Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come. . . .

— Revelation 19:7

In the school where I teach, our senior students spend a lot of their spare time planning their graduation banquet. They taste samples from a banquet menu, raise funds so that they can have a special celebration, and imagine how great it will be to celebrate their long-awaited milestone.

A great feast is also at the culmination of God’s great story of redemption in the Bible. Throughout Scripture, many stories show how God feeds his people. It’s like a long bread-thread woven through and baked into the whole story of God’s amazing work in and through his people. And this great feast will have the finest and best of breads—no meal could be complete without it. This great feast combines so many things at once: it is high and long and wide and deep with the love of Christ; it celebrates manna in the wilderness and the “bread of the Presence” of God; it multiplies the feeding of the 5,000 exponentially; it recalls the bread that Jesus gave thanks for and broke with his disciples; and it fills us with Jesus himself, the bread of life.

All of these great memories and the fullness of every promise come together at the great supper of the Lamb in the new heaven and earth.

“Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” (Revelation 7:12)