Hi, this is the Hymn We Proclaim podcast, The Messages of John Fawnville. you're listening to season five called two keys to spiritual growth Here's John with message number eight called the New Covenant Meal. Turn with me, if you would, to Luke chapter 22, Luke chapter 22, and let's look at verses 19 through 20. This is what Luke writes. He says, and when he had taken some bread and 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. Do this as my memorial. Verse 20. And in the same way he took the cup. after they had eaten, saying, This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant.
in my blood. That's what I want us to look at today at verse 20. Jesus says, this cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant. In my blood.
Now to understand what Jesus is saying here, we have to back up and go all the way back as we always do to the Old Testament because this comes straight out of the Old Testament.
So I'm going to rehearse for you about I don't know. 1,500 years of history in about four minutes, okay?
So just stick with me. Israel, the nation of Israel, had reached the peak of its glory under the reign of King Solomon. Who was the son of David? That's in 1 Kings chapter 4. But what had begotten well ended with tragedy.
Solomon, the son of David, proved to be unfaithful. 1 Kings chapter 11, it says that he turned to foreign gods and had many wives, and because of that, his heart was turned from God, and the glory of the kingdom of Israel literally fell straight off the cliff. 1 Kings 11. And so from 1 Kings 11 forward, the history of Israel is in a downward spiral. It is in a crash-collision course.
And so you know the story. Israel splits into two kingdoms, both the north and the south. And during this period of redemptive history, the Lord sends a long line of prophets. And you should think of prophets as like. Attorneys, there were covenant lawyers, there were covenant attorneys.
And God sent them to prosecute his lawsuit against his unfaithful people, Israel. And so over and over, the Lord's prophets remind Israel of the conditions of the Mosaic, which is an old covenant. And these prophets warn the people of their imminent destruction according to this covenant if they don't repent. Yet, both kingdoms continue to spiral down, and they eventually both go into exile. The northern kingdom goes into exile in Assyria, and they're never heard of ever again.
They never come back, lost forever. During the southern kingdom's captivity in Babylon, which was called the Babylonian captivity, the Lord also used his prophets to bring a message not only of judgment, but of hope.
So let me give you an example of the prophet Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah had witnessed multiple deportations of Judeans from the tribe of Judah to Babylon, and he had also witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem temple. And so Jeremiah's prophetic ministry was most likely directed toward the people of the southern kingdom of the tribe of Judah. And it was directed to these people while they were awaiting the end of their exile and the return to the land. And so during this very difficult time in Israel's history, Jeremiah foretold of a coming time of restoration and renewal through the arrival of the promised Messiah.
He was promising them through a message of hope that the offspring of Abraham and that the son of David is coming. Listen to what he says. He says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king, and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. And then he says in Jeremiah 33, he says, if I have not established my covenant with day and night in the fixed order of heaven and earth, then I will reject the offspring of Jacob and David my servant, and will not choose one of his offspring to rule over the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then he says, for I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy on them.
So, these are people who are in Babylonian exile, and God is making these promises that a righteous branch of David. The son of David, the offspring of Abraham, he is going to come and he's going to bring renewal and restoration to the people of God through having mercy on them. And so even though God's people had broken this old Mosaic covenant, God would not forget his unconditional promises that he made to Abraham. He's filled with steadfast love forevermore. And so Jeremiah foretells of a new covenant.
That the Lord promises to make with his people. And in this new covenant, the Holy Spirit would work to bring about a new humanity and a new creation. And Jeremiah says that this new covenant would not merely be a restoration of the Mosaic covenant. He says, in fact, it will not even be like this old Mosaic covenant that could be broken. Instead, he says that this new covenant would be something altogether new, as Jesus would later say in Matthew chapter 9.
This new covenant will be like new wine that must be placed in new wineskins. And so this is the context by which you have to understand Jeremiah's prophecy in Jeremiah chapter 31 concerning the new covenant. Listen and take your Bibles to turn to Jeremiah chapter 31. And let's read verses 31 through 34. This is what God, through the prophet Jeremiah, says to the people of Israel who are in exile in Babylon.
He says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant. With the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Look, verse 32: not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant that they broke. Though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them. and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people. That's the promise of Genesis 17, 7, the Abrahamic covenant.
I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor, and each his brother say, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity. And I will remember their sin no more. I'll no longer hold their sin against them forevermore.
And so this hope of this new covenant filled the hearts of God's people. And so when the southern tribe of Judah returns to the land after 70 years of captivity in Babylon, The remnant of God's people from the tribe of Judah, this little tiny remnant left of the southern kingdom, they are waiting in great expectation for the promised Messiah, the son of David, the offspring of Abraham, who will come and inaugurate this new covenant. Fast forward now, five hundred years later. to the time of Passover. On the night Paul says when Jesus was betrayed.
And Luke tells us in Luke 22 that our Lord instituted his new covenant meal. Then And that brings us to Luke 22. That's the whole context for which you understand what Jesus is doing here. In Luke 22, Jesus says, This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. With the coming of Jesus, the offspring of Abraham, the son of David.
The true Israel, the new covenant, the new creation, the new humanity has arrived, and he has brought it through this meal. Luke 22 teaches us that the meaning and significance of this supper must be defined by its covenantal context. Because Christ institutes this as a covenantal meal. This is the cup, this cup which is poured out for you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
This is a covenantal meal. The whole context is God's covenant. And so Luke tells us that Jesus institutes the new covenant, which is the Lord's Supper. As he concludes and fulfills the old covenant, feast which is Passover. This is why we have said that Jesus' institution of this covenantal meal is not to be understood entirely as an independent and new act that's never happened before in history.
Covenant now, listen with me carefully because this sets the whole thing up for you. Covenantal meals. We're an essential component of international treaty-making events in the ancient Near East. And these international peacemaking treaties that were accompanied with covenantal meals where there was both eating and drinking. Are particularly recorded in the Old Testament scriptures in the history of Israel itself.
The overall context of the Bible is set in an unfolding and an intriguing drama of international politics. We might say that the Bible gives to us the story of the treaty of the great king. The relationship that God has with us, who were his former enemies on the battlefield, who are now received as adopted sons, who are highly favored. This relationship that God has with us is a matter of foreign relations. In the ancient Near East, International treaty-making rights involved the cutting of animals in half.
We have a very clear example of a typical ancient Near Eastern treaty-making rite. And the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis chapter 15. Listen carefully. In Abraham's vision, God, who is pictured as the great king, God is walking by himself through severed halves of the animals, thus by doing this, calling down upon himself the curses of the covenant if he should violate his promise.
So, as he walks through these severed halves of these animals, all by himself, as the great king. He's saying, May the same fate befall me should I fail to keep the promises I make in this covenant to you. God is solely responsible for the fulfillment and success of the Abrahamic covenant. Not only did these far eastern international treaties that kings would make, involve cutting of animals in half. But they also listen, they involved.
covenantal meals. These covenantal meals that would be celebrated, listen. They ratified and confirmed the treaty that was made.
Now, so for example, fast forward to our day in the 21st century, when the President of the United States has stayed dinners with foreign dignitaries and nations. State dinners usually follow the signing of an international treaty that we make. Listen carefully. In the ancient Near East. The covenantal meal was the signing ceremony itself.
And so, this is how we understand Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel in Exodus 24: that when God made the covenant, the old covenant with them at Mount Sinai. They go up on the mountain, and listen, they're eating and drinking with the Lord on the top of Mount Sinai. And so, this theme of eating and drinking in a covenantal meal continues in the Passover. And in the Passover, as God's people would, future generations of Israelites participate in this Passover meal, they would literally, by faith, participate. And they're passing safely under God's sword of judgment because of the blood on the doorpost.
They were participating in that. Future generations would participate in that past act. And then we come to Luke's gospel. And this theme of eating and drinking in the presence of the Lord at a covenantal meal is carried forward into the New Testament here in Luke's Gospel. Luke 22, Jesus institutes his new covenant meal, and this new covenant meal ratifies, it confirms his new covenant.
This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. This is the biblical context for how we understand what Jesus is giving to us in this simple little meal.
So, this brings up two vital questions, important questions that I want to briefly explore and answer with you this morning. Here's the first question: What is new? about this new covenant. And second, how does this covenantal meal ratify or confirm the new covenant to us?
So, first of all, what is new? What is Jesus doing? This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. What is new about it?
Well here, first When the scriptures speak of the old covenant, This does not refer to the Old Testament. Are you with me? I know this is a lot of new stuff. When the scriptures speak of the Old Covenant, it does not refer to the Old Testament. Everything prior to the new covenant in the Old Testament is not the old covenant.
The new covenant is new. What's new about it? The new covenant is new in relationship to the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant. The old covenant refers to the Mosaic covenant that God made with the nation of Israel on Mount Sinai. We just read that in Jeremiah 31.
Listen again carefully. Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 31, in the passage that we read: Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant. Listen. This new covenant is not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. That is the Mosaic covenant.
This means that the Abrahamic covenant is not the old covenant, even though it is in the Old Testament. Paul makes this crystal clear in the book of Galatians. In Galatians, Paul clearly argues for this incredibly vital point. Abraham is not Moses. Don't ever forget that.
Listen carefully. Abraham is not Moses. In Galatians chapter 3, verses 16 through 18, Paul says that this unconditional covenant of promise, the Abrahamic covenant, Was never changed when God, four hundred and thirty years later, Added the covenant that he made with Israel at Mount Sinai, the Mosaic covenant.
So the first thing we note about what is new about the New Covenant is that the New Covenant is new in relationship to the Old Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant. It is not new in relation to the Old Testament itself. Second, what is new about the new covenant? The mediator of the new covenant is Jesus, not Moses. Listen to the Apostle John in John chapter 1, verse 17.
He says, for the law, the Mosaic covenant, was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized. through Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 8, verse 6, he says, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old covenant. He says in the old, as the covenant that Jesus mediates is better.
The covenant that Jesus mediates from Moses is better than Moses. It's better than the old covenant. Why? Because the new covenant is enacted on better promises. We're going to come back to that.
So that's what's new about the new covenant. Jesus, not Moses, is the mediator of this covenant, the new covenant. Third, The new covenant blesses rather than curses. The old Mosaic covenant was based on law and required national obedience of Israel if Israel was to receive the temporal blessings promised in the Mosaic covenant. The condition for receiving blessings is spelled out in Deuteronomy 28, which promises, do this and you will be blessed, or it threatens, do this and you will be cursed.
You can just read all of it. It's just like, do this, do this, do this, or don't do this, don't do this. It just goes on and on and on and on. It is the ultimate health and wealth prosperity gospel.
Okay. But in contrast to the new covenant, it is based on God's unconditional promise to save sinners for Christ's sake alone. Listen to the promises that Jeremiah says the new covenant brings. I will be their God and they shall be my people. That is a direct quote from Genesis 17, 7, the Abrahamic covenant.
That is not quoting Moses. That is quoting Abraham. Abraham is not Moses. Listen to this promise of the new covenant. I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember, I'll never hold against them, their sins ever again.
That is never said of Moses. The old covenant, the Mosaic covenant, never once, anywhere in scripture, ever promises the forgiveness and mercy of God. No Old Testament believer ever looked to Moses and said, Oh, Moses, mercy. Not one time.
So, in bringing the Old Covenant to an end and fulfilling it here in Luke 22, Jesus completely reverses the nature of the old covenant. Listen carefully. Instead of the blood which is dashed on the people to seal the covenant at Sinai, which confirmed their promise to do everything prescribed by the Mosaic Old Covenant. Jesus inaugurates the new covenant. This is my body, which is given for you.
This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. As God made the covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, all of Israel was gathered before God in Exodus 24, and Moses read to them the terms of the old covenant, and the people said, All this we will do. Yeah, right. Just keep reading.
Yeah. All this we will do. And Moses takes the blood and he splashes it. Guess on who? Them.
If you don't keep the promise you just made, may this be the fate of you. The blood be on you for your performance. Jesus reverses this and he says, If I don't keep the promise to forgive your sin, may the blood of this covenant be on me. It's my blood. And so, this new covenant assures us that Christ has satisfied the demands of the law on our behalf.
This new covenant assures us that even though we are an unrighteous sinner, Even though our conscience accuses us daily of never keeping God's law perfectly, once. We are justified on the basis of Christ's imputed righteousness to us. We are justified so much so. that it is as if I had never had sin. Nor committed any sin, and as if I had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me.
And so, because Christ is a mediator in the new covenant, we never have to fear God's judgment and wrath ever again. Why? Why do we not have to fear it? Here's why. Because in the New Covenant, we do not relate to God on the basis of our own performance like in the old covenant, listen, but on the basis of Christ's performance for us in the new covenant.
That's how we relate to God. Fourth, the new covenant is new because the new covenant provides an internal renewal of the Holy Spirit. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul compares and contrasts the old covenant and the new covenant. It's a powerful chapter. Listen to what he says in chapter 3, verse 6, when he compares the old Mosaic covenant with the new covenant that Jesus institutes.
He says that God has made us adequate servants of a new covenant. He's talking about his apostolic ministry to go forth and preach the gospel and plant churches. God has made us servants of the new covenant, not of the letter, not of the old covenant, not of the Mosaic covenant, but of the spirit, of the new covenant. He says, for the letter kills, the old covenant kills. But the spirit, the new covenant, gives life.
And so in this context, when he says letter, he's referring to the Mosaic covenant, the old covenant of Moses. He says the Mosaic covenant kills sinners because the Mosaic covenant commands sinners to perform God's will without granting them the ability and power to do it. It's like Pharaoh when he told the children of Israel in Egypt: go make bricks, but I'm not going to give you mud and straw to make bricks. How do you make bricks if you don't Receive the material to make it. You can't.
And so Pharaoh is like a metaphor for God's law that tells you, be holy, but I can't because it doesn't give me the power. It just tells me to do that. And so Paul says, this old covenant, the letter it kills, which is why in verse 7 of 2 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul refers to the Mosaic covenant. Quote, he calls it, listen, the ministry of death. And then in verse 9, he calls the Mosaic covenant, the old covenant, the ministry of condemnation.
And so this old Mosaic covenant required an obedience that no sinner could achieve, and it condemned all who failed to achieve that obedience. Deuteronomy 27, 26, Paul quotes it in Galatians 3, verse 10, and he says, For all who rely on the works of the law, on the works of the old covenant, are under a curse. For it is written in the Mosaic covenant, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. But then he contrasts the old covenant, 2 Corinthians 3, with the work of the Holy Spirit. And he says, the Spirit, the new covenant, the Holy Spirit working with the new covenant gives life.
He says, quote, the Spirit gives life. In the Nicene Creed, what do we confess? We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. The Holy Spirit, the new covenant, produces in God's people that which they are incapable of producing themselves. Concerning the promise of the new covenant, listen to what the prophet Ezekiel says.
He says in Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 26 and 27, he promises, I will give you a new heart. And put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances. It's the promise of the new covenant. And so with the new covenant, the Holy Spirit brings the new creation into the present.
And Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. And so that's what's new about the new covenant. Fifth, the new covenant, unlike the old covenant, what is new about the new covenant?
The new covenant includes all nations. includes all people groups. The old Mosaic covenant was made solely with Mount Sinai. with Israel. That's why, like on the Lord's, on the National Day of Prayer, everybody quotes 2 Chronicles 7:14.
If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray in Dharma and seek my face, then I'll heal their land, right? Has nothing to do with America and the National Day of Prayer. Nothing. Because America was not at Mount Sinai. We weren't under the Mosaic covenant.
Under the new covenant, there is a great expansion of Israel's borders to the ends of the earth, and it includes all people, groups, and nations. In the new covenant, the Holy Spirit working through the gospel, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 14, Paul says, is making one new man between believing Jews and Gentiles out of every tribe and language and people and nation. John says in Revelation chapter 5, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. Fixed. The new covenant is permanent.
What is new about this new covenant? It's permanent, it's forever, it's eternal. The old Mosaic covenant was temporary. It was designed by God to be replaced. The moment that covenant was made, Moses tells Israel right after, read it in Deuteronomy.
You will break this. How you like that? The old covenant could be broken. Jeremiah has already told us this. Listen carefully.
I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant that they broke. The old Mosaic covenant could be broken. It was designed by God to be temporary. Moses was an imperfect, sinful, temporary mediator of the old covenant.
I don't know about you, but I don't want Moses mediating God to me. The author of Hebrews is writing about this in the book of Hebrews, and he says, he reasons, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. Listen, for if that first covenant, the old covenant, had been faultless, Perfect. Eternal. Not able to be broken.
If it had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second new covenant.
So, in contrast to the old covenant, the new covenant cannot be broken because it's enacted on better promises and it is founded by a better mediator. Christ is the perfect, sinless, eternal mediator of the new covenant. Let me ask you a question. What does Jesus live for? Yeah, it sounds like the Anthony Robbins Self-help, what do you live for?
You know, and get the big smile and everything. What do you live for? What does Jesus live for? Listen to Hebrews 7, 25. Jesus is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.
Jesus lives to eternally mediate you safely to the Father forever. That's what he lives for. And thus was given to us in the new covenant.
So this brings us very quickly, and this point is easy. How was the Lord's Supper a ratification or confirmation of the new covenant? We'll go back to what I've talked to you about, international peace treaties, right? Peacemaking rights between kings of nations. For they had covenantal meals together, where they would eat and drink together.
Just like the covenantal meals in the Old Testament, our Lord's new covenant meal is intended to be a perpetual ratification, a continual international peace treaty with his enemies. The great king is standing at his covenantal meal, telling you perpetually and forever, confirming to your heart, peace. This covenantal meal is a perpetual ratification of God's peace treaty with his enemies. In the Passover meal, what did God do? God sees the sign, he sees the blood on the doorposts, and he remembers his covenant, he remembers his promise to what?
Pass over the Israelite households. Likewise, in this new covenant meal, God sees the signs of bread and wine and he remembers. He remembers his covenant promise to pass over, that is, to forgive us all our sins. Even listen, the sinful nature with which we struggle our whole life. This meal, this new meal, this new covenant meal, not only serves to assure us of God's favor in Christ.
But this new covenant meal is reminding God through these signs of bread and wine of His commitment, of His covenant promise to forgive our sins. For Christ's sake, listen, even when we as believers, our sins provoke his anger. He looks at the bread and wine, the signs, and he says, There is therefore now no condemnation for you because you're in my son Christ. This new covenant is dependent on Jesus' performance, not our performance. In this upper room on the night before his crucifixion at the Passover meal, Jesus took bread and he said, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
He says, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is offering himself at this point up to death for you. In the upper room, what is Jesus doing? He is effectively splashing the blood of the covenant on himself. He is bearing the curse of the covenant that lies upon us, upon himself.
He is drinking the cup of wrath on the cross so that we can drink the cup of salvation. This cup that you're about to drink is the cup of salvation for the forgiveness of your sins. It is not the cup of wrath. It is not a table of judgment. It is a 150-proof gospel for you.
And so, in this new covenant meal, Jesus, the great king, seals his fate. As he calls down the curses of the covenant upon his own head, and as he walks down the Via Dolorosa, the path of suffering. the path of his crucifixion, carrying his cross, do you know what Jesus is doing? He is walking by himself alone through the severed halves of the animals. of the Abrahamic covenant.
He is voluntarily offering himself as the sacrificial Lamb of God who is the great king saying, let the fate befall on me if I fail to forgive your sin. This is the blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Let me ask you one question as we bring this to a conclusion. When you think about the forgiveness of your sins, And you don't have to answer out loud, but just answer it. You think in the past tense, don't you?
Listen carefully, the Apostles' Creed. What do you believe concerning the forgiveness of sins? That God, because of Christ's satisfaction, Will no longer remember my sins. He won't hold them against me forevermore.
Well, what else do you believe? Nor my sinful nature against which I have to struggle all my life. Oh, yeah, God forgave me, past tense, but the sinful nature that I'm struggling with, and man, I really sinned this week. I'm not sure. What do you believe about the forgiveness of sins?
That God, for Christ's sake, doesn't hold against me my sinful nature. by which I'm struggling with every day of my life.
So, when you sin this week as a Christian, God's not holding that against you for Christ's sake. And that meal tells you that's true. This is true for you. Why? Why does he not hold your sinful struggle against you?
Here's why, because he graciously imputes to me the righteousness of Christ so that I may never come into condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. None. Past, present, and future, God forgives all your sin, past, present, and future. And that's what this table is announcing to you, to confirm to your heart, so that you will believe that's true.
And so, through the preaching of the gospel, through the administration of this new covenant meal, the Holy Spirit comes in great power. And he reassures our hearts, telling us what our own hearts cannot. That Jesus has satisfied the demands of the law and the old covenant, and he's redeemed us from its curse forever. That Jesus has given to us a righteousness and life through the body and blood of our servant, Savior, Jesus Christ. That the Holy Spirit through this meal causes us to commune with the whole Christ, both humanity and deity in one person, feeding us with the body and blood of our Lord who is in heaven, who grants to us the forgiveness of our sins.
And so just as the preached gospel is our Lord's new covenant, Promise. This sacrament is our Lord's New Covenant meal. And by it, the Holy Spirit powerfully assures my heart. That the new covenant is true. I will forgive their sins.
I will remember their sins no more. I will be merciful towards them and forgive their iniquity, and I will be their God. And they will be my people. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this new covenant meal. We thank you for the great promises that we receive in it. Father, we stand in great gratitude.
For what you have done for us. And so, as we come to your table this morning, I pray that the power of your Holy Spirit would come and feed all of us. Assuring our hearts of what our hearts cannot tell ourselves. that we have the forgiveness of sins for Christ's sake. Amen.
Thanks for listening to the Hymn We Proclaim podcast with John Fawnville. Hymn We Proclaim is a ministry of John Fawnville of Fairmount Church in Jacksonville, Florida. You can check out his church at paramountchurch.com. We look forward to next time.
