To better understand the Lords supper, recounted for us here by Luke, it is helpful to consider the redemption of the children of Israel from the brutal slavery of the Egyptians.
The children of Israel groaned under the oppression of the Egyptians, but they didn’t really ask to be redeemed. They didn’t really have any context by which to understand redemption. They even complained at times that Moses should just leave things as they are.
But God is faithful and true and will redeem his people.
The children of Israel were not required to work for their redemption, there really was nothing they could have done.
But God is faithful and true and will redeem his people.
The children of Israel were instructed to have a special feast in their homes and to spread the blood of the feast lamb over their door posts.
Image for a moment that you are a Hebrew father living in the land of Egypt at that time. You believed the words of Moses and Aaron, you prepared your family’s feast, bloodied the door post of your home and prepared to leave the only world you had ever known.
You spend a sleepless night hoping, praying that you prepared everything just right. That you spoke the right words, prepared the feast as instructed, painted the door post appropriately. You are Hoping and praying that as the sun rises in the morning your first-born son will still be alive.
As the first rays of sun start to turn the eastern sky red you fly to your eldest son with breathless anticipation.
Alive! He is alive!
You take your first-born son into your arms and hold him close, feel his heart beating, his breath filling his lungs with life.
Your immeasurable joy is shattered by the sound you hear from your neighbor’s house. The anguished cry of a father whose son has perished in the night. Then another cry, then another, until the morning sun is shining over an unimaginable intensity of pain and sorrow.
Your heart begins to break for the sound of the groans of your neighbors, your colleagues, even for of your slave masters, the anguish is so intense.
There is no record regarding how many of the members of the Hebrew community partook in the Passover and thereby preserving their first-born sons. Given what we know about people in general, It would not be unreasonable to presume some chose not to participate and some chose to participate in their own way. And, their first-born sons would have paid the price for their rebellion. But redemption was still theirs.
Not of works, lest any man should boast –
But what of the anguish and pain of losing their first-born son. Rebellion has consequences.
We also are instructed to a feast. A feast that calls to remember blood. Not that of a lamb but that of our God and Saviors Jesus Christ. Blood that was shed so that you may be redeemed.
Take the bread, take the cup, in full obedience and submission to the Lord of life.
And, as you take the bread, and take the cup commit yourself anew to living second.