Over time, traditions have a way of becoming rituals that people mindlessly repeat even if they have no idea where the tradition came from or what it means. Take, for instance, the Rock Chalk chant of my beloved Kansas Jayhawks. Every year, thousands upon thousands of people participate in the Rock Chalk chant at sporting events, yet most people have no idea what it means.
All traditions can follow that pattern, including the traditions that we uphold within the Church. That’s why we have been taking a close look at the Lord’s Supper each time we have observed it over the last few months. Today we’re going to discuss a question that may have come to your mind before: what is the connection between the Lord’s Supper and the New Covenant?
Whenever we observe the Lord’s Supper together, we read from the instructions of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, and in v. 25, he quotes the words that the Lord Jesus spoke when He gave the cup to his disciples and said, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood.” What did Jesus mean by that statement? That’s what we’re going to discover today.
1. What is the New Covenant?
First of all, we need to answer the simple question, “What is the New Covenant?” This phrase might be very unfamiliar to you, even if you have heard it many times while observing the Lord’s Supper. To put it simply, the New Covenant is a promise made by God to the nation of Israel during one of her darkest hours, in which He promised to restore her fortunes both materially and spiritually. This was the promise that the Jewish people were clinging to when Jesus came into the world, though by and large they had unfortunately overlooked the spiritual aspects of this promise. They were eagerly waiting for the material aspects of this promise—such as a restored kingdom for Israel and other such blessings—but their overlooking of the spiritual aspects of this promise led to a great misunderstanding of Jesus’ ministry. This misunderstanding, among other things, led to the crucifixion of Jesus, though ironically, as we will learn, the sacrificial death of Jesus actually established the New Covenant.
The phrase “New Covenant” is found in Jeremiah 31:31. Why don’t you turn there with me? There are other passages that also describe the details of this promise, but we’ll focus on a few points from Jer. 31:31–34.
A. It is “new” in contrast with the “old” covenant that God made with Israel through Moses (vv. 31–32)
Follow with me as I read vv. 31–32 [READ vv. 31–32]. Here the Lord expresses this promise to make a new covenant with Israel and Judah, which was necessary because the people had broken the former covenant that was made after God brought them out of Egypt. Let’s talk about that “old” covenant for a moment.
According to the book of Exodus, after God graciously and powerful saved Israel from their slavery in Egypt, He led them into the wilderness of Sinai, which is the easternmost part of Egypt today, and just south of modern-day Israel. At a mountain in that wilderness, God entered into an agreement or a covenant with the people. In Exodus 19, beginning at v. 4, the Lord said, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:4–6).
The agreement was very straightforward—God stated that if the people would obey Him, He would confirm with them the special relationship that He had promised them since the time of Abraham. He would use them in a very special way to be like priests for the rest of the world, so that the rest of the world could learn about God through them.
God then spelled out the way that the Israelites were supposed to behave and the way that they were supposed to worship Him. These commands are what we normally call the Law of Moses—they are all of the rules and regulations that you read about in Exodus through Deuteronomy. Its important to note that these commands were not designed to allow the Israelites a way to earn a place in heaven or anything like that. They were meant to show the people how to live as God’s priests to the rest of the world.
So the covenant was clear-cut—if the people would obey God’s commands, God would confirm His special relationship with them. But the sad testimony of the Old Testament is that the people did not obey God’s commands. They broke His commands, and thus they broke the agreement of the covenant. As a result, they received the curses mentioned in that covenant rather than the blessings. In fact, at the time that Jeremiah recorded the words of the New Covenant, the people of Israel were experiencing one of those curses—they were being oppressed by the armies of Babylon and were about to be taken from their land and relocated. But in the midst of that dark hour, God allowed the light of His grace to shine through by telling the people about the significant blessings that He still had in store for them.
B. It contained the promise of significant spiritual blessings for Israel and Judah (vv. 33–34)
Other passages, such as Ezekiel 36, contain information about the material blessings of this covenant, but the Lord spoke through Jeremiah about the spiritual blessings of the New Covenant, as we see here in vv. 33–34. There are four significant blessings mentioned here:
1) God’s law will be written in the hearts of the people [READ 33a]. This idea is amplified in Ezekiel 36:26–27 when the Lord states that He will put His Spirit within the people and give them a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone.
2) God will establish an intimate fellowship with the people [READ 33b]. No longer will there be a strain in God’s relationship with the people. They will serve Him alone as their God, and He will give them the fullness of His blessing.
3) God’s people will have a universal knowledge of Him [READ 34a]. No longer will Israel be divided between those who know the Lord and those who don’t know Him. They will all know Him.
4) God will forgive the sins of the people [READ 34b].
As you can see, God promised some tremendous blessings to the people of Israel in the New Covenant. Its no surprise that the promise of this covenant became a special thing to them. But what does this have to do with the Lord’s Supper? Why did Jesus mention this covenant on the night before He was crucified?
2. How is the New Covenant related to the Lord’s Supper?
If you will think back to the words of Jesus that Paul recorded in 1 Cor. 11:25, the Lord made the statement, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood.” So the Lord tied the New Covenant to His own blood that He was about to shed in His sacrificial death on the cross. What did Jesus mean by this statement? I think a little piece of history will clear things up for us.
In ancient times, when two people would make a binding agreement like a covenant, that agreement would often be accompanied by the sacrifice of an animal. That sacrifice would solemnize the occasion, and oftentimes it represented a challenge for the two parties as well. The idea is that they were saying, “May I end up like this animal if I break my word!”
So the sacrifice ratified or established the covenant. We can see this practice within the pages of Scripture. You may remember that in Genesis 15, when God made His covenant with Abraham, he told Abraham to gather a heifer, a goat, and a ram. Abraham gathered the animals and killed them, cut them in half, and laid the two halves opposite each other with a walkway between the halves. A vision of the Lord then passed between the two halves of the animals, which symbolized that His covenant with Abraham was now officially established.
Also, when the Lord made His covenant with Israel through Moses—which we just discussed a moment ago—a sacrifice was made on that occasion. It says in Exodus 24 that Moses offered sacrifices to God and then sprinkled the blood of the sacrifices on the people as they were gathered together before God. That sounds a little gross, but that was an element of the culture at that time.
Thus, when Jesus associates His blood with the New Covenant, He is saying that He is the sacrifice which establishes this promise between God and Israel. His sacrificial death was the foundation of this promise, because as we learn from other Scriptures, His death was necessary to provide that spiritual blessings of the covenant. His death was a necessary step in order for sins to be forgiven, which was necessary for God to put His law in the hearts of mankind through the Holy Spirit, which was also necessary for mankind to experience the fullness of fellowship with God.
And so, Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross made it possible for the promises of the New Covenant to be fulfilled. Now remember, these promises were made to the people of Israel, the same people with whom the old covenant was made through Moses. Since we have not yet seen these promises fulfilled with the nation of Israel, that gives us every reason to expect that they must be fulfilled in the future. I think we have every reason to believe that God is not done with His Old Testament people—He still has outstanding promises to them that He intends to fulfill.
But in the meantime, the spiritual blessings of the New Covenant are available to anyone who will accept Jesus as their Savior by acknowledging their sins to God and believing that Jesus paid the full penalty for their sins through His death on the cross. Our sins are washed away by the same blood that established the promises of the New Covenant, and so we can have our sins forgiven; we can have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us; we can have the fullness of intimacy with God.
The Lord’s Supper reminds us of all that God has done to extend His grace to us. He is a God who delights to show mercy, who chooses to make promises to His unworthy creatures and follow through with them. The fact that He sent Jesus to establish the New Covenant tells us that He will fulfill every promise that He has made to us, and that gives us tremendous reason to rejoice.
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