This Passover in Canaan is the same feast that the people had celebrated in Egypt, and yet how much they differed one from the other. There, it was a people conscious of their guilt, hasting to flee, sheltered amidst the darkness and the judgment by the blood of the paschal lamb. Here, it is a people safely landed in Canaan, delivered from the last traces of the reproach of Egypt, a risen people who have been through death [figuratively, through the Jordan River], but who return in perfect peace to the starting point, the foundation of all their blessings, to sit around the memorials of a Christ slain for them on the cross. The Passover in Canaan corresponds with what the Lord's Supper is for the Christian.

And notice, it is a permanent food; it will not cease in the glory. Yet it will no longer be the remembrance of the Lord's death celebrated during His absence, neither shall we need something tangible to remind us of it, for our eyes will see in the midst of the throne the Lamb Himself, as though He had been slain-- He the visible center of the new creation founded on the cross, the basis and pivot of eternal blessing, the object upon whom myriads of myriads gaze with adoring and universal worship.

But there is more than this in our heavenly repast. "And they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain." God gave them a food which had been unknown to them in Egypt, the "old corn" [the stored grain] of the land of Canaan: a heavenly, glorified Christ [symbolically for Christians]-- but Christ as a Man who had been through this sin-stained world in a spotless humanity, like the unleavened bread; and who in this same humanity had passed through the fire of judgment like the parched corn, and who, having entered the glory in resurrection, sits as Man at the right hand of God.

Moreover, He is there for us, not only as our Advocate with the Father, but as introducing us in His Person as Man into the glory. The place is prepared for man in the third heaven; he is brought in Christ into the full enjoyment of heavenly blessing. I behold this Man and say, “There is my place; I am in Him, a man in Christ, possessing already the same life as He, life eternal, the life of a Man risen from among the dead. I am united to Him, seated in Him in the heavenly places, enjoying this infinite blessing by the Holy Spirit who leads me into it. Blessed Savior! For me Thou camest down, for me Thou didst hang on the cross; Thou art gone into the glory, and Thou has brought me into it already in Thine own Person, previous to being with Thee and like Thee forever.”

What wondrous joy and what power there is in occupation with such a Christ!

Henri L. Rossier