WHEN JESUS THANKED HIS FATHER.

At the sacrificial memorial of the Lord’s supper, we give thanks before eating the bread and drinking the grape juice, the fruit of the vine.

The Lord Jesus Christ celebrated the Passover Feast with His disciples. It was a time to remember how God hovered over the Israelite homes with their doorposts and lintels applied with the blood of an unblemished, year-old male lamb , which ensured their safety.

On the anniversary of that night Jesus sat with His disciples. He explained that the food represented Himself, as the perfect Lamb, soon to be crucified, and His blood shed. This remembrance feast would be celebrated as often as desired.

‘Do this as often as you can in remembrance of Me.’ It will be observed until the Lord Jesus Christ returns to call us to heaven.

Subtly Judas attempted in vain to hide his intended betrayal of Jesus. Yet, despite Jesus’ knowledge of Judas’ plot, and the thirty pieces of silver money in exchange , Matthew, Mark and Luke each record that Jesus took the bread, and later the cup, and ’He gave thanks.’

For what? A morsel of bread! A cup of juice! He knew the bread was made from crushed wheat, and that the juice came from grapes cut and pressed. Seven hundred years earlier, Isaiah wrote, ’bread corn is bruised. Ground grain is basic to bread.

In offering the bread and juice Jesus acknowledged the bruising and wounding of His own body, as prophesied by Isaiah ( chapter 53 ), that he would suffer soon after this remembrance meal.

Yes, our Lord gave thanks , not for the bread and juice, but for His suffering body and soul, as he carried our sins in His own body. And He would shed His blood, without which there is no remission of sin.

How poignant that our Lord sat with those who soon betrayed, deserted and denied Him, and yet gave thanks as the emblems pictured His death, while bearing our sin.

Was there a reward? Yes! In Hebrews we read, ‘For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross and despised the shame’- so that sinners could be reconciled to the Father God, and become saints.

We seldom thank God for present or anticipated suffering, yet our Lord Jesus Christ thanked His Father for the privilege of suffering to become our Redeemer.

THANKS BE TO GOD FOR HIS UNSPEAKABLE GIFT.