Breaking Bread Together

to get a better understanding of breaking bread, we're going to jump into Paul's letter to the first chapter to the Corinthians, his first letter to the Corinthians. So if you have a Bible and you want to follow along, or if you've got maybe an app on your phone and you want to follow along, I encourage you to pull that out. Take a look first Corinthians, chapter 11. Or you can just follow along. We'll have the verses on the screens here this morning. You see, breaking bread had a different meaning to those in the early church than it does to us today. Our practice of breaking bread took place as part of what I believe was the original potluck. Now, in the Bible, you're not going to see the word potluck. The new living translation, though, gives us a little bit better understanding of Luke's writing in Acts chapter 2. With its translation, where we read these words, all the believers devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, and to sharing in meals, which included the Lord's Supper and to prayer. You also won't see this description in the Bible, but the belief is that in the early church, this, this idea of breaking bread was oftentimes referred to as an agape feast. The agape feast, or this love feast, was a communal meal that Christians shared as a way to foster fellowship among the believers of a local church. Many believe that it is in his letter to the church at Corinth where we first get this idea of, of an agape feast. And unfortunately, Paul wasn't happy about their treatment of each other at the feast, so he wrote to them about it. So let's jump into our text this morning.