The Last Supper: Christ's New Covenant and Sacrifice

 

Summary

In this session, we delve into the profound events leading up to Jesus' crucifixion, focusing on His last Passover meal with His disciples. As Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly, the religious leaders plot His demise, setting the stage for His betrayal by Judas Iscariot. Amidst this turmoil, Jesus prepares to celebrate the Passover, a pivotal moment that marks the beginning of His passion. This celebration is not just a remembrance of the past but a foreshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice He is about to make.

The Passover, a significant Jewish tradition, commemorates God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. It involves the sacrifice of a lamb, whose blood spared the Israelites from the angel of death. Jesus, aware of His impending death, redefines this ancient ritual. He positions Himself as the ultimate Passover Lamb, whose sacrifice will bring about a new exodus—not from physical slavery, but from the bondage of sin and death.

In the upper room, Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper, transforming the Passover meal into a new covenant. He breaks the bread, symbolizing His body, and shares the cup, representing His blood, which will be shed for the remission of sins. This act signifies the end of the Old Covenant and the birth of the New Testament church. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper becomes a vital practice for the early church, emphasizing the importance of Christ's sacrifice and the new covenant.

The theological debates surrounding the nature of the Lord's Supper are explored, highlighting differing views on Christ's presence in the elements. The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, Luther's view of Christ's presence in the elements, and Calvin's emphasis on the spiritual presence of Christ are discussed. Despite these differences, the significance of the sacrament as a means of grace and a reminder of Christ's redemptive work remains central.

Key Takeaways:

- The Passover meal Jesus shared with His disciples was not just a remembrance of past deliverance but a prophetic act pointing to His ultimate sacrifice as the Lamb of God. This new exodus offers freedom from sin and death, leading believers into the heavenly Promised Land. [09:06]

- Jesus' institution of the Lord's Supper marks the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant, signifying the birth of the New Testament church. This sacrament is a profound reminder of Christ's sacrifice and the new relationship between God and His people. [11:46]

- The theological debates on the nature of the Lord's Supper reflect the deep significance of this sacrament. Whether viewed as a literal presence or a symbolic act, the Lord's Supper is a vital means of grace, connecting believers to the redemptive work of Christ. [18:27]

- The Lord's Supper is not merely a ritual but a profound act of worship that looks back to Christ's sacrifice and forward to the ultimate banquet in heaven. It is a celebration of the new life and hope found in Jesus, the perfect Passover Lamb. [21:08]

- Jesus' deliberate timing in instituting the Lord's Supper underscores its importance. He ensures that this sacrament is established before His arrest, highlighting its role in enriching the church and reminding believers of His sacrificial love. [22:06]

Youtube Chapters:

[00:00] - Welcome
[00:38] - The Gathering Storm
[01:29] - Judas' Betrayal
[02:14] - Preparing for Passover
[02:55] - Jesus' Fervent Desire
[03:45] - The Hour Has Come
[04:44] - Last Supper's Significance
[05:45] - Passover's Historical Importance
[06:36] - The Angel of Death
[07:30] - The Blood of the Lamb
[08:20] - A Call to Remembrance
[09:06] - Looking Forward to the Perfect Passover
[10:01] - Jesus Changes the Liturgy
[10:47] - The Birth of the New Covenant
[11:46] - The New Testament Church
[12:42] - "This is My Body"
[14:02] - The Cup of the New Testament
[14:46] - Weekly Celebration of the Sacrament
[15:46] - Divisions in Understanding
[16:21] - Transubstantiation Explained
[17:10] - Luther's View
[18:27] - Calvin's Perspective
[19:06] - The Mystery of the Incarnation
[19:45] - The Presence of Christ
[20:24] - Symbolism vs. Reality
[21:08] - The Ultimate Banquet Feast
[22:06] - Establishing the Sacrament

Study Guide

Bible Study Discussion Guide

Bible Reading:
- Luke 22:1-20
- Exodus 12:1-14

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Observation Questions:

1. What significant event was Jesus preparing to celebrate with His disciples, and why was it important? ([02:14])
2. How did Jesus express His desire to eat the Passover with His disciples, and what did this signify about His awareness of the events to come? ([02:55])
3. What changes did Jesus make to the traditional Passover liturgy during the Last Supper? ([10:01])
4. How did the religious leaders and Judas Iscariot conspire against Jesus during the time of the Passover? ([01:29])

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Interpretation Questions:

1. How does Jesus' redefinition of the Passover meal as the Lord's Supper signify the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant? ([11:46])
2. In what ways does the Passover foreshadow Jesus' role as the ultimate Passover Lamb? How does this connect to the concept of a new exodus? ([09:06])
3. What are the different theological perspectives on the presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord's Supper, and why do these debates matter? ([18:27])
4. How does the institution of the Lord's Supper serve as both a remembrance of Christ's sacrifice and a forward-looking celebration of the heavenly banquet? ([21:08])

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Application Questions:

1. Reflect on the significance of the Passover in your own spiritual journey. How can understanding its connection to Jesus' sacrifice deepen your faith? ([05:45])
2. Jesus expressed a fervent desire to share the Passover with His disciples. How can you cultivate a similar desire to share meaningful spiritual experiences with others? ([02:55])
3. The Lord's Supper is a reminder of Christ's sacrifice and a celebration of the new covenant. How can you approach this sacrament with a renewed sense of reverence and gratitude? ([11:46])
4. Consider the theological debates about the Lord's Supper. How do your beliefs about Christ's presence in the sacrament influence your participation in it? ([18:27])
5. Jesus' deliberate timing in instituting the Lord's Supper highlights its importance. How can you prioritize this sacrament in your spiritual life and encourage others to do the same? ([22:06])
6. The Lord's Supper looks forward to the ultimate banquet in heaven. How does this future hope impact your daily life and interactions with others? ([21:08])
7. Reflect on the concept of a new exodus from sin and death. How can you live out this freedom in practical ways in your community and relationships? ([09:06])

Devotional

Day 1: Jesus as the Ultimate Passover Lamb
In the events leading up to His crucifixion, Jesus redefines the Passover meal, a significant Jewish tradition commemorating God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. This meal, which involves the sacrifice of a lamb, is transformed by Jesus into a prophetic act pointing to His ultimate sacrifice as the Lamb of God. By positioning Himself as the ultimate Passover Lamb, Jesus offers a new exodus—not from physical slavery, but from the bondage of sin and death. This new exodus leads believers into the heavenly Promised Land, offering freedom and hope through His sacrifice. [09:06]

Exodus 12:13 (ESV): "The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt."

Reflection: In what ways can you recognize Jesus as your personal Passover Lamb today, offering you freedom from sin and death?


Day 2: The New Covenant and the Birth of the Church
Jesus' institution of the Lord's Supper marks a significant transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant, signifying the birth of the New Testament church. During the Last Supper, Jesus breaks the bread, symbolizing His body, and shares the cup, representing His blood, which will be shed for the remission of sins. This act signifies the end of the Old Covenant and the beginning of a new relationship between God and His people. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper becomes a vital practice for the early church, emphasizing the importance of Christ's sacrifice and the new covenant. [11:46]

Jeremiah 31:31-33 (ESV): "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers... But this is the covenant that I will make... I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts."

Reflection: How does participating in the Lord's Supper remind you of your relationship with God and the new covenant He has established with you?


Day 3: Theological Significance of the Lord's Supper
The Lord's Supper is a profound sacrament that has sparked theological debates regarding the nature of Christ's presence in the elements. Different views, such as the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, Luther's view of Christ's presence, and Calvin's emphasis on the spiritual presence, highlight the deep significance of this sacrament. Regardless of these differences, the Lord's Supper remains a vital means of grace, connecting believers to the redemptive work of Christ. It serves as a reminder of Christ's sacrifice and the grace extended to believers through His redemptive work. [18:27]

1 Corinthians 10:16-17 (ESV): "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."

Reflection: How do you perceive Christ's presence during the Lord's Supper, and how does this understanding impact your spiritual life?


Day 4: The Lord's Supper as a Celebration of Hope
The Lord's Supper is not merely a ritual but a profound act of worship that looks back to Christ's sacrifice and forward to the ultimate banquet in heaven. It is a celebration of the new life and hope found in Jesus, the perfect Passover Lamb. This sacrament serves as a reminder of the hope and promise of eternal life with God, encouraging believers to live in anticipation of the heavenly banquet. [21:08]

Revelation 19:9 (ESV): "And the angel said to me, 'Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' And he said to me, 'These are the true words of God.'"

Reflection: In what ways can you live today in anticipation of the ultimate banquet feast with Christ in heaven?


Day 5: The Importance of Establishing the Sacrament
Jesus' deliberate timing in instituting the Lord's Supper underscores its importance. He ensures that this sacrament is established before His arrest, highlighting its role in enriching the church and reminding believers of His sacrificial love. The Lord's Supper serves as a continual reminder of Christ's love and sacrifice, encouraging believers to live in gratitude and commitment to Him. [22:06]

Luke 22:19-20 (ESV): "And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, 'This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.'"

Reflection: How can you make the remembrance of Christ's sacrificial love a daily practice in your life?

Quotes


Now, while all of that's going on over here, at the same time, Jesus is making provisions to celebrate the Passover with His disciples. And we read the text, "Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread when the Passover must be killed, and He sent Peter and John, saying 'Go to prepare the Passover for us that we may eat.'" And then it tells the story of those preparations. And verse 14 said, "When the hour had come, He sat down and the twelve apostles with Him, and He said to them, 'With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.'" [00:02:16]

Here we note that Jesus is beginning to enter into what's called His passion. He's aware of His impending execution. He's aware that He is going to be betrayed. He's aware that He will also be publicly denied by Peter. And all of this comes out at the celebration of the Last Supper. But there's a word here in the text that I want to pause on for just a moment, when it said, "When the hour had come." Throughout the ministry of Jesus, multiple references are made to His hour, and on occasion He will say, "My hour is not yet come." [00:03:25]

Now, you remember why this celebration was so important to the Jewish people that God commanded that they observe it every single year without fail because in the first instance, the Passover commemorated God's redemptive action in saving His people at the time of the Exodus. You remember the various plagues that God visited upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt, and the command to Pharaoh when He said, "Let My people go." Let them go that they might come out into the desert to the mountain and worship Me there. [00:05:45]

And so God appointed this avenging angel, this angel of doom to come and to bring death upon the Egyptians and on the house of Pharaoh. However, He took again intricate provisions to spare the lives of His own people and of their children and their livestock. And you know what He did. He gave the instructions that each family would select a lamb without blemish and kill that lamb and take the blood of that lamb and affix it to the doorposts so that when the angel of death came, He would see the blood of the lamb smeared on the doorframe and know that that was a house of a Jewish person, and pass over that house, and the people then who were in that house escaped the condemnation of God. [00:07:03]

And so every year the Passover Seder was celebrated in every home, and the father was required to explain to the children why they were celebrating the Passover meal. Now, as I said, the first reference of the Passover was to celebrate something that had taken place in the past. It was a call to remembrance. Don't ever forget how I redeemed you from the Egyptians through the blood of the Pascal lamb. But not only did this event look backwards in time, but in the economy of the providence of God, it was looking forward to the future, to the final Passover, to the perfect Passover when the perfect Pascal Lamb would be sacrificed, ending the sacrificial system once and for all, that in the blood of this Lamb the people would be experiencing a greater exodus, not simply an exodus out of the bondage of Pharaoh, but out of the bondage of Satan itself, out of the bondage of death, because this exodus would take them, His people, literally into the Promised Land of heaven, into the heavenly Jerusalem, into the heavenly temple. [00:08:44]

And so Jesus gathers His disciples in the upper room, and as He's going through the Seder, as He's going through the liturgy of the Passover, He changes it. And can you imagine how significant it was for any Jew, after the Passover was originally instituted, to have the audacity to change the liturgy of it. Well, the only person in the world who had the authority to make such drastic changes to the liturgy was Jesus Himself because the Passover was about Him. He is the Pascal Lamb. He is the One invested by God with the authority to give a new understanding, a new meaning to this Old Testament sacrament, as it were. [00:10:15]

I might also add before we look at those changes in the liturgy, that what is happening here in terms of the work of Christ is not simply the fulfillment of Passover, but it's the end of the Old Covenant because in that upper room the New Testament church was born. Most people think that the church was born on the day of Pentecost. I don't. I think the church was born there in the upper room when Jesus institutes the new covenant. And when covenants were instituted, they had to be ratified by blood, and the ratification of this new covenant that Jesus institutes in the upper room takes place the following afternoon when the covenant is ratified in Jesus' own blood. And so He announces this new covenant. [00:11:35]

After He took the bread, and He changed the meaning of the bread by saying, "This is My body." Now there's an endless controversy about what Jesus meant when He said, "This is My body." Was He identifying that bread with Himself? Was the verb "to be" there used as a copula, meaning an identification, that this bread is identical to My body. Now, there are lots of people who think so. Luther took the position in the debates and discussions among the reformers about whether or not the bread was literally the body of Christ. [00:12:34]

And then we are told that in like manner, after they had supped, He took the cup. They drank the cup four different times in the Seder. On this occasion, Jesus again changes the liturgy, and He said "This is the cup of the New Testament which is in My blood, which is shed for the remission of your sins. And as oft as you eat of this bread and drink of the cup, you show forth My death until I come." And it's interesting to me that in the early church, the Christians met weekly and celebrated this new covenant sacrament, not just once a year, but once a week because it was understood to be so vitally important in communicating, in demonstrating the importance of the cross and of the new covenant, and of the Lamb who was slain, the Lamb without blemish, the perfect Pascal sacrifice. [00:14:12]

Now, you know that churches are hopelessly divided in their understanding of what happens in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. And the disputes are not only long, lengthy. They can become acerbic because the passion is so great. Everybody understands. This is an extremely important thing that we're doing here. And so what is actually happening? What is Jesus' connection to it? In the Roman Catholic Church, the church developed a doctrine of transubstantiation, which I'm sure you've heard of. And the doctrine of transubstantiation simply teaches that in the miracle of the mass, the body and -- excuse me -- the bread and the wine, the elements of bread and wine, are changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, so that Jesus corporeally, physically is there in the body and blood. [00:15:46]

Calvin, of course, had a great problem with that, going back to the church's Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century in 451 when the church declared that in the mystery of the incarnation were the two natures. The divine nature and the human nature were joined together in perfect unity, that that union was without mixture, confusion, separation, or division, each nature retaining its own attributes. That is to say, that in the incarnation, the human nature of Jesus is not deified. The human nature retains its human attributes. And the divine nature retains its divine attributes. And so the divine nature can be in Pittsburgh, and Chicago, and Boston, and Orlando all at the same time, but not the human nature. The human nature is limited in space and time by the natural limitations of humanity. [00:18:34]

But these debates go on and on and on, precisely because the church does understand that when Jesus the night before He died celebrated the Passover for the last time, was fully intending to establish a sacrament that would enrich His church and would cause His people to remember what He accomplished by offering that perfect sacrifice, by being the Lamb without blemish, but also look forward and prefigure the ultimate banquet feast in heaven at the marriage feast of the Lamb, when we sit down with Him at His Father's banquet house in heaven. So Jesus would not allow Himself to be taken, would not allow the soldiers to come too soon to interrupt or to abort the establishment of this most significant sacrament. [00:21:03]

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Transcript
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