Revisiting the Lord's Supper Part 3 History

[HKHaugan]

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper Part 3 History

In all the Gospels, it is made clear that the Last Supper is Jesus’ fulfillment of the Passover meal.  He is bringing a new dimension to a historic religious observance.  That meal was a remembrance of the Hebrew people’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt.  When the Lord God had sent dire warnings of doom for Egypt that if they didn’t release the Jews it would result in the death of all the firstborn Egyptian children including Pharaoh’s son.  So, God ordered lambs to be the last supper in Egypt for each Hebrew family who, that night, would be told to leave Egypt.  To protect the Hebrews, God instructed them to place the blood of the sacrificed lamb on their door post so when the angel of death passed through Egypt, the angel would pass over the homes of the Hebrews.  The Lord God then commanded the Jews to make an annual observance of their deliverance from slavery which they do to this day. 

From Egypt, they cross the Red Sea pursued by Pharaoh’s evil forces but God, having parted the waters, closes them on those forces destroying them.  That frees the Hebrews to move into the wilderness and head toward the Promised Land.  Each of us is born in slavery to sin but Jesus parts the waters of self-centered aloneness and it fears, freeing us to grow in the wilderness as He teaches us how to cope with all its subtle spirits and demons that assault us as we make our way toward the Promised Land, the Kingdom of Heaven.  The Hebrews had so much to learn on their way having been reduced to a slave mentality for 400 years.  The spiritual parallel here is our personal wilderness experience and the evil forces that want to destroy us.  Just as Moses led them through the physical wilderness so Jesus came to bring us through the world’s spiritual wilderness with all its subtle traps and snares.  Moses, Joshua and the prophets were their course correctors needed because they lost their moral compass through immorality and compromise with foreign powers just as we lose our compass and need course correction from our own sins and cultural compromises.  That’s why what was probably a forty-day trip took forty years.  They kept getting morally sidetracked along the way.  Their learning is our learning as the whole Old Testament shows. Jesus parallels this by His 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil.  

In fact, the whole of Jesus’ life was a retracing of Hebrew history to show its fulfillment in Him.  Adam born of God, living in Eden. Jesus conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, living in a God-chosen land.  The Hebrew’s Red Sea Crossing and then their move forward through the Jordan River into the Promised Land.  Our being baptized with water, saved by Jesus was and is moving into a spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus, the Gate to the Promised Land. The Hebrews enter the Promised Land and have to take one town after another.  Jesus travels through Galilee and traverses the relational landscape taking one heart after another.  The Hebrew prophets stand against the immorality of the culturally compromised kings and people.  Jesus carries everyone’s sin to the Cross.  The Hebrews keep the Word of the One God central through all adversity.  Jesus is the Word come alive as the means to be spiritually conscious at all times through everyone’s Red Sea and unexpected storms.  The Old Testament gives us a picture of the human problem, separation from God.  The New Testament gives us the solution, a relationship with Jesus, our return to God.