The Lord’s Last Supper

The most important thing in all of history is the atonement.  It is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, followed a few days later by his resurrection.  Upon the atonement hangs everything that abides in life and in eternity.  It alone is the basis for the salvation of sinners.  It is the means whereby God remains just, even as he shows his favor to men.  It is the foundation of the church, and it is the message entrusted to the church for the world.

In this text, we read of two covenant ordinances that both point to the atonement.  The Passover pointed forward to it from the beginning of the nation of Israel until Christ’s crucifixion.  And this Passover that Jesus celebrated with his disciples brought that institution to its close.  The Lord’s Supper points back to the atonement from the time Jesus instituted it until he comes again in glory.

It is God’s purpose that his people throughout the ages look to the atonement.  In the case of both Passover and the Lord’s Supper, God commanded that they be practiced regularly and repeatedly by God’s people.  Both were given to assure us that the atonement was given for us, and both were given to allow us to declare our commitment to the Lord and his people.

This morning’s text naturally divides into three sections:  “The Lord’s Passover” (vv. 12-16); “The Lord’s Betrayer” (vv. 17–21); and “The Lord’s Supper” (vv. 22-26). 

The Lord’s Passover (vv. 12–16)

I call this “The Lord’s Passover” because for this group of men celebrating the Passover, the Lord Jesus was in charge.  He made it happen. He was the host.  They dined at his table.

The brief conversation about where to prepare to eat the Passover took place on Thursday, probably in the morning.  On the following day, Jesus would be crucified, and he was well aware of it.  Surely, if anyone could ever claim to be too burdened or too troubled to celebrate the Passover or any other holy ordinance, it was Jesus at this time.  In the course of the evening, John says that Jesus would be troubled by his coming betrayal (John 13:21).  Later, in the garden of Gethsemane, he began to be deeply distressed and troubled (Mark 14:33).  And yet Jesus desired eagerly to eat this Passover with his disciples (Luke 22:15).  If the Lord himself did this, the Lord who had no sin, then do not let any expectation of trouble keep you from the means of grace God has ordained.  Have confidence in God, and do not be overcome by anxiety or by the temptation to wallow in misery.  God gives grace through his means.

Jesus also faced serious obstacles in celebrating the Passover.  Deuteronomy 16:5–6 gives the command, “You must not sacrifice the Passover in any town the Lord your God gives you except in the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name. There you must sacrifice the Passover in the evening, when the sun goes down, on the anniversary of your departure from Egypt.”  That means the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed in the outer court of the temple in Jerusalem, and the lamb had to be eaten in Jerusalem.  Jesus had first gone to Jerusalem for the Passover when he was twelve, as we read in Luke 2, and he had faithfully gone every year since then.

But Jesus and his disciples were not currently in Jerusalem.  The question, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations,” shows that they were outside Jerusalem, probably either in Bethany or on the Mount of Olives.  Ever since Jesus had entered Jerusalem very publicly on the first day of that week, the whole city was stirred. Everyone was talking about him, and it would be very hard for Jesus not to be recognized and for him to enjoy some peace.  But more than that, Mark 14:1 tells us that just two days earlier, on Tuesday of that week, “the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him.” They had even ordered that anyone who saw him should report. So surely some degree of secrecy and privacy were needed.  But Jesus would overcome obstacles.  He was a man.  He operated under his Father, and he was empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The Lord knew what to do.  When he needed a donkey to ride into Jerusalem, he knew where to find one.  Now he needed a room, and he knew where to find just the one that would suit his purpose.  According to William Hendriksen, “It was the rule in Israel that if anyone at this time had space available it must be given free of charge to whatever family or group wished to make sacred use of it.”[1] This was a necessity because of the sheer number of visitors who came.  According to the Lutheran scholar Dr. Jeremias, Jerusalem normally had a population of about 20,000 to 30,000. But during the three festivals that must be celebrated in Jerusalem, another 150,000 people came into the city.  We don’t know whether Jesus had prearranged with the owner of this house to make use of his room.  If he did, certainly the disciples did not know about it.  But one thing we know is that the man who owned the house had become a disciple of Jesus and was willing and eager to allow Jesus and his disciples to use the room.

There was another obstacle Jesus faced which was not known to most, and so Jesus acted with great wisdom in the instructions he gave to his disciples.  The danger he faced in going to Jerusalem was not just from the possibility that he would be observed by his enemies and arrested.  The danger was already there in his small group of disciples.  Judas Iscariot had gone to the chief priests to offer to betray Jesus for money, and now Judas was looking for an opportunity to hand him over.  If Judas knew where Jesus was to celebrate the Passover, he would go straightaway and report to the authorities where they could find and apprehend Jesus.  So Jesus instructed Peter and John in such a way that would lead them exactly to the right place but would not let them or particularly Judas know the location in advance, so that Judas could not report it.

The Lord was the head of this group, and he would act as the father of the family in hosting this Passover.  The Lord’s message to the owner of the house stated that even the guest room should be entirely at his disposal for him to celebrate the feast with his disciples as his guests.  The disciples understood it was their job, as the subordinates and as the guests, to go and make the preparations.  They had to search the room to ensure that all yeast had been removed.  They had to go and buy certain foods, including unleavened bread, bitter herbs, wine, and so on, and they had to prepare the lamb.  They had to make the preparations for the master of the house and his household to eat the Passover.

Jesus desired so eagerly to celebrate this feast undisturbed because, first, he desired to impart last things to his disciples.  It was there in that upper room on that evening that the events of John 13–17 took place, including Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and saying, “A new command that I give you: Love one another,” as well as his discourses in which he said, “I am the true vine” and “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and his high priestly prayer.  These all took place there. That is why it was so important to have that time with his disciples.

But Jesus also desired to celebrate this feast because it pointed to the atonement.  The Lord identified with us sinners when he was baptized by John.  And the Lord identified with us sinners by eating the Passover.  Many centuries earlier, when the Israelites were captive slaves in Egypt, God determined to bring them out.  Pharaoh defied God saying, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?”  God went to war against Pharaoh with a series of plagues, and finally God said he would go throughout Egypt and put to death all the firstborn of every household.

Sinners oppose God, and God must oppose them.  However, it was not only the Egyptians who were sinners.  The Israelites were sinners too.  Before the holy God, they stood condemned.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  There is no one on the face of the earth who can stand before God righteous and safe in his presence.  But God provided a way for them to find mercy.  Every Israelite household was to kill a lamb and put some of the lamb’s blood on the doorframe.  Then, when God passed through and saw the blood on the doorframe, he would pass over that house.  God provided, so that the blood of the lamb would come between the holy God and sinners, so that the sinners inside the home and under the blood of the lamb, would live.  At God’s command, then, the Israelites commemorated this every year by celebrating the Passover.

But, as Hebrews 10:4 says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”  That is why they had to be offered every year ongoingly, repeatedly.  Even in the Old Testament, God had spoken about the inadequacy of the blood of animal sacrifices (see, for example, Micah 6:6).  So the believing Israelites understood that this sacrifice pointed to a greater sacrifice.  The Passover lamb ultimately pointed to Jesus Christ, who would be the acceptable sacrifice to stand between the holy God and condemned sinners, to give eternal life to all who believe.  His death liberates us from bondage to sin and to Satan, so that he provided the ultimate exodus from a greater captor and a greater slave master than Pharaoh and the Egyptians.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

The Lord’s Betrayer (vv. 1–-21)

In the atonement, Jesus was both the priest offering the sacrifice and the sacrifice itself.  He was in control from beginning to end.  Nothing happened to him that he tried to get out of or that he was overcome by.  Nevertheless, his death had to come at the hands of sinful men.  Here he revealed to the Twelve for the first time that the betrayer would be one of them.  That any man should crucify the Lord of glory was a great sin, but that one of his own apostles should betray him was greater and more heinous and more evil still.

When the disciples responded to Jesus’ initial statement by asking among themselves and of the Lord who it might be, they said, “Surely not I, Lord?” At this point, Jesus simply said, “It is one of the Twelve, one who dips bread into the bowl with me.”  It seems that shortly thereafter Jesus did identify Judas as the one, even though the disciples did not fully comprehend all that Jesus was saying.  But at this point, Jesus was not identifying who it was that would betray him.  All twelve disciples were dipping bread into the bowl with him; Judas was not the only one doing this.

What the Lord was doing was emphasizing the evil character of the betrayer’s deed.  He was saying, “My betrayer is sharing this meal with me.”  Remember, Jesus himself was the host.  The Twelve with him were eating his food.  Especially in the Near East, it was considered most reprehensible to accept someone’s hospitality and then to turn against him and do injury to him.  That statement by Jesus highlighting the evil of a betrayal should now have touched the conscience of Judas and caused him to stop moving forward with his evil course.

The sin of betrayal is a serious sin, and, to some degree, all sin involves betrayal.  Sin is not just a violation of the standard of holiness.  God is eternally holy in his being and all his actions.  God is light.  But God is not only light.  God is also love.  God is eternally triune, and he existed as three in one from all eternity, enjoying loving fellowship and loving relationship among the three Persons of the Trinity.  There is fellowship and communion there.  And when God created all things, it was an act of his generous love.

And God continues to provide for his creation. We read about God’s ongoing providential care of creation especially in Psalm 104.  Verses 14–15 say, “He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate—bringing forth food from the earth:  wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart.”  Verse 27 says, “These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time.”  So God is generous, as it were continually setting a table before all of creation.

God’s generosity is not limited to his people.  When Paul preached to the people of Lystra, he said that the living God “has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy” (Acts 14:17).  So everyone who eats, eats what God has given in kindness and benevolence.  Whose water do you drink?  Whose air do you breathe?  Most people eat God’s food, and then turn and deny that he exists.  Some worship false gods.  Some thank themselves.  But whatever their particular course, surely those are evil responses to God’s graciousness.

God also created man in his own image.  Before sin entered the world, there was only one thing God said that was not good in that pre-Fall world:  It was not good for man to be alone.  God created the woman as a helper, a companion, and a wife for the man.  People are designed to be in relationships.  People are designed to walk together, to work together, and to talk together.  This sort of fellowship inevitably involves trust and love and giving toward one another.  It is a very evil thing to exploit that trust against another person.

The first murder in history relied on betrayal.  Genesis 4:8 says, “Now Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let’s go out into the field.’”  Able trusted Cain.  “And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.”  And King David suffered more from betrayal than from his Philistine enemies.  He describes this in Psalm 55.  In verses 12–13 he says, “If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were raising himself against me, I could hide from him. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend.”  And in verse 20 he says, “My companion attacks his friends; he violates his covenant.”

To sit and share a meal together implies a real bond.  The phrase “breaking bread” comes from the Scripture, but has entered the English language and has taken on a place of its own in the English language. It means more than just to eat together.  It means to affirm trust, confidence, and comfort with those you are eating with.  That sort of fellowship makes betrayal all the more serious.  In Psalm 41:9 David said, “Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.”  The Lord Jesus said these words were fulfilled in Judas’ betrayal.

I say all this because we have many bonds of fellowship and relationship among us.  We as a church are marked by love among one another in the household of God.  If we’ve been here for any length of time, we have all enjoyed a meal in someone else’s home.  We have shared life together.  When one suffers, brothers and sisters eagerly come to the aid of the one in need.  We have a pastor and elders who lay down their lives for us.  In addition to the prayer and discipleship they provide, they give practical help when we have needs, they welcome us into their homes, and they listen when we need a friend and confidant.  You see, there is relationship that we give and receive from one another.

From our Lord’s betrayal, there is, first, a warning.  These acts of fellowship come with a basic obligation toward one another.  Do not treat that as nothing.  Americans tend to be very atomistic and individualistic. And if it is not written down in a signed contract, they say, “I owe nothing to anyone.”  But God does not view it that way, and we were not built that way.  Do not spurn and turn against and slander those who welcomed and hosted you.  More explicitly, when we eat the Lord’s Supper with the Lord himself as the host, we are declaring that we are one with God and with one another.  To then turn against God or one another is a serious sin in God’s sight, and the judgment that came on Judas is a warning to each one of us.

But from our Lord’s betrayal, there is, second, a sort of encouragement.  Do not stop practicing love and hospitality toward others.  Jesus knew who would betray him, but in this he was almost unique. David did not know in advance.  The other disciples never suspected Judas’ betrayal.  But David did not go into hiding and separate himself away from other people. (GMW)  After Judas left, Jesus spoke more intimately with his disciples than before.  As for the Eleven, see them in Acts 2 and Acts 4.  They are not isolated, suspicious, and fearful.  They are enjoying the fullest, closest, most joyful fellowship the world has ever seen.  Throughout biblical history, and in our own history, from time to time there have been people who have proved unfaithful.  But we do not go into hiding.  God will deal with the betrayers, but the Holy Spirit does not stop.  He continues to produce fellowship among us, and we are to make every effort to maintain the unity that the Holy Spirit has produced.

When Jesus did not immediately identify which one of the Twelve would betray him, he was not only addressing Judas’ conscience, but he was also giving the other eleven a chance to examine themselves.  Judas’ response, of course, was one of rank hypocrisy.  But I’m focusing on the other  eleven.  It would have been proper at this point for Peter and John and James and Andrew to ask themselves, “Have I been allowing a root of bitterness to grow within me?  Have I taken my obligation as the Lord’s disciple and now as his guest so lightly that I will turn against him at the next opportunity?”  God wants us to examine ourselves too.  First Corinthians 11:28 says, “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup” so that he does not come under judgment.

It has often been supposed that the Eleven did just that.  One commentator described them as having a wholesome self-distrust.  But did the disciples really think in that way?  Consider that at various times they had quarreled among themselves about which one of them was the greatest.  Had they left that so far behind that each one could now seriously consider, “I may commit a serious sin that the others would not”?  Shortly after this point, when Jesus told the Eleven with no uncertainty, “You will all fall away,” we do not see wholesome self-distrust there.  Beginning with Peter, they all asserted adamantly that they would never fall away.  In this passage, when Jesus says, “One of you will betray me,” they said, “Surely not I!”  The way they phrased that assumes the negative. It assumes each was saying, “It surely is not me!”  This is not the model for self-examination or self-distrust.

Real self-examination requires that we allow for the possibility of great evil in ourselves.  Real self-examination does not dismiss out of hand the possibility, “You are the man,” as Nathan said to David.  Take seriously the calls we have to examine ourselves.  Sometimes before communion we are told to examine ourselves, and we are given a pause and a moment of silence to do so.  Do not assume that you have no problem. Do not mentally brush it off with the assumption that all is well, unless you have taken the time to examine yourself already.  Sometimes a particular sin is preached about.  Do not assume that surely you could not be guilty of that sin and so mentally excuse yourself from any serious look at yourself related to it.

The heart of every fallen human being is capable of all sorts of evil.  There is no sort of evil that you and I are not capable of.  Proverbs 28:13 gives the reason for self-examination:  “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”  Self-examination gives you an opportunity to find mercy, as you identify sins.  If you never seriously look, you never identify them, and no mercy will come. Self-examination gives you an opportunity to seek grace as you identify carelessness and self-confidence, and to return to the Lord who is our Rock.

I must also say that self-examination does not being false in the other direction.  It does not mean that you feel guilty about something you did not do or something that is not actually true of you.  Truth before God is what we seek, that we may find real mercy from God.

The Lord’s Supper (vv. 22-26)

In this section we read about how the Lord ended the old covenant with its Passover celebration and established the new covenant, instituting the Lord’s Supper.  The name “The Lord’s Supper” comes from 1 Corinthians 11:20, and it highlights the fact that the Lord is the host.  It is his table and his supper, and he gives to us what produces life in us and what nourishes our life.

This new sacrament is also known as Holy Communion, meaning a time when we commune with the triune God and his church.  It has also been called the Eucharist, which comes from the Greek word for giving thanks and is found in Matthew 26:27.  First Corinthians 11 records Christ’s words about his body and his blood, but it also includes his command to “do this in remembrance of me.” That makes it, therefore, an ongoing practice for the church, for believers, until Christ returns.

Jesus took the bread and said, “This is my body.”  From this statement, the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox churches developed the doctrine of transubstantiation.  Transubstantiation says that when the bread and the wine are consecrated, they become the literal physical flesh and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Is that doctrine simply being faithful to the words that Jesus spoke?  That, after all, is the most important question.  “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” is a good motto to live by.

But is transubstantiation what God said?  Throughout his ministry, Jesus frequently used figurative language, and frequently those who heard it misunderstood him in an overly literal way. I am going to look at several such examples:

• In John 2:19, Jesus told a group of Jews, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” Jesus was speaking about his body as the temple, but the Jews misunderstood him, and they thought he was speaking about the building made of stone. They objected that what he was saying was ridiculous because it had taken forty-six years to build the temple.
• In John 3, Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” Nicodemus thought he was talking about physical birth.  He said, “Surely an old man cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born.”  But, of course, Jesus was speaking of regeneration.
• In John 4, Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “Whoever drinks the [living] water I give him will never thirst.” The woman did not understand that Jesus was speaking about eternal life, and so she asked for some miraculous physical water instead.
• A little later, also in John 4, the disciples returned and urged Jesus to eat. He said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”  Again, the disciples thought he was speaking about physical food, but he said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”
• In John 6, after feeding the five thousand, Jesus spoke of himself as the bread of God to people who were thinking in terms of physical bread. They had just experienced this miracle of the multiplication of bread.  When Jesus had made completely explicit that he was speaking of himself, he said in verse 53, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you.”  So the Jews were arguing among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  But, of course, Jesus was not speaking about cannibalism in any form.  I must point out here, since this passage has been used to support transubstantiation, that this passage is not connected to the Passover or to the Lord’s Supper.  This is what Jesus is saying that he wants people to learn and understand from the miraculous feeding of the five thousand.

So as these examples show, Jesus often spoke in figurative language, and the people who heard him often misunderstood him initially.  It is therefore no surprise that in this case Jesus would speak in figurative language.  And it is no surprise that people would initially misunderstand him.  What is surprising is that after two thousand years, people would persist in misunderstanding him.  It would be as if even today there would people saying, “We must enter our mothers’ wombs a second time to be born.”  And we would say, “No such thing ever occurs.”  How do they get around that in the case of transubstantiation?  Well, they bring in Greek philosophy, and they say that it is the body and blood of the Lord in its essence, but its properties are the properties of bread and wine.  It looks and tastes and smells like that.  Those are just “accidents,” according to the Greek philosophy, or you could use the word “incidentals.”  And so that sort of response would be as if to say, “Yes, you must enter your mother’s womb a second time to be born.”  And even though there is no observable evidence that such a thing occurs, it really does.

So when Jesus said, “This is my body,” he did not mean that the bread miraculously turns into flesh, but he was also not speaking about mere bread.  When Jesus spoke to the woman at the well about “living water,” her mistake was not that she was expecting some miraculous physical water, but that Jesus was just speaking about ordinary physical water.  Jesus was using this figurative language to speak about great truths about his body and soul united—torn apart in death and reunited in his resurrection, about regeneration, about eternal life, about all these great truths of the kingdom of God.  So when he said, “This is my body,” he was likewise speaking about great truths.

Hebrews 10:5 quotes Psalm 40 saying, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. . . . I have come to do your will, O God.”  We sinned, and the wages of sin is death.  God wills that sinners he has set his love upon should be freed from the penalty of death and from the power of sin and the bondage to it, and be brought into fellowship with himself.  But in order for him to forgive sins, our death and our hell had to be poured out on someone else.

That was the purpose of Jesus’ body.  God’s will was that he be pierced for our transgressions.  He must be flogged and beaten.  He must be crucified.  He must shed his blood and pour out his life.  And from his death on the cross flow all the benefits of salvation for us.  As Hebrews 10:10 says, “And by that will”—God’s will that he die for us—“we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”  The work is finished.  Jesus is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).  Or, as 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

When Jesus said, “This is my body,” he is presenting us with physical bread, yes, but as a token of the saving grace that flows to us from his death for us.  Our eating the physical bread depicts our ongoing faith in Christ crucified and our union with him.  The Holy Spirit causes Christ’s people by faith to experience communion and fellowship with Christ who died, rose again, and is now seated on the right hand of God the Father. As a result of this real spiritual communion, which is made possible by the ministry of the Spirit, God nourishes us spiritually.

In the same way, Jesus took the cup.  And after he had given thanks and he gave it to them to drink of, he said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”  The Passover, the old institution that pointed forward to the atonement, was a bloody feast.  A lamb’s blood must be shed.  But the Lord’s Supper is not bloody because the blood, Christ’s precious blood, has been shed, and what we have instead represents, stands for that blood.

Jesus’ words “the blood of the covenant” point back to the inauguration of the covenant under Moses.  Exodus 24:6–8 says, “Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people.” He told the people that they should obey God and keep the terms of the covenant. What did the people say?  “They responded, ‘We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.’  Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.’”  So the blood of the covenant consecrated and cleansed the people to the service of God.  Moses did this on the basis of the people’s response that they would obey the covenant.

That was under the old covenant.  The new covenant is described in Jeremiah 31:31–34.  It is a covenant in which God changes our hearts in regeneration and causes us to hold him as our God, and he takes us as his people.  God made this new covenant such that his own Son would accomplish redemption and then give it to us freely.  The blood that Moses sprinkled was the blood of animals.  But the blood of the new covenant is the precious blood of Christ.  Jesus gave the cup to his disciples and welcomed them to drink.  “Drink, all of you!  Eat and drink salvation, full and free.”  That is what Christ is saying.  Look now, and again and again until the end of the age, to Christ, crucified and risen, in whom is all the righteousness and the power of God poured out for us, and see the salvation and enjoy the salvation that he brings.

This sacrament is called the Lord’s Supper, because the Lord is the host.  Aren’t we glad that he has invited us and made us to be his guests?  We are the invited guests of the Lord of the universe, of Jesus Christ, whose death brought about total forgiveness of sins.  We can come and have fellowship with him.

Now, the meal that Christ and his disciples shared together was, no doubt, a sober one, especially because of the betrayer and because Jesus would die in a very short time.  So we do approach God soberly, but not sorrowfully.  Jesus gives us through his death every spiritual blessing.  That includes eternal life and joy.  In Psalm 51, David asked God to blot out all of his transgressions and cleanse him, that the bones which God had crushed would rejoice and be glad.  Christ died to remove our misery.  Through Christ we can say, “He has made me glad.”

May we all receive the full blessing God intends whenever we partake of the Lord’s Supper.

[1] William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Mark, New Testament Commentary series (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990 printing), 567.