The Lord’s Supper is based on the Last Supper, the final meal between Jesus and his closest disciples before Jesus was arrested, beaten and crucified.
We mustn’t forget that this meal happened during Passover. It was a Passover meal when every year, Jews from every family would gather together and share a meal remembering the miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt, through the Red Sea and into the Promised Land.
I think we forget sometimes the events leading up to the very first Passover. The first Passover was preceded by Moses asking the Pharaoh of Egypt to let God’s people go, but he refused. Then, there was the first plague and Pharaoh refused again. Then the second plague and again Pharaoh refused and so on until the 10th plague. This plague was the worst of all. God’s wrath culminated in the death of every firstborn in all of Egypt. The angel of death went from home to home and killed every firstborn child. You were spared only if you followed the Lord’s instructions and killed a lamb without blemish and marked the entrance of your door with blood from the lamb. The wrath of God literally passed over the homes of unbelievers so that their firstborn could be spared.
Jesus became the Lamb of God slain for our sins and His blood was marked over the door of our lives so that the wrath of God can pass over your life and mine. We mustn’t forget that sin always needs to be punished. God is a Holy God and He cannot leave sin unpunished. Thanks be to God that through Christ, we are saved BY God and we are saved FROM God. We deserve wrath because we are all sinners. But God provided a way through the death and resurrection of Jesus so that the wrath of God could pass over us and we could be forgiven.
This is what we are remembering whenever we participate in the Lord’s Supper.