Sermon on the Lord’s Supper

Introduction

At the very heart of the life and the worship of the early Christian communion was the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and in the early days of church history—and then, of course, later, throughout church history, the celebration of Holy Communion was known by different names. On the one hand, the early church used to come together and celebrate what they called an “agape feast,” or a love feast, in which they celebrated the love of God and the love that they enjoyed with one another in this holy supper. Also, of course, the sacrament was called, as it is today, the Lord’s Supper because it made reference to the last supper that Jesus had with His disciples in the Upper Room on the night before His death. And we’ll look at the significance of that along the way as we examine the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, and as I’ve already indicated, it was also called, and is to this day called, the sacrament of Holy Communion. And that has, again, specific reference to the reality that takes place during this sacrament of our mystical union with Christ and with all who are united to Christ. Also, in the early church and later, the Lord’s Supper was called the Eucharist, taking its definition from the Greek verb “eucharistein,” which is the Greek verb that means “to thank.” And so, one of the aspects of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, historically, has been the gathering of the people of God to express their gratitude for what Christ accomplished in their behalf in His death.

Body Paragraphs

Historical Context and Connection to Passover

Now just as is the case with baptism, which becomes the covenant sign of the New Testament and that baptism is related and linked by way of some continuity to the Old Testament sign of the covenant, which was circumcision, so even though Christ instituted the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at the very end of His life, that was not the absolute beginning of this event because the Lord’s Supper is a drama that has its roots not only in that Upper Room experience that Jesus shared with His disciples, but the roots that reach backwards into the Old Testament in the link with the Old Testament’s act of the celebration of Passover. In fact, you will recall that when Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper in the Upper Room, He had given requirements to His disciples that they would secure a room for the purpose of their meeting together on this occasion because Jesus was entering into His passion. He knew that His trial and death were imminent, and so He said to His disciple, “I deeply desire to celebrate the Passover with you one last time.” So the immediate context in which Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper was in the celebration of the Passover feast with His disciples. And that link to Passover is seen not only by His words there to the disciples but also when the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and he was instructing the early Christian community there about various things. He makes reference to the statement that “Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.” So there, the apostolic community clearly saw a link between the death of Christ and the Old Testament Passover celebration.

Old Testament Background of Passover

And so for us to get a brief handle on that, let’s take a few moments to look back into time into the pages of the Old Testament to the historical context of the institution of the Passover. I think where we begin really is with the enslavement of the people of Israel in Egypt under the domination of a ruthless and insensitive pharaoh, who increased the burdens of the slavery that he imposed upon these Jewish people, who served Egypt and the Pharaoh, basically as a free labor force. And these men were making the bricks that would be used to erect the storehouses that would store up grain and provisions against the threat of famine and so on, and in order to increase productivity and efficiency, we remember that Pharaoh would increase the quotas required from his slaves and decrease the supplies that they would use in order to accomplish their quotas. In a word, he wouldn’t give them straw for their bricks. And we recall that the people suffered greatly, and in their suffering, they moaned, and they groaned, but their groanings were heard in heaven; and we understand that it was at that time and on that occasion that God appeared in the Midianite wilderness to the aged Moses who was living in exile as a fugitive from the forces of Pharaoh, and that when God appeared to Moses and spoke to him out of the bush that was burning but was not consumed, He called to him saying, “Moses, Moses, take off they shoes from off thy feet for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground.” And in that encounter, God directed Moses to go two places: to Pharaoh and to the Jewish people to deliver the word of God to them.

Moses’ Mission and the Plagues

And we recall that Moses felt inadequate to the task and wondered how he was going to be able to communicate with any authority the word of God, either to Pharaoh or to the people of Israel. “Why would they follow me? Why should they believe me?” And God said, “Look, you go. You tell them I’ve heard the cry of my people, and you tell Pharaoh that I say, ‘Let My people go that they can come and worship me on the mountain where I will show them,’ and you tell the people to pack up and to leave Pharaoh and Egypt.” And God empowered Moses with the ability to perform miracles in order to authenticate the origin of this message. And so we know that Moses responded to the command of God and went first to Pharaoh and to the people of Israel and told Pharaoh to let the people go. And we know that what went on from there was a contest of will and a contest of power between the power that God had endowed Moses with and the magicians of Pharaoh’s court; and in a very short time, the tricks of the magicians were exhausted and the power of Moses was made manifest, particularly in the plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians through the mediating power of Moses, and in all there were ten plagues, but it’s the first nine that we see this escalation of drama and conflict between Moses and Pharaoh, where once a plague would befall the Egyptians, the Pharaoh would relent and say, “Okay, get out of here; take your people and go.” But no sooner would he do that then God would step in and harden Pharaoh’s heart, the purpose of which was to make it very clear to the people of Israel that their redemption was from the hands of God and not from the grace of Pharaoh. And so another contest would ensue and another plague would befall the Egyptians, with the gnats and the frogs and the turning to blood of the Nile river and so on, until finally, after the ninth plague, which was the plague of darkness, by that time Pharaoh had had just about all he wanted to deal with from Moses, and he said—Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get away from me. Take heed to yourself and see my face no more, for in the day you see my face, you shall die.” In other words, Pharaoh said, “Get out of here Moses. If I have to look at you one more time, you’re a dead man.” And Moses responded by saying, “You have spoken well, for I will never see your face again.”

The Tenth Plague and Institution of Passover

Now it was at this point in the drama where God announced to Moses the tenth plague that He was about to bring upon the Egyptians and on the house of Pharaoh. And this plague was the worst of all of the plagues because it involved the taking of human life; it involved the destruction of the firstborn sons of all of the Egyptians, including the firstborn son of Pharaoh, actually the one who would have been the heir to the throne. And so God tells Moses, “‘I will bring this one last plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. And afterwards he will let you go from here. And when he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether. And speak now in the hearing of the people, let every man ask from his neighbor and every woman from her neighbor, articles of silver and articles of gold.’ And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. And the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people. And then Moses said, ‘Thus says the Lord, “About midnight I will go into the midst of Egypt; and all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the handmill, and all of the firstborn of the animals. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as was never like it before, nor shall be like it again. But against none of the children of Israel shall a dog move its tongue, against man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me saying, “Get out, and all the people who follow you!” And after that, I will go out.’ And then he went out from Pharaoh in great anger. The Lord said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh will not listen to you so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.’” And then in the beginning of the 12th chapter of Exodus, God brings Moses to Himself and institutes the celebration of the Passover.

Details of the Passover Ritual

“So the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying, ‘This month shall be the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak now to all the congregation of Israel, saying, “On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of persons; according to each man’s need you will make your count for the lamb.” And listen to this instruction: “The lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. They shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire; with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat it raw, or boiled at all with water, but roast it in the fire with its head and its legs and its entrails. And you shall let none of it remain until morning; and whatever does remain, you burn with fire. And thus you shall eat it with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt will I execute judgment, for I am the Lord. And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are.”

Theological Significance of the Passover

Now this is critical because we understand that the sacraments of the New Testament are understood in the life of the church both as signs and as seals of something extremely important. That’s what a sacrament does, is that it gives a dramatic sign or indicator pointing beyond itself to some truth of redemption that is crucial to the life of the people of God, and so when God instituted the Passover in the Old Testament, He said, “You take this animal, the lamb that is without blemish, and you kill it. You take its blood, and you mark the entrance to your houses. You put the blood on the lintel of the door, on the doorpost, as a sign that marks you as the people of God, so that when the angel of death comes to smite the firstborn of the land, as it comes to execute my judgment on the Egyptians, that the destruction of that judgment will befall only the Egyptians. I’m going to make a difference between the people that I have called out of the world to be my covenant people, to be my holy people and those who have enslaved them; and so my wrath will fall on Egypt but not on my people. And so the angel will pass over every home that is marked by the blood of the lamb.” And so the sign character of this ritual was really a sign of deliverance; it was a sign of redemption because what it meant was these people will escape the wrath of God.

Salvation and the Wrath of God

A few years ago I gave a lecture to a large assembly of Christian leaders, and I risked insulting their intelligence by speaking on something so basic as the question, “What is salvation?” And in the course of that lecture I asked this question—we always talk about being saved. People will come up to you on the street and say, “Are you saved?” And I’m always tempted when somebody asks me that to respond by saying, “Saved from what?” Because that is the question, and if we look at the word “to save” in Scripture, we see that it’s used in many different ways. It means to be spared from defeat in battle; it means to survive a life-threatening illness, for example, so that any rescue from any calamity is described in biblical terms as salvation. And yet there is an ultimate meaning of salvation in Scripture, and that ultimate meaning is this: to be saved in the ultimate sense is to be spared from the ultimate calamity, and the ultimate calamity is exposure to the wrath of God. So what Christ saves His people from is the wrath of the Father; and so we say, what are you saved from? You’re saved from God. Not only are we saved by God, but we are saved from God, and that idea is dramatically displayed here in the Old Testament Passover. The sign on the doorpost, the sign marked by the blood of the lamb means that these people will be rescued from the calamitous exposure to the wrath of God.

The Passover Event and Its Legacy

And so that night, the angel of death came and killed the firstborn of the Egyptians, but the people of God were spared, and after that, Moses led them out of bondage, through the Red Sea, into the Promised Land, where they became God’s people under the covenant of Moses, receiving the law at Mount Sinai. They did go out and worship God at His sacred mountain, but as a perpetual remembrance of this redemption, every year, the people of Israel obeyed the institution of the Passover that I read just a few moments ago, where they gathered in their homes, and they ate the food, the bitter herbs, drank the wine, all of which they did to remember their salvation that God had wrought for them in the land of Egypt, and they participated in this celebration standing with their staff in their hands, with the girding of their belts and so on, as people who were ready to move, ready to march at any second because they were to be ready to move out of Egypt, out of bondage into the Promise Land as soon as Pharaoh and his forces were destroyed.

Conclusion

And so we see when we come to the New Testament that when Jesus is celebrating the Passover with His people, in the middle of the celebration, He departs from the standard liturgy, and He adds a whole new meaning to this Passover celebration when He takes the bread—the unleavened bread—and He attaches a new significance to it, when He said, “Now this is my body which is broken for you.” And then after the supper has been completed, He takes the wine and He said, “Now I’m attaching a new significance to this element as you celebrate the Passover because now this wine is my blood—not the blood of the lamb in the Old Testament whose blood was marked on the doorpost, but it’s now my blood.” You see, because Jesus is saying, “I am the Passover; I am the Pascal Lamb; I am the one who will be sacrificed for you. And it is by my blood that you will be marked and you will escape the wrath of God.” And so He said, “Now, from now on, this is my blood, which is shed for you for the remission of your sins. This is the blood of a new covenant.” The new covenant that He institutes that very night, not a new covenant that is cut off of any significance from what went before, but rather the new covenant fulfills the old covenant, just as the Lord’s Supper contains continuity with the Passover and fulfills it, giving it its fullest and most meaningful expression.