S161P2 – Our God of covenant: the second-to-last supper
Mk. 14:22-26
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” Then He took the cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said to them, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many. Assuredly, I say to you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
The Passover Seder is the ritual meal which begins the Jewish Passover celebration. During the Seder, the story of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is told through a reading of the Haggadah. In that Exodus story, the blood of an unblemished Passover lamb was used to mark and save God’s people from a plague of death that was to go through the area. As long as the people stayed indoors with the blood marked on their doorposts, the destroyer would not enter their homes and strike them. It had no power beyond the threshold. Jesus was celebrating this feast of deliverance during what we commonly call the last supper when He proclaimed himself to be the Passover lamb of the New Covenant.
We call this the last supper because it is the last meal that Jesus would share with his disciples before his crucifixion. It is, however, not the last supper He will share with them. In fact, this next supper that is to come will be shared with us as well. It is the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. [Rev 19:6-10] That is the next time that Jesus will partake of the fruit of the vine, and that will be in his Father’s heavenly kingdom. While the Passover meal commemorated God delivering his people from bondage, and Jesus appeared as the final Passover lamb sacrificed for the remission of sin once and for all, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb will mark our full and final deliverance from the presence of sin and evil.
What I see here is a progression of deliverance. The first passover marked deliverance from physical bondage, which was a foreshadowing of Messiah’s future spiritual deliverance. The New Covenant established by Christ gave us that freedom from spiritual bondage by that last perfect sacrifice, but sin still reigns in this world. The Marriage Supper of the Lamb will occur once sin is banished from our presence forever and all corruption in heaven and on Earth is no more. Christ himself will raise a celebratory toast with us on that day. Father, help us to live with anticipation of that final supper with our bridegroom, the day when every ungodly and evil thing will be no more.