The Blood of our Communion

<p>THE BLOOD OF OUR COMMUNION</p> <p>Exodus 12:3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household.  Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. It is the LORD'S Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.</p> <p>That miraculous event was celebrated by Israel every year during their Feast of Passover to acknowledge that life was given to God’s people through the blood of the Passover Lamb while death came upon the families of Egypt. There were many such rituals that God commanded Moses to have Israel perform to the most precise detail after they escaped from Egypt and journeyed through the wilderness towards the Promised land. Every year would begin with the ritual of the Feast of Passover which was followed fifty days later by the Feast of Pentecost and followed later in the seventh month of the year by the Feast of Tabernacles. For fifteen hundred years the sacrificial blood of animals was spilled on the ground day after day by the priests of Israel for the forgiveness of their sins. God told Moses to say to the people ‘I have given you the blood to sprinkle upon the altar as an atonement for your souls; it is the blood that makes atonement because it is the life’ (Leviticus 17:11). Blood speaks of life as well as forgiveness.</p> <p>But since the time of Jesus there is no more spilling of blood every year on the ritual Feast of Passover for the sins of Israel. The Bible says that John saw Jesus coming to him, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), The blood of Jesus as our Passove