The Meaning of the Lord's Supper

As a sacred action, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is an important one for us. And so it is important and necessary and good for us to understand what is happening when we celebrate it. In order to do so, we're going to look at the words of Jesus himself as he instituted this action, this sacred action of the sacrament in Luke chapter 22. And we begin from verse seven. Luke 22, verse seven.

Then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John saying, go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it. They said to him, where will you have us prepare it? He said to them, behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters, and tell the master of the house, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

And he will show you a large upper room furnished. Prepare it there. And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, take this and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. 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.

But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. For the son of man goes as it has been determined, but woe to the man by whom he is betrayed. And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this. So far, our reading, this is the word of the Lord. In this passage, we see the term Passover being used five times by Luke.

Verse seven, verse eight, verse eleven, verse thirteen, and verse fifteen. The Passover, as some of you may know, is a Jewish festival. It's a tradition that is still celebrated today. The first Passover meal was eaten before the great exodus of Israel from Egypt. In Exodus 12, each family is told to kill a flawless lamb and to dab its blood on their door frames.

Then they roasted that lamb and they ate it with unleavened bread, bread without yeast. On that very night, God's angel passed over the houses where the blood of the lamb had been sprinkled. That is where the word Passover comes from. But for the homes not marked by the sign of the blood of the lamb, God took the firstborn of every family. Even Pharaoh's son was not spared.

This was the tenth and the final sign that God gave to Pharaoh that His people was His people. Pharaoh, who had resisted God's instructions, finally relents, and he lets the people of Israel go. Now, biblically, we know that the Passover is ultimately a foreshadowing of Jesus and the cross. The Passover lamb, the perfect Passover lamb, his life and blood has caused God's judgment to pass over us. It is the lamb's life that has spared God's people from slavery.

He gave his life up for them, dying in their place so that they can go free. Now, while the last supper of Jesus happens in the context of the Passover, the Jewish Passover celebration, while it casts the disciples' minds back to the original Passover of Exodus. In the words of Jesus, as he is sharing the meaning of this supper with them, he's not simply letting their minds wander back to the Passover, but he is also letting their minds look ahead to a great promise. Jesus doesn't hide the language of the kingdom when he talks about this meal. He mentions it twice, and he casts their minds towards a messianic banquet that has been promised in places like Isaiah 25.

Isaiah 25, where the prophet says in verse six to eight, on this mountain, meaning Zion or Jerusalem, on this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever. Significant that this is cast in terms of a meal, the swallowing up of death surrounding a meal. When Jesus says, I will not eat this bread or drink from this cup until the kingdom of God comes, verses sixteen and eighteen, he is looking forward to God's kingdom, the one prophesied in Isaiah 25 arriving fully.

And so the disciples in their minds are waiting expectantly for the arrival of this kingdom. And in Jesus' initiation of the Lord's Supper, we find a dual dynamic, a double dynamic happening, a casting backwards to the Passover lamb, and a casting forwards to the kingdom of God arriving, the wedding banquet of the lamb. This sacred moment is a looking forward and a looking back at the same time for the disciples. And as we will see, that becomes the pattern for us as well. In other words, the night before going to the cross, at the heart of the Bible, remember, this is the climax of the Bible.

At the heart of the Bible comes a meal. This meal is a celebration of the redemption story's central action, the cross of Christ. At this meal is inaugurated a new covenant, Jesus says. At this meal is formed a new people welcomed to God's table. Just as Israel were constituted by the Passover meal under the old covenant, the new community of Jesus is founded by another meal.

This cup, Jesus said, is the new covenant in my blood. The old covenant was in the blood of that Passover lamb. And so at Sinai in the desert, God promised Israel to be their God if they would simply be His people. But we know that that covenant was weakened by Israel's inability to uphold the agreement through their sinfulness. That covenant cannot satisfy the requirements of God.

It takes a new covenant where Jesus presides at the table as both God and man. And in this meal, God is contracting with Himself to be the saviour. The contract is signed, sealed, and delivered through the blood of the son. At the Lord's supper, the hope of the cross is embodied in a meal. But we now ask ourselves, why do we participate in that?

And why a meal? Why are we instructed as the church to participate in it regularly? Why do we need to eat of it? Why did the disciples, as representatives of the church, not eat it that one time and say, well, that's the new covenant made with them. Why do we have to regularly ingest the bread and the wine?

Would it not be enough for Jesus to have said, this bread that the apostles have eaten, reflect on that and their participation in it on your behalf. Meditate on its significance for you. Now, Jesus institutes it as something the church must do again and again. When you become a Christian, you are entitled no. You are commanded to participate in the Lord's Supper.

Why must we personally enter this sacred drama? Several years ago, a book came out, written by Tim Chester, a book entitled A Meal With Jesus, which was a great read on all the times that Jesus sat with people and had meals with him, and the significance of those meals. And at one point, he talks about the Passover meal that he celebrates here, and helpfully, he gave four headings under which I'd like to explain the significance of the Lord's Supper. Firstly, this meal that was celebrated is a meal of remembrance. In verse 19 of our text in Luke 22, we read Jesus saying, this is my body given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. Every year, on 11 November, at 11 o'clock, the whole of Australia stops. We celebrate Remembrance Day. It doesn't matter if it's a weekday or a weekend. It doesn't matter whether it's in the middle of an international cricket test match, which happened a few years ago, or if it's interrupting a school class in the middle of a maths exam.

We stop for Remembrance Day. What's the effect of doing that? Well, it shapes us. It develops the Australian sense of identity. It reinforces a sense of gratitude and appreciation for the freedoms that we have for the sacrifice of individuals who have fought for those freedoms.

This is how the Passover worked for the Israelites. And this is how the Lord's Supper works for the church. Each time we participate in it, we are reminded of the cross. We're reminded that our sin has been atoned for, that we are free, that we are forgiven, that we are acquitted, and that we have been adopted as sons and daughters into the kingdom of God. On my phone is also a number of photos that I have of my family.

If you were to ask me, are those photos on your phone there because you can't remember what they look like? I would say, no. Those pictures are there not to inform my intellect, they are to touch my heart. When I look at those pictures, they remind me of ones I love. I think about them each time I look at them and what they mean to me.

My heart is touched as I recall the fun times where those photos were taken. And I move to thankfulness for God giving them to me, and I pray for His ongoing protection and grace in their lives. And for some family members who I don't see very regularly, I long to be reunited with them. In a way, the Lord Jesus has given us a physical picture, a snapshot of His finished work on the cross in the Lord's supper. The process of entering into the supper causes us to pause and to look at it often.

And when we do this, it reminds us of His great love for us. It fills our hearts with a desire to see Him when He comes again. Like a photo on your phone, it touches your heart and it makes us say, thank you, God, for what you have given us in your son, Jesus. That is why Jesus says, do this in remembrance of me. The Lord's Supper firstly is an act of remembrance.

It is a memorial. But then, it's not simply a memorial as well. Secondly, the meal is an act of participation. The Lord's Supper is more than a memorial because it is also an active involvement in the work of the cross. When the apostle Paul gives instructions to the Corinthian Christians on the supper in one Corinthians 10, verse 16.

He makes the statement, I believe it's here, 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? We are not merely observers around the Lord's supper table. When we share this together, we are participants in the drama of the cross, in the work of the cross. We share in what happened with Jesus through Jesus two thousand years ago.

And it is tangible. It is physical. We ingest something. That is why the Lord's Supper is more than a memorial. It is more than simply remembering.

It is an involvement in something holy and divine. If the Lord's supper involved merely words, so, you know, remember and we read the story again. If it simply involved words, if it was an outward activity that only had meaning by the words of the passion story attached to it, then at the very most, we are simply listeners. We will only be hearers of the gospel event. But eating and drinking the wine causes us to be participants in the very work of Christ Himself.

Since we eat and drink the bread and the wine, which represents His body and His blood, we are drawn into His work on our behalf. Objectively, our salvation doesn't depend on the eating of the meal, however. Our salvation doesn't depend on the eating of the meal. It is not magic. But the Lord's Supper is described as participation in the holy ordeal of Christ.

Through the meal, salvation becomes not simply a cognitive reality for us, but a subjective felt reality for us. We taste. We feel. Our tangible union with Christ is reestablished. We ate.

We eat like He ate. We sip like He sipped. We consume because He consumed and the disciples consumed. And in that, we commune with Him. In some mysterious, divine way, we participate in the Lord's supper and through His activity on the cross.

And through this participation, we enter like His disciples into the work that His body would achieve for them and for us. Now, it is this union, this participation, which is probably the most mysterious, spiritual, and perhaps confusing aspect for us. Where, on the one hand, the idea of remembrance might sit more easily with us, participation, the joining of ourselves into the holy ordeal of Christ on the cross. That becomes a tricky thing for us to try and get our minds around. It pushes our temporal minds to their limits.

I was trying to come up with an illustration that might sort of work for us here. The closest thing I could get is to talk about people having recurring dreams of past events in their life. And sometimes, hear the stories of people that have been through traumatic events. They experience that dream as being as real as it was when they were physically involved in that trauma or that event. Maybe it can be a nice dream.

Hopefully, it is a nice dream. But their adrenaline kicks in. Emotionally, they mourn and they weep. Physiologically, they sweat when they wake up, and yet, it is a past event. Something of that is involved in the Lord's Supper meal.

Something of that participation, and I'm sure there's all sorts of flaws in that analogy. But I think that gets towards this idea of our participation which ultimately remains spiritual and slightly mysterious. This is why, however, all sorts of incorrect teachings on the Lord's Supper also exist. Roman Catholics will say that the meal itself is salvific, that the participation in the bread and the wine themselves become the way of salvation. We enter and eat the physical body and blood of Jesus.

On the other extreme, during the Reformation, Zwingli and then the Anabaptists would state that the sacrament is purely a memorial, and that our participation is only in as far as our minds are able to remember the gospel message. But somewhere in the middle, Luther and Calvin would state that, no, there is something intensely spiritual and important that happens in the meal itself by the work of the Spirit, spoken through the word of scripture, and yet the physical participation in the meal does not offer salvation itself through those elements. Calvin goes as far as to say, I need to eat the Lord's Supper to restore my soul like I would need to eat the elements of bread and wine to restore my body from starvation. In other words, my soul needs the Lord's Supper as my body needs bread and wine to survive. So when we eat and drink the Lord's supper, we participate in a holy and a profoundly spiritual moment, which nourishes us and unites us anew with the work of Jesus.

Then thirdly, the meal is an act of community. Speaking about the Lord's Supper to the Corinthian church, the apostle Paul again writes in one Corinthians 10, verse 17. He says, because there is one bread, we who are many are one body. For we all partake of the one bread. Now, there's a play on words here. Because there is one bread, probably referring to the bread at the Lord's supper table, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of, not this bread, the body of Christ, that bread.

Significantly, we see Jesus initiating the Lord's Supper with all His disciples there. He doesn't take, you know, Peter and James and John as the inner circle and sort of have something with them. He has all of them there, including Judas Iscariot. Throughout the Bible, we see that a meal is more than the food eaten together. A meal is a moment of inclusion and fellowship.

Throughout the Bible, a meal creates and reinforces community. Jesus, in other words, eats the Lord's supper with His disciples because they are more than disciples of a rabbi. They are now His people. They are His family. The Lord's Supper is confirming that they have entered into a single unity of fellowship.

That is why even in the account of Luke, and and far more severely in the account of John of the Lord's Supper, the betrayal of Judas is so stark. The betrayal of Judas there is so harsh because this is a moment of intimacy and inclusion. This is a moment of invitation to be close to Jesus. Yet Judas is already being judged and excluded even as he is participating in the meal. The Lord's Supper is a meal that establishes the community of the Lord even as it excludes others from it.

Ultimately, it shows who is in and who is out. This was exactly the problem that Paul was addressing in the Corinthian context. The communion meals were beginning to reveal the church's divisions. There, the wealthy Corinthians would bring in their meals to be shared by themselves, by the wealthy, so that the wealthy Corinthians would be getting drunk on the wine. And the poorer Christians were not allowed to participate.

Paul says that this attitude is anathema to the purpose of the Lord's Supper because the Lord's Supper exalts the church by telling us again and again of the enormity of being welcomed into God's one family. By sharing together in the holy meal, we proclaim the power of being reconciled into His family as His people through the death of Christ. That's why on the flip side, the withholding of the Lord's Supper as a discipline that the church, that the elders can bestow upon someone in the church is so severe. It shows who is in and who is out. The Lord's Supper in itself is an act of community.

And this then leads us, I think, naturally to the fourth and the last point. The meal is an act of proclamation. Paul will then later in the next chapter in one Corinthians 11, verse 26, again, speak about the Lord's Supper, and he says there, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. This is an interesting concept because this is partly tied to the mission of the church. The Lord's supper is tied to the mission of the church.

While the Lord's Supper is a drama in which we are active participants, we are participants in proclaiming, preaching the gospel message. When we participate, we preach to our own hearts, but also to one another and to the watching world the power of God, His saving power. We profess we profess that God has ransomed for Himself a precious and cherished people. When we share in the supper together, we don't merely reflect on the way things should be ideally. Our hearts are preached into practicing the way things really ought to be.

So we don't think of an idealistic thing. When we share, we practically tell hearts how it should be. Why? Because the Lord's Supper forms our understanding of what being unified in Christ really looks like. And this is the proclamation.

This is the forward looking part of the Lord's supper. This is why Paul instructs us in verse 28 of chapter 11 to examine ourselves before we participate. Now, Rick mentioned on Thursday that this isn't a depressive navel gazing or self flagellation sort of act, and I agree with him, but I would nuance it slightly. Paul says that we are to discern the body in this examination, lest we eat or drink judgment to ourselves. Once again, this is a play on words because on the one hand, it can refer to reflecting on the Lord's body when we discern the body.

We reflect on what Jesus has done in His death. But on the other hand, as Paul will say in just a few chapters later, the body of Christ is the church. And for Paul, there is no distinction. I mean, in His great conversion, remember, he was the persecutor of the church. When Jesus comes to him, he says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Paul does not separate the body of Christ from Christ. In the act of examination, reflecting on what the body means for us, this examination becomes a process of proclaiming to our hearts the gospel which has caused our lives to be realigned to the gospel and its implications. Not only do we participate in what the Lord has done for us, we also joyfully taste the magnificent wedding feast that we will have with God in His new kingdom as His transformed people. This is why we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. We proclaim to our hearts and our minds.

We remind ourselves that we have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the sun. Life within that kingdom looks different. We behave a certain way. And so, if we examine ourselves and discover that there are areas that do not align with the kingdom, it is the Lord's supper that speaks to us and tells our hearts and our minds and our behaviours where we truly belong. We don't belong to this world anymore.

We belong to the coming kingdom. And so, this issue of examination, John Calvin himself defended its importance, but he nuanced it in a way that I think strikes a healthy balance. On the issue of participating in the Lord's Supper, he says, in a worthy manner, as Paul says, after a close examination, this is what Calvin writes, The best and only worthiness which we can bring to God in the Lord's Supper is to offer Him our own vileness. That His mercy may make us worthy to despond in ourselves that we may be consoled in Him, to humble ourselves that we may be elevated by Him, to accuse ourselves that we may be justified by Him, to aspire moreover to the unity which He recommends in the supper. And as He makes us all one in Himself, to desire to have all one soul, one heart, one tongue.

If we ponder and meditate on these things, we may be shaken, but listen to this, we will never be overwhelmed. We shall rather consider that we who are poor are coming to a benevolent giver, sick to a physician, sinful to the author of righteousness. The Lord's Supper is an act of proclamation to our hearts and to the hearts of those around us that Jesus Christ is sufficient for all our needs. He forgives us. He feeds us.

He accepts us. He strengthens us. And so each time we eat the supper, the overwhelming emotion we should have is one of gratitude and peace because the Lord has saved us, and He is continuing to work out that salvation in you so that you won't always remain as weak as you have identified yourself to be. So the question we asked at the start, why do we have a meal like this one? Well, it is because by it, we remember.

Secondly, by it, we participate in God's salvation. Thirdly, by it, we are unified with the community of Christ. And finally, we are strengthened in our Christian living as we remember and proclaim the Lord's coming kingdom and what it means to live in that kingdom. The Lord's supper has so much to say to us. May the Lord grant us the grace to understand and believe all these things as we participate in it again and again.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this precious gift that you have given us. That for physical, temporal, time bound creatures, we have this divine intersection of holiness and our temporalness. Lord, that there is this moment of the spirit meeting to fulfil what is still lacking in us. That in it, we are able to participate and share in both the suffering but also in the glory of Christ.

Help us, Lord, to appreciate when we celebrate this. Help us, Lord, to strike that balance between mourning over our weakness and our sin and yet, Lord, holding out the great hope that we have. Being strengthened, Lord, ultimately, having peace with our God because of it. We pray, Lord, that You'll add these words to our hearts because over the years, we may forget. Please remind us again and again of the significance of what we celebrate and Lord, help us to cherish it as very important.

Help us to prioritise the celebration of it. Help us to miss it when we don't have it. Help us to walk the life that you would have us walk in view of it. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.