As Jesus next administered the sacrament of the bread and the wine to these people, I think some of them would have noted that, previously in their old temples, twelve loaves of what were called shew-bread were placed daily on a table in the “Holy Place,” the room called the Hekal. Only the High Priest could eat of that holy bread.
Here, instead of twelve loaves, we have twelve disciples who carry the bread to all 2,500 people who are allowed to enter into this special holy relationship, as they enter into a covenant with the Lord. The bread now represents not just the broken body as it did at the Last Supper and does in the New Testament, but as Jesus says, “Partake of this in remembrance of my body which I have shown unto you” (3 Nephi 18:7). For 3 Nephi, the bread of the sacrament represented the substance of the body of Christ—the tangible, physical, resurrected body—that these people only a few hours earlier that day had touched, felt, and worshipped. They had testified that they had witnessed the resurrected Lord, with the signs of his suffering in his hands and feet. The tangible, physical nature of that bread reminded them, and reminds us, of the reality of the Resurrection that will be all of ours through the power of the victorious subduing of death and hell by Jesus Christ.
When I partake of the sacrament and contemplate not only the death and suffering of the Lord, but especially his consequential resurrection, I am transported spiritually into the book of 3 Nephi. That text gives me and all of us the opportunity to go to the Temple in Bountiful, where we, too, can touch the bread of eternal life.
Book of Mormon Central, “Why Did the Savior Emphasize His Risen Body in the Nephite Sacrament? (3 Nephi 18:7), KnoWhy 211 (October 18, 2016).