“For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope. “ (Ecc 9:4, KJV)
You would’ve noticed in the previous teaching that all three of the first important feasts on the Jewish calendar were fulfilled spiritually during the Last Supper. The feast of Pesach, the feast of Unleavened Bread and the feast of the First Fruits were celebrated simultaneously to commemorate the exodus out of Egypt (see Ex 11-12). When the disciples sat with Jesus so that God’s “cycles of righteousness” could happen at that “appointed time”, and He made the Passover slip into a new cloak: the communion, it was a further accomplishment of God’s eternal covenant with Jesus, of which even you and I partake in.
This communion would, throughout the ages thereafter, point to the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, the Saviour of the world: “And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you’.” (Luke 22:19-20). This broken body and shed blood were, however, the physical signs of a spiritual covenant that God made with Christ before the foundation of the world, the “eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph 3:11). Therefore Jesus was crucified then already, says Rev 13:8: “The Lamb slain [in the purpose of God] from the foundation of the world.”!
As Melchizedek (in Gen 14:18), who was a priest of God when Jerusalem was still Salem, brought “bread and wine” to the father of the faith, Abraham (Rom 4:16), one realises that back then it was no-one other than Christ who presented to Abraham the first-fruit of the faith, the reconciliation of His Body and Blood! And if you, like Levi, were already in the loins of Abraham through faith (Heb 7:1-10), then you and I (as bosom brothers, Luke 16:22) also had a part of it! The practice of communion, then, follows a trail of blood of glorious redemption which stretches back to before the foundation of the earth, through Abraham and Melchizedek, through the feasts, until the Last Supper, to now where we eat the bread and drink the wine; we clearly “walk in steps of the faith which our father Abraham had” (Rom 4:12)!
- Sela: “As often as you can …” Make communion a daily practice.
- Read: Ex 39; Ps 89; Mark 15
- Memorise: Mark 14:22
