Scripture Reading

Matthew 26:26-30

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, 'Take and eat, this is my body.' And he took the cup, when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, 'Drink of it all of you for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.' And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. This is the word of the Lord.

Big Question

What is the Lord's Supper?

Tonight we're going to be looking at the Lord's Supper. The question that we have for tonight is, what is the Lord's Supper? I think oftentimes when we hear a message or we talk about the Lord's Supper, we as Protestants have done such a good job talking about what it isn't — that we talk about that we're not Catholic, we don't believe that the elements literally become the literal body and blood of Christ. We've done such a good job of saying that that's not what it is. But I think that there is a more pervasive belief that has infiltrated into the church, and it's this really common belief in America — this idea of remembrance.

And before you jump out of your seat and say, well, that's in the Bible — it is in the Bible, absolutely. Jesus says that we need to take communion, that we need to approach the table and to do it in remembrance of him. But oftentimes that's where it ends. That's all that happens, that it's kind of this weird ceremonial ritual act that we do and there's nothing more behind it. But as people who are Reformed or even Presbyterians, we talk about the Lord's Supper as having a spiritual presence, that the Lord is spiritually present in the elements. So what does it mean for the Lord to be spiritually present? Really, what is the Lord's Supper? Well, this passage is going to help us see that.

What happens in this passage is that Jesus inaugurates a new covenant by giving his body and shedding his blood for many, for the forgiveness of sins. To give context of what's happening — this has been Holy Week. Jesus has ridden into Jerusalem as the Messiah, as the new king. Everyone's expecting him to be this new king. And while he's in Jerusalem this week, there's a lot of things that happen. He gives a lot of parables. He overturns tables in the temple. He's teaching a lot. And finally, he meets with his disciples in the upper room, where he washes their feet and promises that the Holy Spirit is going to come. Then we get to this part in the supper.

The Table Jesus Sat At: Passover

In order to understand what Jesus is giving us at this table, we have to understand the table that he is sitting at. When he is talking about this, there is something incredibly important going on. They are celebrating Passover. Passover was the celebration in the Jewish calendar. It was the thing to do. If you were a Jewish person and you had means to make it to Jerusalem, you absolutely would make the pilgrimage every year. This was the highest point of their calendar. This was like Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving all put together.

Passover was a meal, a festival that celebrated when God rescued Israel out of the hands of Pharaoh, out of the hands of Egypt, and delivered them into the wilderness and eventually into the Promised Land. Up until this point, that moment in redemptive history was the pinnacle. This was the highlight. When they thought about what was the most important thing that God had ever done in history, if you were to ask a Jewish person, they would have said, 'It was the Exodus. It was the Passover. It was when God saved us from the judgment and delivered us into the Promised Land.'

This meal had some elements to it. There would have been bread, there would have been wine, and there would have been lamb to remember the Passover lamb. There would have been a person too who presided over the ceremony. The presider would have led this meal almost like a service, would have led them through this Passover experience. And when he got to the bread, every Jewish child would have remembered this line repeated over and over, year after year. The presider would have got to the bread and would have said, 'This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in the wilderness' — talking about the manna that God sustained them with.

The Bread: Jesus is the Better Passover

Jesus is the presider of this meal. He's leading his disciples through this meal, and he says this. He takes the bread, he breaks it, and says, 'Take and eat, this is my body.' Essentially, what Jesus is saying in this moment is not, 'This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in the wilderness.' He's saying, 'This is the bread of my affliction.' The room would have gone silent. They would have heard this like a theological bomb going off, seeing the correlation of what had been happening leading up into this moment. Every person knew this phrase. Every person was expecting it, and Jesus applies it to himself.

Jesus is saying, I am the better Passover. He's saying, in fact, you need something more than Passover. God absolutely delivered you from the hands of your captors, out of your slavery, but you need something more. You need me. Passover, again, was a huge deal. The historical moment of Passover was so big. God had saved them from the angel of death. Breaking the bread meant that we're remembering that God had saved us from death, from the angel of death. But now Jesus is saying, you're going to break bread in a different way. You are going to break bread to remember that I have saved you from death itself.

What makes the Passover meal that Jesus is celebrating different than any other Passover meal? It's because Jesus is the bread. John 6 says this: 'It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.' He goes on to say, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.'

How does the bread of life give life? He becomes the bread because the bread can be broken. We hear that Jesus is the bread of life and we think, oh, that is so great — he nourishes us, he sustains us, he gives us life. But in order to give life, Jesus had to become weak. Bread is breakable. Bread is vulnerable. Jesus had to become that. He had to become breakable in order to give us life. In order to be the thing that sustained us, he had to be able to be broken. The bread of life would die so that we could have eternal life. The one who holds all things together, every atom of the universe, the one who holds all things together would be torn apart.

The Cup: My Blood of the Covenant

We see the bread, we see the bread tells us who he is, but then Jesus moves to the cup and he tells us what it cost. Matthew 26:27-28 says this: 'And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."' I want you to notice the word 'my' in there. When the disciples heard this, this would have been unbelievable.

What Jesus is doing is in some sense copying Moses. When Moses handed out the covenant with Israel, sprinkling blood on Israel, he said this in Exodus 24:8: 'Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you.' And Jesus is sitting here in the upper room and he's saying, 'This is my blood of the covenant.' 'My' seems like a little word — why are we focusing on this? But it makes all the difference. Moses was the intercessor. He was the middleman between God and people. In order to talk to God, you had to go through Moses. In order to be atoned for your sin, there had to be somebody standing in the way. And Jesus sits with his disciples and he says, I am the bread, I am the blood. This cup is my blood.

Being sprinkled by blood was a marker of the people. It was an external marker. The new covenant says that Jesus will be the marker. He will be the intercessor. It is personal. But he will not sprinkle you with blood; he invites you to drink. Think about what that means. Being sprinkled with blood says that you belong to this covenant. Drinking it says that the covenant is inside you. Moses marked the people from the outside; Jesus wants you from the inside out. This is the shape of his whole ministry. Jesus goes after more than just the external actions of people. He's going after your heart.

Think about the Sermon on the Mount. Essentially, Jesus is going over the law again with people. They thought that if they just did enough good, if they could just perform, do the right outward actions, that God would be happy. And Jesus gets up and says, 'No, God wants your heart. It's not good enough just not to commit murder, you can't hate. It's about your heart.' Jesus is saying, I want all of you. This isn't just a legal transaction. This is an eternal relationship that Jesus is instituting here. God isn't just declaring you clean by sprinkling blood. He is making you his and cleansing you from the inside out.

Jesus, in doing this, becomes the new covenant representative and more than that, he becomes the sacrifice himself. When a covenant was made, in order to seal it, two people would walk through an animal that was cut in two. The symbolism of that is to say that a covenant is a promise against your own life. You would walk through this animal torn in two with someone else, and you'd say, 'If I break this covenant, let me be like these animals that we have cut.' This is what happens with God when he makes a covenant with Abraham. Except normally both parties would walk through. In this instance, it is only God. Abraham is put to sleep and he wakes up and he sees God walking in between the animals.

And it leads us right into the upper room. What God is saying to Abraham and what Jesus is saying to the disciples is that I will take the full weight of this. When this covenant is broken, it will not fall back on man. It will fall back on me. I will be the one who's torn apart in order to make it right. That's what Jesus is doing at this table. He's saying, 'I am going to become the torn one. I am going to become the one who is pierced. I am the promise that God made humanity so the burden would not have to fall on you.' In this covenant, Jesus will make right what man could not do himself.

The beautiful part about this is that not only is he looking right at the disciples as he says this, he's looking at you when he says this. This promise goes to you today. We do not have to fall. We don't have to be the person that all of these consequences fall on. Jesus is going to be torn to pieces in just a couple hours from when he says this, in order to spare us. Jesus will go and pay for your sins on the cross. This is why he says, 'This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.' This is not distant. This is not out there. This is not just a promise anymore. Jesus is saying, 'I am going now to the cross and I will take all of your sin with me.' He is giving himself for you.

That word 'for' in Matthew 26:28, when it says, 'which is poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins,' what he's saying is, 'I'm going to the cross for you,' or 'I'm going to the cross instead of you.' His body is going to be broken in your place. His blood will atone for your sins in your place, instead of you. Every covenant before this depended on humanity. Every failure, every sin, every moment where we knew what was right and did the opposite — that's the weight that we carry into this room. And yet Jesus looks at all of it, and instead of turning away from the cross, he turns towards it. He says, I will carry this to the cross.

Main Idea

Receive the King who gives himself for sinners

For centuries, the church has wrestled with this question of what actually happens when we come to the table. The Catholic Church says that the bread actually becomes his body, the cup actually becomes his blood, and that you're literally touching Jesus. The Protestant response since the Reformation has been, no, that's not right. Jesus is standing there in the room with the disciples — it can't be his blood, it can't be his body yet, he hasn't been pierced. It can't be literally. But if it's not literal, then is it just symbolic? Is it just a memorial? Is communion essentially just a spiritual Fourth of July, where we remember what sacrifice someone did for us so that we can have freedom from sin? Is that simply all it is? A weird ritual that allows us to remember? No.

Something real is happening here. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we aren't eating Jesus with our mouth literally, but we are with our soul. When we take communion, it doesn't become the physical body and blood of Jesus, but it becomes that for our soul. This is why Jesus says in John 6:51: 'I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.' Any non-believer could take these elements and yet it is only the true believer who gets the benefits. It's only the Christian who can receive Christ because Jesus is spiritually present in communion at the table.

Robert Bruce has this brilliant quote: 'Why then are the sacraments appointed? Not that you may get anything new but that you may get something better, better than you had it in the word. We get Christ better.' We talk about communion as a visible sermon, as a tangible gospel. It isn't something new. It's not a different version. It's the same gospel, and yet we get to taste and see it. It is more intimate. It is closer. It is better than we had it just in the word. And if this is true, which it is, then this table cannot be what most of us treat it as.

This isn't a ritual we sit through while we think about dinner. This isn't a box that we check in order to perform as a Christian. You are receiving the living Christ in your soul. Every time we come to communion.

Application

Examine yourself

God says that we need to examine ourselves and make sure that we're not taking communion in an unworthy manner. This means that there are some qualifications in order to take Communion. You should not take communion if you aren't a Christian, if you haven't accepted Christ. If that's true of you today, I'd love to have a conversation with you in order for you to take your first communion tonight.

You also shouldn't take communion if you're living in active rebellion against God. If you're living your life unrepentant, this is a time to seek repentance first. Another requirement is that if you have unresolved sin, an unresolved grudge, if there's disunity between you and another believer, God's Word says that we should go to them before we take communion. That is more important — the unity of the body — than it is that we participate in this tonight. The last thing is that if we are living in hypocrisy or a life contrary to the gospel that we believe.

Why would I say all of this? I think sometimes pastors like me get the wrong connotations, that there's all these rules set up around the table. It absolutely is not that. I find no pleasure in saying these things. The reality is that I care about your soul. These things are what God tells us when we come to the table. I love you enough to tell you — I don't want you to walk into something that God says you shouldn't be walking into. Doing these wrong things are actually bad for your soul. The Lord's table is too important to simply go through the motions.

I also want you to hear this because oftentimes this is the outcome that comes from saying something like this. There are going to be some of you who hear that and go, 'Well, man, I messed up this week once and therefore I shouldn't come to the table.' And then there are others of you who are actively living in rebellion and go, 'Well, he's not talking about me.' This is a moment to stop and pause and ask the Holy Spirit to convict you of sin and to help you discern whether or not this is the moment for you to take this. The point of this is not for you to feel more condemnation. The point is that it would draw you back into repentance and into a relationship with Jesus.

Do this

Jesus doesn't just warn about the table. He commands us to do it. That's what Jesus says. It's our application because it's the whole point of Maundy Thursday. It is a mandate. It is our duty to do this. Jesus doesn't just say, 'Do this in remembrance of me.' He says this: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.' This is not just a Christian add-on. This is not an optional thing for a mature believer to do. Communion is where you regularly receive life that only God can give you. So we cannot passively take this, we cannot casually skip this.

Communion is so important that it is worth rearranging our schedule for. It's worth missing our grandchildren's or children's sporting events on a Sunday. It's worth rearranging your schedule around. It's more important than visiting family. It's more important than making a day trip to wherever. Communion is not an add-on. It is an invitation. Jesus has set the table before you. He has given his body and blood so that we could have a seat at this table. So don't miss it.

As we come to a close — the night of the first Passover, God said either a lamb will die or the firstborn son. Israel killed the lamb and painted that blood of the spotless lamb over its doorposts, and death passed over them. That's what happened. That's what is happening at this table. Jesus is the lamb, and Jesus is the firstborn son. He is the blood on the doorpost and death passes over everyone who is covered by it. And he is the firstborn son who takes the judgment.

But here is what is remarkable about this night. Jesus knows that this is coming. He knows that Judas is about to betray him. He knows that Peter is about to deny him. He knows that the cross is only a couple hours away. And yet, he looks past it all. He says this: 'I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom.' On the worst night of Jesus' life, he is already thinking about the feast that will be on the other side of this. He is sitting at the table about to go through the most anguish that any human being will ever go through or has ever gone through. And he says, another table is coming. Not a table of bread and cup, but a table where you will see me in all of my glory face to face. No more symbols, just him. A lamb who died will be the host.

Every time we take communion, we are living between these two tables. We are living between the table of that Passover night, the table behind us where Jesus gave himself, and the table ahead of us where Jesus welcomes us home. This meal is how we remember where we came from and where we are going. Receive the King who gives himself for sinners. So come to the table knowing what it costs. Come to the table knowing that this will not be the last one.

Closing Prayer

Father, we praise you that we do not have to be the ones who were slaughtered for our sins, that we didn't have to be the ones who paid the price for our foolishness, for our lack of wisdom, and for our rebellion against you, but that you sent your Son to take our place. God, I pray that we would not look at this communion, at this table, the same. God, you loved us and took our place. God, help us to worship you, to see the gospel, to hear it now, and to taste and see that you are good. It's in your name we pray. Amen.