Matthew 26:26-29 / Mark 14:22-25 / Luke 22:15-20…
This was the Passover, the night on which for over fourteen hundred years, the children of Israel celebrated God’s deliverance through blood and out of Egypt. In the shadow of where Solomon’s Temple had been built, where David had appointed the altar of thanksgiving to God (2 Chronicles 3:1), where Abraham had given up Isaac and the substitute had been found (Genesis 22:2), Jesus is instituting the Lord’s Supper. Here we see that Christ is the true Passover Lamb whose blood sacrifice establishes the New Covenant (Hebrews 9:15-17).
The Last Supper is the precedent for the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). His body, represented by the bread, is symbolic of His sinless life. His blood, represented by the cup, is symbolic of His atoning death. We don’t need His physical body and blood to come to us today, we need what His physical life and death brought to us for eternity. Jesus lived the life we should have lived and died the death we justly deserved. But on the cross, God treated Jesus as if He lived your life so He could treat you as if you lived His life (2 Corinthians 5:21). That’s the Gospel. Faith is spiritual eating.
I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. Not only does the Lord’s Supper help us to remember the past, it also is a reason to look forward to the future (1 Corinthians 11:26). Just as the Passover was a symbol of the Lamb of God, so the Lord’s Supper is a symbol of an even greater feast: the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-9). How glorious will that day be when we, in our glorified bodies, sit down with Jesus as His bride, and feast at the banquet table of heaven!
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