Baptismal Wings
No Jordan means no Canaan. The Lord’s supper (feast) table is for the faithful who obediently follow our Joshua across the river.
Typologically, we dine with Moses and the elders of Israel above the crystal sea (Exodus 24:10), the Laver that washes us before we, as a church, ascend to the Holy Place.
Exodus 24:9-11 “Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank.”
Notice that Moses is the chief cornerstone and his three mighty men are the other three corners. Beneath Christ, they are the four cornered Land of Israel (the altar), and the 70 elders represent the Gentile nations (Sea) (outer courts). They set the pattern for the city of God.
The word translated ‘tassels’ for the things the Israelites had to have sewn onto the ‘four corners’ of their clothes is literally ‘wings’. As mediators ‘between heaven and earth’, the people, especially the priesthood, flew about symbolically in the Holy Place. Now the church does the same thing, a four-cornered bride city suspended above the waters, with crystal walls that replaced the mediating crystal sea. To enter the church’s gates is to pass through the Laver – ie. baptism. That makes the saints, like New Covenant Levites, God’s bouncers.
No baptism, no membership.
No membership, no communion.
No laver, no dinner.
As the nation “sprinkled with blood” at the base of the mountain of God, we wash before we come to the table, and God does not stretch out His hand against us.
