Every Last Word

Guest (Male): The Last Supper with Christ and his disciples was also the first communion service. What is it about the bread and the wine that still plays such a vital role in the life of the church today? As we prepare to listen to Dr. Philip Ryken's sermon on the Last Supper, let's open our Bibles now to the Gospel of Luke.

Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today we'll look at the first communion service with Jesus and his disciples. We'll learn about the significance of the bread and the wine.

Phil, when we take communion, what kind of attitude should we have when we receive the bread and the wine?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: I suppose there's more than one answer to that question, Mark, but I want to start with the example of Jesus at the Last Supper when he was instituting this sacrament. His attitude was one of great thanksgiving and praise to God, which he expressed in a prayer of thanks to the Father. Whatever else we want to say about the attitude with which we approach communion, it should fundamentally be an attitude of grateful thanksgiving.

Guest (Male): What do the bread and the cup stand for in the communion service?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: I suppose, Mark, it takes a whole lifetime to answer that question because there are many deep mysteries contained in the bread and the cup of the Lord's Supper. Let me begin with this: the bread is certainly symbolizing and signifying the body of Christ, but also the very fact that Jesus is the source of our life. He is like bread itself; that's how fundamental and basic he is to spiritual life.

The cup signifies the blood of Christ, and Jesus connects that to the new covenant, which comes with the promise of forgiveness and cleansing from sin. It will take us a lifetime to learn all of that, Mark, but that's a good place to begin.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Phil. Let's turn in our Bibles now to Luke chapter 22, verses 14 through 20, and listen together to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22. We'll be considering verses 14 through 19. As you know, it is customary for a condemned man to be given one last request before he is put to death. This convention is observed in our own country by giving criminals on death row a feast before they are executed.

Typically, the menu for this is printed in the newspaper, presumably to satisfy the morbid interest of public curiosity. People want to know what the condemned man ate and drank before dying. We could ask the same question about the Lord Jesus Christ, for he too was a condemned man, though not for his own crimes, with one last meal to eat before dying.

As we turn to Luke 22, we come to the night on which Jesus was betrayed. Very soon he would be condemned and crucified for crimes he did not commit. Indeed, he would be dead before nightfall on the following day, his lifeless body buried in the ground. This was the last night of our Savior's life on earth in his first earthly ministry, and there was one last meal that he wanted to share with his disciples.

Christians usually call this farewell feast the Last Supper, and that title makes sense because it was the last time that Jesus would celebrate Passover with his disciples. Indeed, it was the last time that he would drink anything with them before he died. But it was also the first time that Jesus celebrated communion with them, also known as the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. In a sense, this Last Supper was also the First Supper, the first supper of the new salvation that Jesus gave his disciples by giving them himself.

Maybe the first thing to understand about this supper is how eagerly Jesus wanted to share it with his disciples. Luke tells us, beginning in verse 14, that when the hour came, he reclined at 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."

In God's perfect timing, the hour had come for Jesus to sit with these beloved disciples and to share with them the meal that signified their salvation. This expression he uses for "earnest desire" is an expression conveying an intense longing. There is no one on the whole face of the earth that Jesus would rather have been with on this last night than these closest friends. As he looked around at the faces of those men gathered around that table, his heart was very full that night because his intense longing to share this meal with them was now satisfied.

Why did Jesus have this deep desire? Possibly because Passover was such a blessed occasion for the people of God. Here was the sacramental celebration of God's deliverance, a commemoration of Israel's exodus from Egypt. Surely for Jesus and for his disciples, the feast brought back some of the happiest memories of childhood, making the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem, eating roast lamb with their families, praising God for his salvation.

But there is more even than that, I think, because Jesus was not just longing for Passover but already anticipating his death on the cross. He's very specific about this in what he says: "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." Already, Jesus was looking ahead to his sufferings, and there was this one thing he wanted to do with his disciples before he suffered. He wanted to host this farewell feast that would help them understand what he was about to do for their salvation within just the very next day.

Jesus also desired to have this of all Passovers with his disciples because this feast was about to have its fulfillment. Passover had always been a time to look back, to remember how God had saved his people in the past. But in the plan of God, and even some people in the Old Testament days understood this, Passover was also looking forward to the full and final salvation that God would provide in the person and through the work of the Messiah.

Jesus himself was looking ahead on this occasion. "I tell you," he said, "I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." Soon, Passover would find its true fulfillment in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus and his disciples would never have occasion again to celebrate that old Passover feast but instead would celebrate the new sacrament of the new covenant in Christ by eating the bread and drinking the wine of the Lord's Supper. Even this was looking ahead to the last of all feasts when the people of God will sit down to the wedding supper of the Lamb. These were some of the reasons why Jesus was so eager to celebrate this Passover with his disciples.

Recently, I heard a simple gospel song that I think captures something of the warm intimacy that the Savior celebrated with his friends around the table that night. It's a song that Johnny Cash used to sing, in which Jesus says to his disciples, "I can tell by your faces that you don't understand the awesome things you've felt and seen at the touch of my hand. But someday you'll understand it when the Father means for you to. But for now, drink the cup and break the bread, and I'll eat my Last Supper here with you."

Then comes the refrain: "Have a little bread, Simon. Pass the wine to James, my brother. Go ahead and eat, fellows, and love one another. Have a good time, friends, because tomorrow I must die, and I'm never going to eat with you again till we eat the marriage supper in the sky." Needless to say, the words "Go ahead and eat, fellows" do not appear in any reputable translation of Luke's Gospel. These are not the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper as a sacrament for the Christian church, but they do express the friendly affection that Jesus had for his disciples.

He speaks to Simon and James. You realize as he speaks to them in this way, these are his friends; these are the men that he loved. As he sat down to share this last Passover with them, he wanted to give them himself, to share his love with them in that last Passover, which was also the first supper of the kingdom of God.

This transition from Passover to Lord's Supper helps to explain why Luke speaks about two cups in this passage and not just one. If you're familiar with the Christian sacrament of the Lord's Supper, you know that there's only one loaf of bread and one cup of communion in that supper. Yet here in Luke's account of the Last Supper, Jesus offers his disciples both a cup of thanksgiving—that's in verse 17—and the cup of the new covenant in verse 20.

We may well ask what is going on here. In all likelihood, that first cup is not part of the Lord's Supper proper but part of the traditional celebration of Passover. Here it helps to know that there were four cups of salvation that were raised during the Passover meal, one for each promise of deliverance that God gave his people through the prophet Moses. I think that's the context for what Luke tells us in verses 17 and 18. 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."

It's not entirely clear which cup this may have been, but whether it was the first cup of the feast or the last, I think it was part of this Passover, as Jesus called it in verse 15, "this Passover," the one that Jesus said he wanted to celebrate with his disciples. You'll notice that this was a cup of thanksgiving. How wonderful it would be to know exactly what kind of thanks that Jesus gave as he raised this cup for his disciples. Surely he would have praised the Father for his mighty works of saving power.

It is enough for us to know that he celebrated this feast with a glad and thankful heart, and that when he gave this thankful cup to his disciples, they drank it together, for they were sharing a communal celebration of God's saving power. It's in the context of this Passover celebration that Jesus then proceeds to give the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. This Last Supper, as people call it, is both the last Passover and the first communion.

Here's an illustration or analogy that may help you understand this. I think it's a little bit like a video sequence in which one image fades away while at the same time an image over which that first image has been superimposed is sharply coming into focus. One is fading away; the other is coming into focus. It's as if this meal morphs from Passover into communion, from the last supper of the old administration to the first supper of the new covenant.

I think Jesus presented the sacrament in just this way because it was one of the best ways for his disciples to understand his saving work. Seeing the Lord's Supper in the context of Passover teaches us what Jesus was doing for us on the cross. Let's consider then the two elements that Jesus used to celebrate this first supper: the bread of remembrance and the cup of the new covenant. Beginning the way that Jesus did with the bread, verse 19: "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.'"

The people of God always ate bread when they celebrated Passover. But here, by the words that instituted the Lord's Supper, Jesus invested this breaking of bread with new and surprising significance. It's not simply what Jesus did here that's important, but also what he said. In order for us to know what it means to "do this" in remembrance of Jesus, the physical sign of breaking the bread must be interpreted by the sacramental words of our Savior. They are simple words. "This is my body." They are the kind of words it takes only a moment to understand but truly a lifetime to comprehend because although they are simple in themselves, they reveal many deep mysteries of the gospel.

What are some of the things that we learn from what Jesus said about the bread? We learn that the bread of this sacrament is to be received with thanksgiving. This is the example Jesus sets for us. It's when he had given thanks that these things were offered to the disciples. This is why some Christians call communion the Eucharist, which is simply the Greek word for giving thanks. This Lord's Supper is a gift of God's grace, and therefore it is to be received with a grateful heart.

We learn further that the sacramental bread is the body of Jesus Christ. This, of course, immediately raises further questions because our interpretation of what Jesus meant by this depends on what our definition of "is" is. Some Christians believe that Jesus is speaking literally here, and that in some way the physical essence of the bread must be changed or, as some say, transubstantiated into the very body of Christ.

I think there are a number of reasons to think that this interpretation is incorrect, including some that are obvious from the immediate context. I wonder, what sense does it make to say that the bread becomes the body of Christ in this way when Jesus is right there with his disciples already in his physical body, breaking bread with them? No doubt the disciples themselves would have been astonished that anyone would think of taking Jesus literally in that way in this context.

The idea would have been alien to their whole way of thinking about the sacrament and also their whole way of thinking about Jesus. By this time, they were well used to their Lord speaking to them in figures of speech. So, for example, when Jesus said, "I am the door," they did not start looking for his hinges. And when he said, "I am the bread of life," they did not assume that his dough was made from scratch. It's just not that way of speaking at all. On the contrary, they instinctively recognize these statements as metaphors that Jesus uses to make a spiritual comparison.

Similarly, when Jesus says, "This bread is my body," he is not giving his disciples some philosophical theory of the sacrament but drawing a simple comparison that would help them understand the meaning of his death. He was not describing a physical change but making a sacramental identification. To say that the bread is his body is to say that it represents or signifies or symbolizes his body. In the words of John Calvin, "The bread is called body because it is a symbol of the body."

Undoubtedly, one of the reasons why Jesus chose bread to serve as this sacramental symbol is because bread is so basic to life itself. We cannot live without our daily bread. And so when Jesus tells us to take and eat the bread that signifies his body, he is giving us something we cannot live without, something that we need to nourish our souls. Jesus gives us this life-giving nourishment by faith in the bread of the Lord's Supper.

I say that Jesus gives us this nourishment because that is just the word that Jesus himself uses: "This is my body, which is given for you." In breaking the bread, Jesus is offering us himself, specifically his offering himself in his bodily sacrifice of himself for our sins. I think there may be a reminder of this bodily sacrifice in the very fact that the sacramental bread is broken.

This action echoes the famous prophecy in Isaiah 53, where it is promised that our suffering servant would be wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. Thus, the breaking of the bread may well serve as a sacramental signification of this bruised servant, a depiction, so to speak, of his sacrifice. Furthermore, the death of Jesus is even more obviously signified in the words "for you," as we find them in verse 19: "This is my body, which is given for you."

This is language that the New Testament frequently uses in order to indicate that Jesus died on our behalf, that his sacrifice was substitutionary, that this was something done in our place. It is "for us" in that sense. When Jesus said to his disciples, "This is my body, given for you," he was already looking ahead to what he would do for them and for us and for all his disciples on the cross.

Jesus was speaking of himself already as a saving sacrifice. He would give himself for us; he would die in our place to pay the death penalty that we deserved for our sins. Understand that to say that Jesus died "for you" is to say something more than simply that he died for your benefit; it is also to say that he died in your place, to say that he suffered the death that you deserved to die.

This can be illustrated from something that happened not long after the end of the American Civil War when a man in farm clothes was seen kneeling at a soldier's grave in Nashville, Tennessee. When a sympathetic bystander saw him there and he asked him, "Is that the grave of your son?" "No," the farmer replied, "I have seven children, all of them young, and a wife on my poor farm in Illinois. But I was drafted into the Union Army. Despite the great hardship that it would cause to my family, I was required to serve. Yet on the very morning that I was to depart, the man who now lies in this grave, my neighbor's oldest son, came over and offered to take my place in the war."

When the farmer stepped away, the bystander could see the words that he had written on the gravestone. They simply read: "He died for me." This is the testimony of every believer in Jesus Christ. We have a Savior who has offered himself in our place, and there are benefits that come to us because of that, but it begins with the very fact that he died in our place. So whenever we break the bread of this table, we are saying by way of our testimony and by way of our faith: "He died for me." This is what we believe about the Lord Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for our sins.

The old Scottish Presbyterian John Willison summarized what we have been saying about the bread in his Sacramental Catechism. The catechism asks this question: "What is the meaning of the words, 'This is my body, broken for you'?" And then the catechism gives this answer: "The meaning is that this broken bread is Christ's body, spiritually and sacramentally, that it signifies and represents his body, and is a visible sign of his body's being broken, bruised, and crucified. Yes, crucified for you, even wounded for your transgressions and bruised for your iniquities." This is what we believe when we hear the words, "my body, given for you."

It is not simply the body and the bread that are given to us, but also the blood, which is signified in the cup of the new covenant. Luke tells us that likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood." Like the bread, the cup is a symbol of Christ's sacrificial death on the cross. Just as the bread signifies Christ's body, so the cup signifies his blood. Anytime a sacrifice is offered, blood is poured out, and Jesus signified this by pouring out the cup for his disciples.

Jesus was saying that in pouring out his sacrificial blood, he was establishing a new covenant. This is the vocabulary that he uses: it is a new covenant in the blood. To understand what that means, we would need to begin with the old covenant and with the sacrificial blood on which that covenant was based. It is characteristic of the covenants that God has made with his people for salvation that they are established by way of sacrifice.

A covenant is a bond in blood, a solemn commitment that God will keep his saving promise to the very death, and this is always indicated by the offering of a blood sacrifice. One of the best places to see this is Exodus chapter 24. I would encourage you to turn there in your Bibles, very close to the beginning of scripture, Exodus following Genesis. Exodus chapter 24, where God makes a covenant with his people through the prophet Moses. He had already brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. He had already given them the Ten Commandments, the moral law. And here in chapter 24, there is a confirmation of God's covenant with his people.

On the day that covenant was confirmed, Moses collected the blood of many sacrifices into large basins, we read in verse six. And we read further that he threw half of the blood against the holy altar of sacrifice in the house of God. Then he took the other half and he threw it on the people themselves. We see that in verse eight: "Moses took the blood, he threw it on the people and he said, 'Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.'"

Making the covenant, obviously, was a messy, bloody business. This covenant was not signed like a contract, but sealed in blood. Truly, this was a sign of God's mercy because when the people looked at the altar and saw all of the blood on the altar, they would know that they had forgiveness for their sins, that an atonement had been offered for them. When they saw and felt the blood on themselves, they would know that they were included in that covenant of salvation. The blood of the sacrifice had been applied to them. That was the old covenant.

But now Jesus had come to establish a new covenant. This was the covenant God had promised through the prophet Jeremiah when he said—and this is in Jeremiah chapter 31—"I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. I will be their God and they shall be my people, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more."

Even the old covenant was a covenant of grace. We've seen that already in Exodus chapter 24. It signified the forgiveness of sins; it meant that they were included in the covenant of salvation. It was all of the grace of God. But the old covenant, as gracious as it was, was always looking forward to the time when God would bring his full and final salvation and fulfill all of the promises that he had ever made of his grace.

God had promised to be our God and that we would be his people; he had promised to forgive all of our sins forever. Jesus is the answer to all of those old promises of the covenant. That's what Jesus was telling his disciples on the night of the first supper: the new covenant had come. Jesus said, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant." Then, of course, he added those staggering words, words that would take your breath away if you understood what they meant: "in my blood."

This is what is new about the new covenant: it is established by the very blood of God himself. Of all the things that we could say about the newness of the new covenant, this is the place that we should begin: with the fact that the Son of God shed his own blood for our sins. "My blood of the covenant," he called it in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. "The new covenant in my blood," he says here in the Gospel of Luke.

This is the amazing reality that all of the old sacrifices were getting God's people ready to understand. You think about all of the sacrifices in the Old Testament—Adam and Noah and all of the patriarchs and all of the sacrifices of Passover and the Day of Atonement and all the sacrifices offered at the tabernacle and later at the temple. On and on it goes: blood after blood after blood. Those old covenant sacrifices were offered again and again because they were only animal sacrifices that in themselves could not atone for human sin. They were sacrifices offered in anticipation of the once-for-all sacrifice that would be provided through the very blood of Jesus Christ.

Here we are in the Gospel of Luke on the eve of that sacrifice. Jesus announced that he would establish the new covenant with his own blood. We should understand that God never asked anyone else to shed any blood to establish the covenant of salvation; he offered the covenant blood himself in the person of his Son Jesus Christ, who is both God and man. This is what Jesus was emphasizing when he instituted the Lord's Supper. He was saying: "It is my blood that will do this thing. It is my blood that will establish the covenant. It is my blood that will gain your salvation. It is my blood that will atone for your sins. My blood will accomplish all of that, and all that I ask of you is to believe in the cross where I will give my blood for you."

Then by faith, you will be able to drink all of the benefits of the sacrifice that I have made on your behalf. This was the legacy that Jesus left for his disciples the night that he was condemned to die. Rather than thinking about what he might have for himself, the way that people usually do when they are led to their execution, he was thinking about what he wanted to give of himself. He would give his disciples a meal to remember before making the sacrifice that they will never forget.

Do you understand what Jesus was doing for you on the cross? Do you understand the bread of remembrance and the cup of the new covenant that Jesus gives in the Lord's Supper? J.C. Ryle said this in commenting on this passage: "The two elements of bread and wine were intended to preach Christ crucified as our substitute. They were to be a visible sermon appealing to the believer's senses and teaching the old foundation truth of the gospel: that Christ's death on the cross is the life of man's soul."

Well, that is the foundation truth of the gospel, is it not? That the death of Christ on the cross gives life to the soul. Oh, may it be the foundation truth of your life as well: that his death on the cross for your sins gives life to your soul, and life that will last forever. Our Father, we pray for faith to believe in Jesus and in his work on the cross, and faith to receive the signs and seals of that sacrifice as we eat together around the Lord's own table. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Every Last Word with Bible teacher Dr. Philip Ryken, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance exists to promote a biblical understanding and world-view. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of reformed theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide Christian teaching that will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place. Alliance broadcasting includes the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, Every Last Word with Bible teacher Dr. Philip Ryken, God's Living Word with Pastor the Reverend Richard Phillips, and Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible featuring Donald Barnhouse.

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