the doorpost, the cup at the table, the washing away of every past sin. It is the entry, and it is free. Nobody walks through the door by climbing; the door is opened. This is Salvation by Favor, and the element that represents it is the wine.

But Paul does not stop at verse 9. The very next breath --- verse 10 --- says we are created in Messiah unto good works, which Yahuah prepared that we should walk in them. The favor is not the destination. It is the doorway into the walk.

3.2 --- Salvation by Judgement --- the Bread

The second stage is the part modern Christianity has quietly deleted. Scripture is relentless that there is a coming judgement, and that the judgement looks at what we did with the bread --- whether we walked in the commandments or threw them away.

Revelation 20:12 --- the dead are judged according to their works.
Matthew 16:27 --- He shall reward every man according to his works.
Romans 2:6, 13 --- Yahuah will render to every man according to his deeds; the doers of the law shall be justified.
Ecclesiastes 12:13—14 --- fear Yahuah and keep His commandments; for He shall bring every work into judgement.
2 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Peter 1:17; John 5:29 --- each one ties the outcome to what was actually done.

This is Salvation by Judgement, and the element that represents it is the bread --- the body, the commandments, the Word walked out across a lifetime. The wine pays the price. The bread walks the road. And the road ends at a judgement that asks whether you ate the bread.

And here is the heart of the problem. Modern Christianity loves to drink the wine --- the part of salvation that is free, the cup it never had to earn --- but it cannot stand the bread. It will take the gift gladly and leave the daily manna on the ground, despising it exactly as the wilderness generation did. They grew sick of the bread from heaven and loathed it (our soul loatheth this light bread, Numbers 21:5), even though that manna was the very thing keeping them alive and teaching them to live by every word from His mouth. The cup is poured once; the bread must be gathered every single morning. And a people who will not eat the bread are a people who never finish the journey.

3.3 --- The Three Tenses of Salvation

If deliverance were finished the moment you believed, a whole row of verses would make no sense. But the New Testament speaks of salvation in past, present, and future tenses constantly --- because it is one work being walked out over time:

Romans 13:11 --- now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. Nearer at the end than at the start.
1 Peter 1:5 --- kept by the power of Yahuah unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1 Peter 1:9 --- receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Salvation as something received at the end.
Hebrews 9:28 --- He shall appear the second time unto salvation. Salvation arrives at the second coming.
Philippians 2:12 --- work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. A thing worked out across a life.
1 Thessalonians 5:8—9 --- the hope of salvation. You do not hope for what you already fully possess.

Entry, walking, consummation. The wine opens the door; the bread carries you down the road; the door at the far end opens unto the salvation revealed in the last time. Modern Christianity has truncated all of this to the entry moment alone --- and in doing so has handed people a doorway and called it a house.

3.4 --- It Takes Both --- Faith and Works Are Not Enemies

This is where the old “faith versus works” argument dissolves. They were never opponents. They are the wine and the bread --- two stages of one thing.

JAMES 2:22, 26 --- KJV

Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?… For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

James says trust is made perfect --- made complete --- by works. Not replaced by them, completed by them. The blood without the bread is a body without breath. Acts 26:20 says the same in miniature: repent (the wine, the turning) and do works (the bread, the walk). One coin, two faces. You need the whole coin to enter His rest.

Salvation by Favor is the entry, by the blood --- the free gift you could never earn. Salvation by Judgement is the consummation, through the bread --- the commandments walked out and weighed at the end. Take away the wine and you have a religion of effort. Take away the bread and you have a religion of slogans. Keep both, and you have the deliverance Scripture actually describes.

P A R T F O U R

The Wilderness Pattern

Once you hold the pair, the Old Testament stories come alive. The clearest of them all is the exodus --- a complete picture of salvation from the blood at the door to the judgement at the edge of the promised land, with a long wilderness walk in between.

4.1 --- The Blood on the Doorpost --- Entry by Favor

EXODUS 12:7 --- KJV

And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.

The blood on the doorpost was the token --- the mark of a freedom Israel did not deserve and could not earn. They did not fight their way out of Egypt; they were carried out, the night the blood stood between them and the destroyer. That is Salvation by Favor in its first and clearest form: the wine, the blood, the entry. Pesach is the doorway. But Pesach was never the destination --- it was the night before a forty-year walk.

4.2 --- Eagles’ Wings, the Covenant, and the Kingdom --- Exodus 19:4—6

EXODUS 19:4—6 --- KJV

Ye have seen… how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant… ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.

All three movements of salvation sit in three verses:

v.4 --- borne on eagles’ wings: the favor, the entry. (Revelation 12:14 carries the woman on the same eagle’s wings.)
v.5 --- if ye will obey my voice and keep my covenant: the walk, the bread, the wilderness obedience. (Revelation 12:17 --- the remnant keep the commandments.)
v.6 --- a kingdom of priests, an holy nation: the inheritance reached at the end. (Revelation 1:6 and 1 Peter 2:9 give the same title to the saints who endure.)

Favor, then obedience, then the kingdom. The entry, the walk, the consummation. The exodus is the two-stage salvation in narrative form.

4.3 --- The Donkey and the Lamb --- a Hidden Witness

EXODUS 13:13 --- KJV

And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck.

Here is a gem hidden in a single command. The donkey was the one unclean animal that could be redeemed --- bought back --- by a clean lamb dying in its place. That is a picture of the unclean being saved by favor, the very shape of the gospel going out to the nations. And if this story is about redemption, the blood-and-wine motif should be hiding somewhere in it --- and it is. The Hebrew word behind the donkey (chamor) shares its consonants with the word for wine and fermentation (chamar). The unclean creature carried, in its very name, a whisper of the wine that would redeem it. Centuries later, Yahushua rode into Jerusalem on exactly this animal --- the redeemed donkey --- a living picture of redemption walking through the gate.

4.4 --- Manna and the Labour to Enter --- Hebrews 3—4

After the blood came the bread. For forty years they walked on manna --- the bread from heaven, which Yahuah expressly said was given to teach them that man lives by every word from His mouth (Deuteronomy 8:3). The blood got them out of Egypt; the bread carried them through the wilderness. And the writer of Hebrews uses this exact story to warn the believer:

HEBREWS 4:1, 11 --- KJV

Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it… Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

Read that carefully. It is possible to come short of the rest --- even after the blood, even after leaving Egypt. We are told to labour to enter. The wilderness generation was redeemed by the Pesach blood, every last one of them --- yet of the 603,550 fighting men who came out (Exodus 12:37; Numbers 1:45—47), only two entered the promised land. The rest fell in the wilderness because they would not walk in trust and obedience --- they had the wine but refused the bread. The entry was free; the inheritance was walked out. The cross does not erase that pattern --- it gives us the true Lamb and the true Bread to walk it by.

4.5 --- The Ancient Paths --- Where Rest Is Found

JEREMIAH 6:16 --- KJV

Thus saith the LORD (Yahuah), Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

Rest --- the goal of the whole journey --- is found by walking the ancient paths: the old, tested way of His commandments. And notice the tragedy of the verse: the rest was offered, the way was shown, and they refused to walk. Three verses later (6:19) the consequence falls. The bread was set before them and they would not eat. That is Salvation by Judgement --- the same warning the exodus already told in story form.

Egypt was the blood. The wilderness was the bread. The promised land was the judgement at the journey’s end. Two left Egypt for every six hundred thousand who entered the land --- not because the blood failed, but because they would not walk by the bread. The pattern still stands.

P A R T F I V E

The New Testament Backs the Old

The pattern is not an Old Testament curiosity that the New Testament outgrew. The apostolic writings carry the very same two stages --- always confirming the Old, never replacing it.

5.1 --- Favor’s Side --- the Blood Received

Romans 3:25—28 is saturated with the language of the first stage: propitiation through faith in his blood, justification as a gift, not by the deeds of the law. This is the wine --- the entry by favor, exactly as Romans 5:9 framed it. The Law was never the way in; the blood is.

But Romans 6 immediately guards the door from being mistaken for the house. Having received the free gift, shall we keep on sinning that favor may abound? God forbid. The one baptized into Messiah is no longer a servant of sin but an instrument of righteousness (6:13, 16). The blood that frees you from sin’s penalty also frees you from sin itself --- so that you can finally walk by the bread.

5.2 --- Judgement’s Side --- the Bread Walked Out

And the second stage is everywhere the writers describe the finish line:

Hebrews 5:8—9 --- He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. The eternal stage is tied to obedience, not to the entry alone.
Hebrews 9:26—28 --- the blood covers sin at the first coming (v.26); salvation is finalized at the second coming (v.28). Both stages, two verses apart.
Hebrews 10:26—31 --- a sober warning that one can receive the truth and then trample it by returning to wilful sin, falling short at the judgement. Favor can be spurned.
Titus 3:7; 1 Peter 1:9; 2 Corinthians 5:10 --- justified by favor in hope of eternal life, salvation received at the end of trust, each man answering for what he did.

None of this earns the entry. All of it walks out the gift. The wine is poured once; the bread is eaten daily until the door at the end of the road swings open.

Go Deeper --- The Joint-Heirs Word Picture

Romans 8:17 calls the saints joint-heirs with Messiah. The Greek word behind “heir” is kleronomos (Strong’s G2818). Look at what it is built from. Kleros (G2819) is a portion or inheritance received --- something you are given, not something you seize --- joined to the idea of nomos (G3551), the Law. And kleros itself traces back to klao (G2806) --- to break, the very word used for the breaking of bread. The inheritance, the Law, and the broken bread are bound up in one word. We become joint-heirs with the Messiah as those given a portion, clothed in the Law, by way of the broken bread. Even the word for our inheritance has the bread hidden inside it.

Go Deeper --- The Sermon on the Mount Is the Old Testament Retaught

Many treat the Sermon on the Mount as the charter of a brand-new covenant that left the old behind. But from Matthew 5:17 onward, Yahushua is re-teaching the Old Testament commandments --- thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery --- and driving each one deeper, into the heart. He opens by saying He came not to destroy the law… but to fulfil (5:17), and He closes the whole sermon with the verdict: not every one that saith… Lord, Lord, shall enter… but he that doeth the will of my Father (7:21). Saying is the slogan; doing is the bread. The greatest sermon ever preached ends on Salvation by Judgement. (This deserves its own study; it is sketched here only to show the pattern holds even where we least expect it.)

C O N C L U S I O N

The Three, Side by Side

Stand back and look at the whole table. Two elements. Two stages. One Messiah. Now go back to the three people from the beginning, set their three comments side by side, and watch what happens.

The family member had it all along. The remnant will keep the commandments of Yahuah and hold the testimony of Yahushua. That is the bread and the wine in a single breath --- the body and the blood, both halves of salvation, named together. She was holding the whole table and may never have known it. Everything this study has traced was already folded inside her favorite line: the commandments she would not let go of, and the testimony she had received.

The friend from church had hold of the wine. By grace are ye saved through faith, not of works --- the blood, the free gift, the doorway. Every word of it true. But he stopped at the cup. He had the entry and mistook it for the whole house, never reaching for the loaf that was meant to be eaten the rest of the way home. He had the first half of salvation and called it the whole.

The friend from work was doing the opposite --- he was taking the bread away. No longer under the bondage of the Old Testament, he would say, and in saying it he set the loaf down and walked off without it. He kept the cup and discarded the commandments, as though freedom meant a table with the bread removed. But the bread was never bondage. It was the body. It was the law of liberty. It was the way home.

Three people, pulling in three directions --- and every one of them was standing at the same table. One held both elements. One held only the cup. One had taken the loaf away. They were never having three different conversations; they were each touching one part of a single thing --- salvation, in two stages, pictured by two elements. That is what came together. Not three subjects, but one table: the bread beside the wine.

Modern Christianity kept the cup and threw away the loaf. It preached the entry and called it the whole house, leaving people standing in a doorway, certain they had arrived. But the people of Yahuah were always known by both --- they keep the commandments of Yahuah and hold the testimony of Yahushua. Bread and wine. Body and blood. The pair that named the first priest of the Most High, the pair on the altar at Sinai, the pair in His hands at the table --- the pair that carries you the whole way home.

◆

The wine pays the price. The bread walks the road. Take away either one, and it is no longer the salvation of the Scriptures.

“Come out of her, my people.”

Revelation 18:4