Doctrine of Food – Food Teaches Us to Remember and Celebrate
Food Teaches Us to Remember and Celebrate
Exodus 12:14 ‘Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance.
Luke 22:19And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is 
given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
For thousands of years, food has been a focus of our times of celebration and remembrances. Kings display their wealth by declaring great feasts. I love how the beginning of Esther describes the great banquet of King Ahasuerus’s which lasted 180 days. What wealth! Things haven’t changed much since King Ahasuerus day, except maybe the length of the feast is not quite as long. When countries host ambassadors, they have elaborate State dinners with lavish servings of all kinds of good food. In our home, we have a tradition of letting the person celebrating their birthday pick the food for the meal we eat as a family. Everybody I know enjoys Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter meals as well as a good ole 4th of July barbecue. Basically, when people gather, food is present.
The Israelite people have many feasts; Passover, Pentecost (also called the feast of weeks), the Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles (Booths), Rosh Hashanah, Purim, and more. What is interesting is that God commanded His people to celebrate with food. Specifically, God instituted the Jewish Passover feast to remember and celebrate their deliverance from bondage. The feasts were very much a part of the Old Covenant.
It is by the grand design of God that in the same way, as part of the New Covenant, we participate in the ordinance of communion to remember our deliverance from the bondage of sin. The Apostle Paul tells us that whenever we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes back. Eating bread and drinking the wine of communion are ways to remember and celebrate our salvation. In the scheme of life, is there anything that should have more cause to remember than what Christ has done for us?
How interesting that God has chosen eating food as a way to celebrate the Lord’s death.
Jesus said (Luke 14:15), “Blessed is everyone who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!” The Angel told John, (Revelation 19:9), “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
Indeed!