God has given us a wonderful capacity to remember. We love to have pictures, videos, letters, texts, and emails of loved ones so we can recall the good times we shared with them. The more we love someone, the more we want to remember the special relationship we had. God wants His children to remember Him and all He has done for them. In the Old Testament, God frequently reminded the Israelites to remember His acts of mercy and in particular, His deliverance of them out of slavery in Egypt. One feast, called the “Passover,” was instituted by God to help the Israelites remember that when they were in Egypt, they had to kill a lamb and put the blood on their doorposts so the death angel would pass over that house and not kill the first born. Once every year, the Jews would celebrate the “Passover” and remember God’s mercy and the requirement for the blood of an innocent victim to be shed so others could be spared from death.
In the New Testament, God still wants His people to remember His acts of mercy. God saw the bondage of His chosen people and sent His only begotten Son to deliver them out of the bondage to sin. Jesus died on the cross to pay the sin debt for the elect of God. Jesus resurrected on the third day and proved that God was satisfied with the price He paid. All our sins were imputed to Jesus and all God’s wrath was poured out on Him while He was on the cross. Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, was punished in our place. There has never been such a display of love for undeserving people. Romans 5:10 says, “But God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus told His disciples how they should remember this great act of love and mercy. He used two symbols that used to be part of the Passover meal: the unleavened bread and the cup of wine. Jesus changed the meaning of those symbols to reflect a much greater acts of love and mercy than the physical deliverance of the Jews out bondage in Egypt. Now those same symbols would point to Jesus and His redemptive work. The bread reminds us of His body that was nailed to a tree and the cup reminds us that He shed His blood (laid down His life) so we could be saved from bondage to sin and be forgiven for all our sins.
These are the words of Jesus in Scripture: the words we will repeat when we partake of the Lord’s Supper. “Take, eat (the bread); this is my body which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of me. Then Jesus took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25).
The best thing we can remember is God’s love for us and the price God was willing to pay to redeem us and make us His own. May the bread and cup be always on our minds reminding us of the infinite love and grace of God in Jesus Christ.
Love in Christ,
Pastor Dennis
