Yom Kippur, Passover and the Lord's Supper

The sermon at our church this past Sunday was about the marriage feast of the Lamb in the book of Revelation, chapter 19, which seems to occur immediately before Armageddon. Since the chronology of Revelation is rather hard to sort out, it may not actually be in that order in my opinion, and in the sermon the pastor discussed the various concepts of the second advent of Christ and whether it happens pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation or post-tribulation. I agree with him that the pre-trib point of view requires a very strained reading of Scripture and is rather in conflict with the rest of the teaching in the Bible about suffering. I tend to think that the church may have to endure the entire tribulation, not escaping even mid-tribulation, but the truth is that no one really knows. The excessive confidence of the pronouncements by Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, and others are out of line in my opinion. We just don't know how all of that will unfold.



Anyway, after that discussion came the wedding feast of the Lamb and one of the points was that the Lord's supper anticipates that wedding feast. I commented here recently about how often the Bible compares Christianity to marriage, and this is another of those and this time the comparison has to do with when He is fully united with the Church, which is His betrothed until He returns. As we take the Lord's supper, we both look backward to the cross and forward to the marriage feast.



Since Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, happens in September the same week as this sermon, I was reminded of how that holiday relates to Passover, one looking back and the other more forward looking. The Passover lamb died to provide the blood for the doorpost in Egypt, protecting Israel from the death angel, causing him to pass over their homes. It is celebrated with a roasted lamb, bread, and wine as well as bitterherbs and salt water and looks back to that event in Egypt. Jesus became the Lamb who took away the need for more sacrificial lambs and took away our tears and bitterness, so the Lord's supper is celebrated with only the bread and wine. No other lamb will ever be needed. We look backward to His act of sacrifice in that way at the Lord's supper, and the absence of the lamb, bitter herbs, and salt water give testimony to what He did and it, as Paul said, 'proclaims the Lord's death until he comes' (I Cor 11:26).



And when He comes, we will do what Christ promised when He first celebrated the Lord's supper with the Disciples, saying about the bread and wine, ' I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God' (Mark 14:25 but also Luke 22:18 and Matt 26:29). This could well be at the marriage feast of Revelation 19. I think of Yom Kippur as a fresh start, with the sins being carried off by the 'scape goat' and a chance to begin anew, and in that way the forward looking part of the Lord's supper, coming as it did in a sermon at the time of Yom Kippur, reminded me of that. Yom Kippur also comes at the start of the Jewish new year, which is a forward-looking time. Most often I only think about the backward looking part of the Lord's supper and omit the forward looking part. I appreciated, and needed the reminder about, the forward looking part.