For hundreds of years, many theologians and preachers a
whole lot smarter than I am have debated this issue, and so I don’t pretend to
have solved every difficulty in this passage for us today. However, I am assured of the fact that
Jesus said that they that worship God must worship Him in Spirit and in
truth. I am also convinced that
the scripture says in John 16:13,
"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the
truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He
will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” That principle is repeated elsewhere as
well, which promises that we may know the essential truth of God’s word. We may not know every mystery, but we
can know the things freely given to us by God that are essential to our
salvation and our sanctification, if we come to the word of God with a humble
heart desiring God’s wisdom.
That desire to know the truth has been the driving force of
my ministry. It is a commitment
that I made before the Lord 30 years ago, that if He would show me the truth, I
would follow it. And it continues
to be the driving impetus of my preaching and teaching today in this
church. I do not want to be guilty
of blindly following tradition. I
do not want to merely regurgitate the status quo, without doing my own research
and study to see if those things are so.
I believe that the truth is important, and nothing less than the truth
will serve the gospel.
So to that end, that we might know the truth and worship God
in truth, we will look at this important passage today first of all from a
historical perspective – what happened as the context tells us, and then from a
doctrinal perspective – what this passage teaches us in light of how we are to
observe Christ’s instructions.
First of all, note that the text makes it clear that this
was the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is also called the Passover. All that transpires here in the upper
room happens in the context of the disciples and Jesus celebrating and
observing the Passover. Christ
does not institute a new ritual.
He takes an old ritual and establishes a new covenant. He modifies the old ritual, He changes
the meaning of the old ceremony, but it’s essentially the same Passover
ceremony.
But before we go into the specifics of what the Passover
feast entails, let’s consider the preparation that is detailed in vs.
7-13. Much detail is given by Luke
about the selection of a room and the instructions Jesus gave Peter and John
concerning it. There seems to be a
certain degree of secrecy about the instructions. Jesus could have said “just go to such and such a street,
and it’s the third house on the left.”
That would be the normal way to give directions. But Jesus gives them this almost
clandestine arrangement; you will see a man with a water pot, go follow this
man to his house and so forth. And
if you have a curious mind you should be asking yourself why the
subterfuge? Jesus obviously knows
the place He intends to observe the Passover, why not just come out and say it?
Well, you should remember from the preceding passage that
Judas went to the chief priests and agreed to betray Jesus when the crowd was
not around. He was looking for the
right opportunity when Jesus was out of the public eye so that he could alert
the chief priests, and they could send a mob of soldiers and arrest Him without
a lot of fanfare. So Jesus answers
the disciples question about where they will hold the feast without giving away
the location. Only Peter and John
will go there, and they will not know where it is until they see this man
carrying a water pitcher. By the
way, that was not as common a sight as you might think. This was typically the thing women did,
carrying pitchers of water on their heads. So to see a man do it would attract their notice.
So the point was to avoid giving the information to Judas
before the time that God had appointed Jesus to be betrayed. Jesus knew the hour that God had
appointed, and that all the events that would happen had to occur in such a
time frame so that He would be crucified during the time that the Passover
lambs were being slain, around 3pm on Friday. It was now Thursday morning.
Furthermore, Jesus wanted to observe the Passover Feast with
His disciples. It will be the last
opportunity for Him to teach them and pray with them and show them things that
will become foundational to the church after He is gone. And so Jesus gives Peter and John
instructions about the location and the preparation in such a way so that Judas
was unaware of the essential details.
So after everything is ready, and Peter and John have
prepared everything, vs. 14 says the hour had come to eat the Passover
meal. He reclined at the table
with the apostles. I’m sure most
of you are familiar with the significance of the Passover. But it might be helpful to review it
for a moment. The Passover was a
meal that was prescribed by God for the Israelites when they were about to
leave Egypt for the Promised Land.
As you will recall, the Lord had brought plagues upon the Egyptians
because they refused to let the children of Israel leave Egypt. The last of 10 plagues was that the
eldest son of every family in Egypt would be killed. And so to protect His people, God gave the Israelites
specific instructions to slay a lamb and put the blood of the lamb upon the
doorposts of their home so that when the angel of death came through the land,
he would pass over those houses where the blood was on the doorpost.
Then the members of the house were to take the meat of the
lamb and cook it in just a certain way, and they were to prepare unleavened
bread, and bitter herbs and eat this meal in preparation for their
journey. In Exodus 12 all of the
details of the meal are explained, and it states that this was to be a
perpetual feast for the Israelites, that they would remember the deliverance by
God from their enslavement in generations to come.
So this is the meal that the apostles and Jesus are
observing. It is the Passover
meal. It was an important festival
that they observed every year - for one week a year they ate unleavened bread.
They were to remove all leaven from their houses during this time which
symbolized a time of self examination and repentance from sin. And then on the afternoon or evening of
the Passover day, they would sacrifice a year old lamb at the temple by the
hand of the priest, and bring back the body which they would roast in fire with
all the entrails and head and so forth intact, and they would eat the
lamb. Everything that was not
eaten had to be burned, so that nothing was left until morning. And as time went on the Israelites developed an intricate order, or seder
it was called, of the Passover meal which was interspersed with the singing of
certain Psalms and prayers and recounting the story of the exodus.
Now at the beginning of this Passover meal, Jesus says in
vs. 15, ““I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I
suffer; for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in
the kingdom of God.” First of all,
it is worth noting that Jesus says He was fervently, or earnestly desiring to
eat this Passover with them before He suffered. Not only does this indicate His love for His disciples, but
it indicates that Jesus was passionately focused on His purpose. He came to Earth to suffer and die for
the sins of the world. This was
His mission, His goal. And He says
He has been eagerly looking forward to it. He doesn’t have some morbid desire to die, He has a divine
desire to liberate mankind; to accomplish the redemption of mankind. That was
His earnest desire; to save men from their sins. And Jesus saw the Passover as the end goal of His mission on
Earth; to provide Himself as the Passover Lamb, to save mankind from the
penalty of death.
Also in this verse we have another significant principle
that is often overlooked. Jesus is
saying that this meal not only looks back at the historic deliverance from
Egyptian slavery, but it also looks forward to being consummated or fulfilled
in the kingdom of God. What they
were doing then was symbolic of what would one day be fully, or completely realized
in the kingdom of God.
One day there will another feast when the kingdom of God
comes in glory. The Bible refers in
Rev. 19:19 to it as the marriage supper of the Lamb. And so to some extent then what was being celebrated not
only looked back at the exodus from Egypt, the freedom from bondage to the
promised land, but also looks forward to the future freedom from the presence
of sin, the freedom from the bondage of sin that this world is under when we
are delivered from this body of death to the glorified, eternal life with
Christ.
Then in vs. 17, Jesus formally begins the meal by giving
thanks, and offering up the cup He said, “Take this and share it among
yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from
now on until the kingdom of God comes.”
Now we see Christ with the cup here, and then after the bread we see the
cup again. Actually, traditionally
there were four cups that were offered in the meal. But once again, the future fulfillment of this symbolism in
the kingdom of God is what Jesus is emphasizing. Twice Jesus emphasizes the future fulfillment of the
glorification of the church at the marriage supper of the Lamb. There was a past fulfillment in Egypt
which was symbolized. And we will
look in a moment at the present fulfillment in Christ’s death that was
realized. But twice Christ has
emphasized the future fulfillment that is prophesied. That is important. But
unfortunately, it’s one that I have never really heard emphasized very much as
a part of the meaning of the meal.
Now in vs. 19 we come to the part that is more well known. When
Jesus had taken the bread and given thanks, He said, “This is My body which is
given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” To the Jews, the unleavened bread was emblematic of the
bread of affliction. It was bread
that did not have time to rise because of their haste in leaving Egypt. It was the bread of captivity, of pain
and suffering as slaves. But Jesus
inserts into the ceremony here a startling statement. He says, “this is My body which is given for you, do this in
remembrance of Me.”
Now this statement has been the cause of much
controversy. There are some who
view this statement as a literal declaration that the bread becomes the host of
Christ, the actual body of Christ that is eaten. The Roman Catholics believe that it becomes the actual body
of Christ as the priest blesses it and gives it to the recipient. It’s called transubstantiation. Protestants, born out of the
Reformation, tend to believe that it is symbolic of the body of Christ, but does
not actually contain His body.
Jesus says something similar in regards to the wine. Luke says in vs. 20, “And in the same
way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out
for you is the new covenant in My blood.”
Once again the literalists take this to mean that the wine becomes the
actual blood of Christ.
I don’t want to get bogged down in all the minutia of every
denominational distinction, but I would simply point you back to the historical
precedent as a help to understanding what this means. First of all, the Passover meal was symbolic of an actual
historical event. It was a way
of remembering the passing over of the death angel during the last plague upon
the Egyptians. It was a
celebration of their deliverance.
But in this meal Jesus is changing that historical symbolism
to mean that He is the Passover Lamb that was slain, whose blood was spread
over our house, so to speak, so that we might be free from the fear of death
and the penalty of death that is upon all the Earth. 1 Corinthians 5:7 says,
“Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in
fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” Paul makes it clear that Jesus is
the Passover Lamb, and yet we understand that is a metaphorical statement. The Passover lamb symbolizes Christ.
What I find interesting in this is that there is no mention
of lamb being eaten in the gospel account of the Lord’s Supper. But Paul says that He is the Passover
Lamb, and yet Jesus says that He is the bread. It’s interesting because Paul says clean out the old leaven,
so that you may be unleavened; he’s talking about the unleavened bread in one
breath and then the Passover Lamb in the next. Paul connects the two.
So what is going on here?
Well the answer might be that when Jesus became the Passover
Lamb, there would be no more sacrificial lambs offered up in the new covenant. He was the last One. Something far greater than the blood of
animals was offered on Friday; the blood of Jesus Christ is the final sacrifice
for sins. And so the veil to the
Holy of Holies was torn in two during His crucifixion. And when the temple was destroyed just
35 years later as He had prophesied, there was an end to the temple sacrifices. In the new covenant, there would be no
more lambs offered at an altar. We
don’t eat lamb in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper because there can be no
more sacrificial lambs. We don’t
worship in a temple made with hands.
We don’t have an earthly priesthood to slaughter the lamb on the
altar. Furthermore we have no more
need of it because it was done once for all at Calvary. Now our Savior has become our High
Priest. So Jesus transfers that
symbolism that was once portrayed by the lamb to the bread. He references the bread as His body,
which was given for us. Paul makes
it clear in 1 Cor. 5:7 that leaven is a picture of sin. Jesus was the sinless One, offered up for
the sinner. He was the substitute
for our sins. He was the bread of
life which came down out of heaven.
There is another important facet to what Jesus said on this
occasion which Luke does not record.
Actually it is the Apostle Paul writing later to the church at Corinth
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who adds a point of distinction. And that is found in 1Cor. 11:25-26, “In
the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new
covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’
For as often as you eat this bread
and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.” The point that I want to make is the
twice reference to as often as you do this. Much has been made about the frequency of observing the
Lord’s Supper. Catholics do so at
every mass. Some Protestants do it
every week, some every month, and some only at various times in the year. I would say that the text speaks for
itself. In Exodus the injunction
was to observe the Passover once a year in the Spring. So if you take the text literally, you
might say that “as often as you do this” refers to the observation of the
Passover, which was once a year.
But there are some theologians that say that the tradition of the early
church seems to indicate that they were gathering together to break bread every
Lord’s day. Therefore they say the
tradition of the early church was to observe the Lord’s Supper every
Sunday.
But even if that is the case, Paul definitely rebukes the
church at Corinth for abusing the practice of the Lord’s Supper. He says in 1Cor. 11:20-21, “Therefore
when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, for in your eating
each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry and another is drunk.” So if anything, Paul seems to imply
that familiarity had dulled the importance of the feast and it had just turned
into a substitute meal, rather than symbolic of the substitionary Savior.
So when Jesus offered up the cup, He said, “This cup which
is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.” He had not yet spilled His blood. When
He said “this is My body which is given for you,” He had not yet given His
body. He was obviously speaking
metaphorically. He could not be
saying that His literal blood was in the cup. His body was not being eaten that night. The apostles understood it to be
metaphorical. The bread was
symbolic of His body. The wine was
symbolic of His blood. And so what
was clear to them should be equally clear to us. Jesus was resurrected in His body. He went up into heaven in His body. Symbolically we eat the bread,
remembering the sacrifice that He made for us that we might be freed from the
enslavement and penalty of sin.
Symbolically we drink the wine or juice remembering that His shed blood
purchased our redemption. It
ratified a covenant that God had made 2500 years earlier with Abraham that was
prefigured in the burning oven and flaming torch that passed between the cut
pieces of the sacrificial animals. God made a covenant then with Abraham that from his
seed would come a nation, and from that nation would come a people numbered
like the stars of heaven. It would
no longer be a people united by nationality or by heritage or lineage, but
united by faith. Abraham would be
the father of the faithful. Those
that would be saved by faith in Christ.
So Jesus said the cup signifies a new covenant in My blood. Heb.
9:15 says, “For this reason He is
the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the
redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant,
those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.” It goes on to say that covenants have
to be ratified with blood. This
covenant is an everlasting covenant, the supreme covenant, because it was
ratified not with the blood of animals, but with the precious blood of the Son
of God.
One last point that I want to leave with you. And that is that Jesus said in vs. 19,
“do this in remembrance of Me.”
Actually, Paul says that He said it twice, after the bread and again
after the wine. Jesus isn’t
prescribing a means of grace here.
He is prescribing a way to bring us to remember His ultimate sacrifice
for our sins. He is giving us a meal of communion with Him when we remember His
sacrifice for us. When we join in
the fellowship of His suffering.
Remembering His love for us should prompt us to love Him in return. We love Him because He first loved
us. We offer our lives in gratitude
as servants of Christ because of His great sacrifice for us. This remembering of what Christ
accomplished should be the motivation for our lives, to live our lives for His
glory, in His service.
We come together as a church, as Christ’s body, to eat
together, to fellowship together, to participate in communion together. And in so doing we recognize that spiritually we are connected to one
another because we have all partaken of His body. That is the spiritual significance. That is the symbolism of eating
together, Christ’s body makes us all one body in Christ. This is the New Covenant, that God has
provided a way for all men, of every nation and tribe to become part of His
church, the bride of Christ, and that one day Christ will come again to reclaim
His bride, and we will consummate that relationship at the marriage supper of
the Lamb in the new heaven and new
earth. In the meantime, let us do
this, as often as we do it, in remembrance of Jesus.
That remembrance should inspire in you a desire, as stated
in Romans 12:1, to present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable
unto God, which is your reasonable service. We don’t remember Christ’s supreme sacrifice so that we can
continue in a life of selfishness, a life of self gratification. Paul said if we do that we come to the
Lord’s table unworthily. And as
such we come under judgment, because we have not properly examined ourselves. So as we remember what Christ has done
for us as the Passover Lamb, we should consecrate ourselves to live holy lives
in His service. Paul says in
Romans that is our spiritual service of worship. Listen, salvation wasn’t cheap, therefore worship shouldn’t
be cheap either. It’s not lip
service that God wants, it’s a life of service as a living sacrifice. That is the proper response of those
that properly observe the Lord’s Supper.
Let’s do this in remembrance of Him, by living our lives in service as
gratitude for Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment