Offering

Jesus broke the bread and gave it to His disciples saying, "Take this and eat, for this is My body."  Then He poured the wine and passed it around, saying, "Take this and drink, for this is My blood."  And I've seen the painting of the Last Supper, and that wasn't all the food Jesus had to choose from.  

So why the bread?  And why the wine?

The answer is in the offering.

In Old Testament times, the people brought offerings to God.  Sin offerings, burnt offerings, guilt offerings, grain offerings.  Freewill offerings and offerings for the festivals.  They brought lambs, rams, goats, and sheep, one-year-old males with no defects, mourning doves or pigeons, whatever they could afford.  They brought the first of their harvests - grain and grapes and olive oil.  And with each offering, they brought baked rings of unleavened bread and a measure of wine.

You think of course, the bread and the wine were part of the offering.  They were part of the guilt, the sin, and the burning.  They were part of the festival, part of the feast.  But no.  No.  The bread and the wine were much more.

Bread, brought by itself, was a fellowship offering.  (Leviticus 7)  And Bible scholars suggest that the wine was an offering of good will or good faith.

Fellowship....and faith, along with the offering for the atonement of sin.

Isn't it cool, then, that as God prepared the sacrifice of a Lamb, a male with no defects, to be offered on the altar of the Cross, He also saw fit to send to us the bread and the wine.  Fellowship...and faith.

It's awesome, at least to me, that God would choose to die so that we might live.  It's amazing that He would figure out a way to bring us the sacrifice that we would normally bring to Him in order to have that sacrifice mean more.  But it's absolutely awe-inspiring that in all of that, He would also see fit to bring us the rest of the offering.  That my God, who willingly died for me, who sent His Son to be my Lamb, the atonement for my sin...also offers me fellowship.  And also offers me faith.

I've seen the painting of the Last Supper, and Jesus had quite a spread to choose from, to hear the painters tell it.  He could have chosen the fish - He did remarkable things with fish.  He could have chosen the fig - we know how He felt about the fig tree.  He could have chosen anything on the table.

But my God chose the bread and the wine.  I think that's incredible.