The People of God: The Story of the ChurchSample

As the Israelites escape Egypt, a meal is celebrated. This meal, called Passover, was to commemorate how God ‘passed over’ the houses with the blood of a lamb on the doors. The people were to celebrate this meal each year and use it to remember how they fled in haste, protected by God. It was a way of passing onto their children what it meant to be a community that represented God. Little did they know that this would also point forward prophetically to when Jesus would become the ultimate Passover lamb to take away the sins of the whole world.

The church, as we gather around Communion each week, stands in this great Passover tradition as we remember the great exodus from sin and death itself. By initiating the Lord’s Supper on Passover, Jesus was not replacing Passover but bringing it into its ultimate culmination. Receiving communion is a celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection but also follows in the incredible Passover tradition. Of course, Jews, and even some Christians, still celebrate Passover to commemorate the Exodus event and the beginnings of the nation of Israel.