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like the one who treads in the wine press? 3 I have trodden the wine trough alone, And from the
peoples there was no man with Me. I also trod them in My anger And trampled them in My
wrath; And their lifeblood is sprinkled on My garments, And I stained all My raiment. 4 For the
day of vengeance was in My heart, And My year of redemption has come. 5 I looked, and there
was no one to help, And I was astonished and there was no one to uphold; So My own arm
brought salvation to Me, And My wrath upheld Me. 6 I trod down the peoples in My anger And
made them drunk in My wrath, And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.
So Christ's use of wine at the Supper foreshadows the fact that He was to be crushed by God in
the winepress of His wrath, provoked by the sins Jesus would bear on the cross, until His blood
would flow out, satisfying the justice of God and securing the redemption of His people.
So then, blood and wine (and God's wrath against sin) are tied together in Scripture, and pouredout, or shed blood is synonymous with death, and is pictured graphically for us at the
Table. Why should all this make us want to participate in the Lord's Supper? We are so
forgetful of what Jesus went through for us. We can dismiss it in five words, "He died on the
cross". Yet the thought of His shed blood, and the recollection this should bring of His physical
and spiritual agonies for us, must draw us out in love to Him, or we have no Christian life worthy
of the name. We should long to "sit beneath the cross, and gladly catch the healing stream" as
Charles Wesley put it (O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done!).
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