Friends: We started a summer sermon series on Deuteronomy at our church. It reminds us Jesus is all over the Old Testament, too. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1020

June 2, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Shadows and Reality

By Bob Walters

“These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” – Colossians 2:17 NIV

The Old Testament is a catalogue of God’s Creation, God’s character, God’s righteousness, and God’s plan. It is the tale of man’s possibilities in God but also man’s failures in sin. It is a tale of nations, of Satan, of rulers, of the faithful, of the deceitful, of prophets, and if you know how to look, one can find shadows and types and hints of Jesus on every page. He is the One to Come.

But the Old Testament is a story without a climax, a resolution, or a moral ending. It just … stops.  It is Jesus Christ, and the Gospel, and the New Testament writers who pull God’s Word all together: the Old story of God’s creation and man’s sin, and the New story of God’s grace and human salvation.  Salvation that is promised in the Old but delivered in the New. We need both Testaments to understand the full story; we need Jesus to understand God’s reality.

I like to say that the Old Testament describes the problem and the New Testament describes the solution. The problem? Our sin, our distance from God, and our human pride of sufficiency. The Solution?  Well, the solution is Jesus Christ and our renewed divine and eternal relationship in God’s Kingdom. That is what we celebrate with communion. It is a small meal that nourishes our souls and cements our fellowship in Christ.

As we enter into this new sermon series anchored in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, let’s use today’s communion time to mention various places in the Old Testament that suggest communion in the coming Messiah Christ.  In the cup is represented the blood of Jesus’s sacrifice and life, and in the bread, Jesus’s body and fellowship. With these, we remember the body and blood of Christ.

In Genesis, the apple of “the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” is the opposite of communion. The “apple” separated us from God; communion in Christ restores us to God.

The other tree in the garden, routinely overlooked, the “Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:22), calls us to “eat of it and live forever.” In Revelation 2:7, Jesus says, “to the victor I will give the right to eat from the Tree of Life that is in the Garden of God.”  In this communion is Christ’s promise of eternal life. In His sacrifice we are forgiven, and in our faith, restored to God’s Kingdom. In Genesis 4 we see Abel’s blood spilled by Cain, then Hebrews 12:24 declares the blood of Jesus “speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.”

Before there was the Jewish Law, there was Melchizedek, the mysterious, eternal king and priest, “made to resemble the Son of God” (Hebrews 7:3), who in Genesis 14:18 offered a sacrifice of bread and wine, foreshadowing communion.

In Exodus there are of course the blood of the Passover and the manna, or bread, of the desert.  There is the “hearth cake and jug of water” for Elijah in the desert (1 Kings 19), the Temple’s “Bread of the Presence” (Lev 24:7), and the Fiery Coal of Isaiah (Isaiah 7:6-7).  In Ezekial 2:8, the prophet has a vision, when God and the Spirit of the Lord enter him, saying, “open your mouth, and eat what I give you.” All these are shadows of communion with the coming King of Kings.

The Jesus we know has given us this communion to share. As we consume this small meal, let us consume and remember the Word of God in scripture, and remember the Word Who was made flesh, died for our salvation, and rose again in promise of eternal life.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) delivered this communion homily Sunday, May 31, 2026 at E91 Christian Church in Indianapolis where he and Pam are longtime members.