11 THE LORD‘S SUPPER-Jesus' final night on this earth began by sharing a meal with His disciples. It was The Passover Meal that commemorated The Exodus from Egypt led by Moses and was celebrated with The Feast of Unleavened Bread. This feast was when the Passover Lamb was killed and eaten; the celebration lasted seven days. It was the fulfilment of The Passover Feast which God had commanded the Israelites to commemorate, to remind them of the slain lamb and its blood that was smeared on the doorpost of all their homes in Egypt as protection from divine judgement, in the country that had enslaved them. All who were protected by the blood of the lamb did not die as judgement came upon Egypt. The Old Testament Passover Feast prefigured in every detail the time when Christ, The Lamb of God would suffer, bleed and die on The Cross for the remissions of sin.

Both The Old Testament Passover Feast and The New Covenant is connected with The Lord's Supper. Jesus established The Lord's Supper. It is the name given to the meal that Jesus ate with His disciples the night before He was crucified. The supper started as a Passover Meal but Jesus, Himself changed the ceremony to a memorial service to be kept by His disciples until His return as promised.

Jesus used as symbols, the bread and wine of the prepared Passover Meal. The unleavened bread was a reminder to Israel of the exodus from Egypt. Jesus associated the bread with His Body. Jesus taught that He was the Spiritual food, Bread from heaven. The cup of wine stood for His blood. The object of the symbolic Passover ceremony pointed to His death on The Cross. He gave His Life for sinners to be reconciled to God. His own blood, which was poured out for many, was for the promised agreement, an inauguration of a New Covenant between God and man. Only through His death, He Himself could be the bonder of a relationship between God and mankind. Jesus announced that His Blood and His Body would institute the long promised New Covenant which was prophesied by Jeremiah 31:31-34.

Formal outward practices and rituals symbolising important events, are of spiritual significance if instituted by God. The Lord's Supper is not to be empty legalism, not without inner cleanliness and real commitment. It is participating of the commemoration and remembrance of Jesus Christ and all the benefits that resulted to Christians. In the early church, believers would include the sacrament in an ordinary meal, which was not necessarily wrong, as long as it was done in a worthy and charitable manner.

During the meal Jesus identified His betrayer and Judas by His own choice allowed himself to surrender to Satan and slipped away to the Chief Priests and made arrangements for Jesus' arrest later that evening. Peter was told by Jesus that he would deny that he ever knew Him, three times before the next day.

Jesus was God's Passover Lamb and He became the Christian's Passover Lamb and The Lord's Supper is a remembrance of a Christian's own exodus from the bondage and slavery of sin. Jesus correctly adapted the Jewish Passover Feast for The Church. The Lord's Supper is celebrated and distinguished by Christians because Christ commanded that it be so, to bring to remembrance The New Covenant made with God through His Blood. It is a constant reminder of the great sacrifice Christ made with God for the redemption of mankind from sin.
The Lord's Supper is a celebration done as Jesus commanded, in remembrance of the Love of Christ shown to mankind by His atoning death. The Lord's Supper became an act of worship amongst The Body of Christ that began after Pentecost, which was the coming of The Holy Spirit to the Church. Christians who eat bread and drink the wine, symbolic of Christ's Body and Blood are to ensure that they worthily partake of The Lord's Supper in genuine fellowship with other believers and is part of the worship now offered to God as praise and thanksgiving in remembrance of His Gift of His son.

It is not a repetitious sacrifice of Christ at Calvary's Cross but a proclamation of His death, once and for all, for the sins of mankind until He returns. The Lord's Supper is His, not the believer's.

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