"Let my people go!" That was God's urgent command to Pharaoh through Moses. When Pharaoh refused, God sent nine plagues to get him to change his mind. Still Pharaoh refused. This time God was about to send the tenth plague, the harshest of all, before finally leading his people from slavery to freedom through the Red Sea. But before he does that, God inaugurates a festival by which people will remember this great deliverance, the Passover.

That night God tells the Israelites to prepare by selecting a lamb from their flocks, killing it, and draining the blood. They are to take the blood and splash it on the tops and sides of the doorposts of their houses. That night is called Passover because the "angel of death" will visit all the households of the Egyptians, bringing death to the firstborn, but will pass over the houses of the Israelites.

In addition, the Israelites are given directions on other elements of this great festival, especially how the lamb is to be roasted and eaten, how this ceremony will be celebrated from now on, and how the children will be told its meaning.

So before the great deliverance actually takes place, God takes care that the Israelites will remember it from that time forward. The Passover became the central feast for the Israelites, and it remains so to this day.

Now jump ahead fifteen hundred years or so. God is about to deliver his people from their deepest slavery---slavery to sin and death---through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "On the night he was betrayed" Jesus celebrates the Passover with his disciples. But while they are at the table with the roasted lamb, he forever transforms it. He takes the bread and cup and says, "This is my body, this is my blood." "From now on," he tells them, "do this in remembrance of me."

It's important to notice the striking similarities between these two events. In both cases even before the event takes place God institutes the means by which it will be remembered through a ceremony---first, the Passover, and then, finally, the Lord's Supper.

Last week's Q&A told us that God creates faith by the Holy Spirit and assures us of it by the sacraments. The Passover was an old covenant sacrament. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the new covenant sacraments. God gave us sacraments to assure us of faith. That means that at the Lord's Supper, when we eat and drink God is assuring us that Jesus did indeed die for our sins and that we have new life in him.

It's a special kind of remembrance. In a sacrament, we don't just remember that this event happened, but we recognize that we are part of it. Notice what God told the Israelites. "In the days to come when your children ask you, 'What does this mean?' say to them, 'With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery'" (Ex. 13:14, italics added). The "remembrance" of the Passover commemorates something that happened long ago, but it happened to us. In the sacraments of the new covenant, baptism and the Lord's Supper, we remember in that same way. Christ's death and resurrection happen to us and for us. And they assure us of our salvation.