The Last Supper/New Covenant

The Last Supper is one of the most well known events in the New Testament and for the Christian it is a powerful one. Jesus sits down with His twelve disciples and has His final meal with them in which He institutes the New Covenant. There is a lot to be learned by this event which can be seen in all four Gospels and also in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. I intend to give an expository response to this event in light of all four Gospels and 1Corinthians. The majority of my text will be in the Synoptic Gospels because of the detail given in these texts, whereas John’s Gospel focuses more on events that surround the Last Supper and 1Corinthians is really just a repeat of what the Gospels recorded.
Now On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Feast of Unleavened Bread or the Passover would take place on Nisan fifteen and continue until the twenty-first of Nisan. The feast lasted seven days, and on the first day and last day there would be a convocation in which the people of Israel would eat a meal in which there would be a meeting between God and man. Many times in preparing for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, in which there was no leavened bread eaten for the entire week, they would sprinkle leaven crumbs throughout the house and allow the kids to run around and find them all, and in so doing they would purge their homes of all leaven which was symbolic of sin and evil.(1) Leaven is a substance that causes fermentation, and so sin in our lives will also infect us in a similar means. 1Corinthians 5:6 says “a little leaven leavens the whole lump.” In Matthew 16:6 Jesus tells His disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. The Passover meal was instituted to remember the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. This deliverance form Egypt was the central act of redemption in the Old Testament, and after this meal with His disciples Jesus is going to provide a new central act of redemption for all of mankind in the New Testament. This was no doubt an important event in the lives of the disciples and necessary for Jesus to institute. In Luke’s Gospel it says that Jesus had an earnest or fervent desire to eat the Passover to eat this meal with His disciples.
The disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him “Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?” It is interesting to note that the disciples are coming to Jesus on the very day that the Passover in to commence and they are just now asking where to prepare the Passover. It would seem as though there may be a little bit of procrastination on their part. Jesus then tells them to go into the city, we know that the city was Jerusalem because the Feast had to be celebrated in Jerusalem, and find a man carrying a pitcher of water. Now this would seem a little vague to most of us, since there is estimated to have been two million in the city that year, but not to the Jew in that time period. Men would not be seen carrying pitchers of water that was what the woman carried; the men would be carrying an animal skin filled with liquid not a pitcher.(2) This would be a distinct sing for the sent disciples to look for, and in Luke’s Gospel we know that it was Peter and John that were sent by Jesus. (Luke 22:8) As always, when the disciples got there it was exactly as Jesus had said, so they prepared the Passover in a large upper room in the house of the man with the water pitcher.
When evening had come He sat down with the twelve. According to the Jewish calendar the day began at sundown. So when it was evening or the beginning of the Passover day which will be the same day that Jesus will be crucified. Jesus sits down with His disciples to eat this final meal with them. It should be noted that they are seated while they are eating and literally in the Greek it says that they are reclining, which was custom of the day when eating meals. However there is something more significant to note here. In Exodus 12:11 it says “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.” The fist Passover meal was eaten standing up and in haste ready to leave Egypt. Now as the Jews celebrate this meal they do it sitting down recognizing the rest they now have in God’s deliverance. Just as we today have rest in the work of Christ on the cross, Hebrews 4:10 “for he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.”
Now as they were eating, He said, “Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.” This was quite the statement for Jesus to make and it is interesting that all of them become sorrowful and each one of them asks Him if it is them. None of them at this point are so confident that they wouldn’t betray Him; however they also don’t know the extent of the betrayal yet either. The betrayal that Jesus is talking about is that of delivering Him unto death. Jesus makes the distinction that the one who will betray Him is one that dips with Him in the bowl. That is to say that it is a friend who is close to Him because they all are dipping with Him in the bowl. This does show us the love that Jesus had for Judas as He is calling him a friend even after know what Judas has already determined to do in his heart. After this statement we see the true hypocrisy of Judas showing as Judas says “Rabbi, is it I?” To be able to look Jesus in the face and ask such a blasphemous question must have crushed Jesus’ spirit as He responds saying “You have said it.” I am sure Jesus’ response was one of love and kindness as He is still seeking to draw Judas to repentance. In the Middle Eastern culture betraying a friend after the intimate experience of meal time was said to be the worst kind of treachery and this is exactly what Judas did to Jesus. John’s Gospel tells us that it was actually during the meal that Judas left to betray Jesus. John 13:27 says “Now after the piece of bread, Satan entered him. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What you do, do quickly.’”
And as they were eating, Jesus took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” Jesus is at the head of the table and a custom the head would stand up and say “This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let everyone who hungers come and eat; let everyone who is needy come and eat the Passover meal.” This is not what Jesus does; instead He takes the bread and reinterprets it to be His body. Each of the Passover elements had a special significance to the original Passover. The bread represented the affliction in Egypt, the bitter herbs represented the bitterness of slavery, the salt water represented the tears shed over Egyptian slavery, and of course the lamb represented the sacrifice given for the blood on the door post for deliverance from death. Jesus said in John 6:48-51 “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." I am sure that as Jesus is instituting the New Covenant by reinterpreting the meaning of the bread the disciple’s minds are going back to this saying of Jesus after the feeding of the five thousand. We today can see Jesus in the bread in three different ways, 1. He had no leaven (sin) in Him, 2. He was striped for our transgressions (the bread cakes had lines on them), 3. He was pierced (the bread cakes had holes in them). Jesus says take, eat, this is very important in the Greek language. The word for take is λάβετε and it is in the imperative mode which means it is a command and literally means: you all are commanded to take!, and the same is true for the word eat which is φάγετε and literally means: you all are commanded to eat! So we also see that it is directed at everyone and not just the twelve, Jesus says you all are commanded to do this. We are commanded to take and eat, which also shows that it is not forced, we must receive it, and that it is important for our health, without Jesus we will perish.While I am on the subject of Greek the word that is used for giving thanks is εὐχαριστήσας or eucharist which is where the term for the Last supper came from.
Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them saying, Drink for it, all of you. The Greek here is the same as with the bread so I will not go into that again, but there are some important things to note here. In Luke’s Gospel there is a distinction between two cups. In Luke 22:17 it says “Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves.” We then read of Jesus taking the bread and breaking it and in Luke 22:20 it says “Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” After supper He took another cup and this is the cup of the New Covenant. It is interesting when looking at the Jewish Passover that there are four cups that are taken and each one has significance. This can be seen in Exodus 6:6-7 “Therefore say to the children of Israel: 'I am the LORD; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.” The first cup is I will take you to be my people, second is I will deliver you from slavery, the third is I will redeem you with a demonstration of my power, this is the cup that the disciple and ourselves partake of because of Christ, and the fourth is I will take you as my people. Jesus will not partake of this cup until He is with His entire church in the Kingdom and there it will not be the Passover, it will be the Marriage Supper of the Lamb that is talked about in Revelation 19:9.
Because of this institution of Jesus and the Last Supper we can better understand the meaning of the New Covenant that is given in Jeremiah 31:33-34 “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." The Covenant has been sealed with blood just as the old covenant was in Exodus 24:8 “And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, "This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words."