The Covenant Meal: Mark 14:22-26

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The phrase “familiarity breeds contempt” is probably nowhere more appropriately applied than in the Christian observance of the Lord’s Supper. For most of us, we have participated in it so often that much of its meaning has been lost. In contrast to those churches who observe Communion each Sunday, Baptists and other evangelical churches have opted to have the observance on a less frequent basis to prevent this from happening. But it happens nonetheless. And so today, as we come to the passage where Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper with His disciples, our aim is to rediscover the significance of this meal as we examine His words and actions on the evening prior to His death.

The meal we now refer to as His Last Supper took place during the traditional Jewish celebration of Passover, on the 14th of Nisan on the Hebrew Calendar, which typically falls within March or April on our calendars. Of all the Jewish feasts and festivals, Passover was of greatest theological significance. It commemorated the most miraculous moment in Israel’s history: the exodus from Egypt in the days of Moses. For four hundred years, the people of Israel had been enslaved in Egypt’s bondage. When Moses confronted Pharaoh with the demand to “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go,” Pharaoh increasingly hardened his heart against the Israelites. Therefore, in order to shatter his hardened heart, God sent a series of ten plagues upon the land of Egypt, each one increasing in severity. In the tenth and final plague, God declared that He was going to take the life of every firstborn male child in every household of Egypt. But Israel would be spared this judgment, for they were instructed to sacrifice a lamb. The meat of that lamb would be eaten with unleavened bread in a last supper before they fled their state of slavery for God’s promised land of freedom. And the lamb’s blood was to be smeared on their doorposts. And the Lord promised, “'The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” This is the origin the name Passover. And it happened just as the Lord said it would. And the Lord instructed His people to have an annual meal commemorating this event to continually remind them of what He had done for them.

The original Passover event was, of course, followed by the Red Sea parting in which the Lord miraculously rescued His people and destroyed their pursuers. And then, when the Law of God was made known to the people at Mount Sinai, God reaffirmed His covenant with Israel. In Exodus 24, we read that a great sacrifice was prepared and Moses read to the people the book of the covenant, and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” And when the people affirmed God’s covenant, Moses took the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkled it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

The word covenant is a significant biblical and theological term. A covenant is a binding agreement between two parties which stipulates obligations on both parties. The covenant that God establishes with His people is what might be called a unilateral covenant. That means that God initiates the covenant and accomplishes everything necessary for His people in establishing the covenant. The responsibility of His people is to believe His promises, and walk in faith with Him. God established a covenant with Adam, and established a similar covenant with Noah following the flood. In time, God singled out Abraham to be the recipient of His covenant promises, which He reaffirmed to Isaac, and then to Jacob and his descendants. This covenant was restored under Moses during the Exodus. After David was anointed king over Israel, God furthered His covenant with him. He promised David in 2 Samuel 7 that one of his descendants would occupy an everlasting Kingdom. This promise became the basis of Jewish Messianic expectations that God was going to raise up a deliverer of His people through the line of David. During the days of the Babylonian captivity, when no descendant of David was occupying the throne of Israel, God spoke through His prophet Jeremiah announcing the coming of a New Covenant. He says in Jeremiah 31:31-34, “"Behold, days are coming … when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them …. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days[:] … I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, … for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

More than 500 years elapsed between those words that Jeremiah declared and this final Passover meal that Jesus observed with His disciples. And in this meal, Jesus completely redefines the significance of the Passover meal. Henceforth, for those who believe in Him, it will be a reminder of the new covenant that He has established with His people. The deliverance from Egypt was a miraculous deliverance of a particular nation from the bondage of Egyptian slavery. But the Lord’s Supper commemorates an even greater deliverance – not of a single nation, but of the whole of humanity; and not from the bondage of slavery, but from the greater bondage of sin. And the One who gave the Passover its memorial significance is the same One who exercises divine authority to redefine the observance. Jesus is superior to Moses, His salvation is superior to the Exodus, and His covenant is superior to the covenants which had been established with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David. So, the Lord’s Supper is our Passover celebration wherein we remember that because of the sacrificial blood that was shed and applied to the doorpost of our hearts, God’s wrath and His just judgment will pass over us, and we will enjoy eternity in the glory of God’s presence because of what Christ has done for us. This is our covenant meal.

There in the upper room, Jesus inaugurated the meal of the new covenant with His disciples around the table. And as we read His words, and participate in the Lord’s Supper, we are reminded of our covenant with Him. Every time we observe this memorial meal, we are making proclamations about the covenant Christ has established with us. I want to focus on two of those proclamations today as we look into the words of our text.

I. When we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim the cost of His covenant.

The two elements of the Lord’s Supper are symbols of greater realities. I would imagine that a person with no knowledge of the Christian faith and practice would think we are foolish to consider this a “meal” at all. After all, we only eat a tiny wafer of bread, smaller than a penny, and drink a thimble full of grape juice. But it is not the quantity of food and drink we partake in this meal that is important; rather it is the reality behind these symbols which is important. Our goal in the Lord’s Supper is not to eat until we have had the hunger of our bellies satisfied, but to remember that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins satisfies forever the hunger of our souls. God’s offer of a covenant of salvation is a free gift which His grace extends to us. But though it is offered freely to us, we must not think that it was free or cheap for the Lord to provide. It was a costly sacrifice.

In the original Passover meal, there would be more on the table than just bread and the single cup. There would be bitter herbs reminding the people of their hard labor in Egypt. There would be the main dish of lamb, reminding the people of the sacrifice made for the blood that was applied to the door. The unleavened bread would remind them of Lord’s command to rid themselves of yeast, indicating the literal reality of eating this meal in haste before their flight to freedom and the symbolic reality of ridding themselves of the corruption of Egypt. And there would be four cups. And each of the four cups had special significance. The first cup was the cup of consecration which was drank at the beginning of the meal, indicating that God had consecrated Israel as His people. The second was the cup of affliction, indicating the plagues that were poured out on Egypt. The meal was eaten with this second cup. The third cup was the cup of redemption reminding the people of the deliverance from their bondage.

It was between the second and third cups that Jesus took the unleavened bread and blessed it. This was a prayer of thanksgiving and praise to God uttered before the bread was eaten. And then Jesus broke that flat piece of unleavened bread and gave it to the disciples around the table and said to them, “Take it; this is my body.” Just as this bread was broken, so His body would be broken. Following His betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Bible tells us that Jesus was beaten and spit upon. He was scourged, which is a method of torture in which a whip of several strands, with shards of metal, glass, or stone embedded in each strand, was struck across the victim’s body, and those shards would puncture the flesh, tearing it from the body as the whip was withdrawn. He was crowned with thorns and beaten over the head with a reed, driving the thorns deeply into His brow. And ultimately, He was taken to Golgotha, where His hands, these hands that broke the bread, were driven through with spikes and His feet were likewise nailed to the cross. It happened just as Isaiah prophesied 700 years earlier in the 53rd Chapter of the book that bears his name. He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.

And then He took that third cup, the cup of redemption which symbolized God’s salvation in the Passover, and He gave thanks to God for it before giving it to the disciples. As the disciples were all drinking from this cup, He did NOT point to the events of the past and say “This is the blood of the Lamb which was slain in Egypt.” He rather pointed to the events that were about to unfold and said, “This is My blood of the covenant which is poured out for many.” Just as every covenant was sealed with the shedding of blood, so this covenant would be as well. This covenant was sealed with very blood of its Maker. By the shedding of His blood on the cross, He became the substitute who died in our place and bore the wrath that our sins deserve so that we might be forgiven and reconciled to God. By this blood we are bound to God in the new covenant of Christ. This is the cost of our covenant – His very body and blood, symbolized in the Lord’s Supper by the bread and the fruit of the vine. And each time we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim the cost of the covenant to ourselves, to one another, and to the world around us.

II. When we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim the consummation of His covenant.

You recall that earlier we mentioned that in the Jewish Passover meal, there were four cups: the cup of consecration, the cup of affliction, and we also mentioned the cup of redemption which was the cup Jesus used to symbolize His blood which was shed for us. But what about the fourth cup? The fourth cup was called, “the cup of praise,” and was shared to indicate that the Passover meal was completed. But you will notice that Jesus does not drink this cup with His disciples. Instead, after sharing the third cup, the cup of redemption, He says, “I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.” He foregoes the fourth and final cup, essentially leaving the Passover meal unfinished. And we see this vow being upheld when, on the cross, He was offered wine mixed with myrrh as an anesthetic, but He refused it. What is the significance of this?

The new covenant, which is sealed by the new Passover sacrifice of Jesus Christ, has been depicted in the meal in symbols, but the reality had not yet occurred. Therefore, the new Passover was not completed. The redemption of humanity from sin had not yet been fully accomplished and would not be until He had laid down His life on the Cross. And it was there as He died that Jesus uttered His final word: Tetelestai, a Greek word translated in our Bibles, “It is Finished!” And then, John tells us in his Gospel, Jesus bowed His head and gave up His spirit. Now the redemption of the new Passover that seals us in the new covenant has been fully completed. But still we wait. We wait throughout all these centuries and generations for the day when He returns and consummates the covenant in establishing His perfect and righteous Kingdom on the Earth. We wait through days and months and years of trials and suffering in this fallen world, having His Spirit within us as a pledge of His promise. And we know that in His own time, according to His own perfect purpose, the day is coming when He will return and gather His covenant people to Himself. And when John was given the glorious vision of eternity in the book of Revelation, he tells us that the consummation of the covenant will be celebrated at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. And then and there, when all the elect of God have been gathered into the fold, and the wrongs have all been righted, and the Lord has executed His perfect judgment and those things which we now behold by faith become sight, the fourth and final cup of the covenant meal will be enjoyed together anew with the Lord Jesus in His everlasting Kingdom. And what a cup of praise it will be.

But until then, we gather together regularly and partake of these tokens, these symbolic elements: the bread that represents His broken body; and the third cup of redemption representing His shed blood for our sins. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:26, “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.” In other words, we are looking back in remembrance of the cost of the covenant. Jesus Christ suffered the breaking apart of His own body and the pouring out of His precious blood on Calvary’s cross that you and I may be saved from the bondage of sin. And we are looking ahead in expectation of the consummation of the covenant. This Jesus who died for us was raised up gloriously from the dead and ascended into Heaven where He waits at the right hand of the Father until the day when He returns and establishes His eternal throne of righteousness.

And then Mark tells us that they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives. You might wonder, “What hymn did they sing?” Well, Jewish custom dictates that the Passover meal be concluded with the singing of Psalms 115-118. And in the singing of these Psalms just before walking into His betrayal, arrest, torture, and death, look at the words He sang: Turn to Psalm 115. &

115:17-18 - “The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence; but as for us we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forever. Praise the Lord!”
116:3-4 - “The cords of death encompassed me and the terrors of Sheol came upon me; I found distress and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the Lord: O Lord I beseech You, save my life!”
116:8-9 - “You have rescued my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living”
116:12-13 - “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I shall lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.”
116:15 – “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones.”

Read the amazing words of Psalm 118 that the Lord Jesus sang as He went out into Gethsamane that night.

1 Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good;
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
2 Oh let Israel say,
"His lovingkindness is everlasting."
3 Oh let the house of Aaron say,
"His lovingkindness is everlasting."
4 Oh let those who fear the LORD say,
"His lovingkindness is everlasting."

5 From my distress I called upon the LORD;
The LORD answered me and set me in a large place.
6 The LORD is for me; I will not fear;
What can man do to me?
7 The LORD is for me among those who help me;
Therefore I will look with satisfaction on those who hate me.
8 It is better to take refuge in the LORD
Than to trust in man.
9 It is better to take refuge in the LORD
Than to trust in princes.

10 All nations surrounded me;
In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off.
11 They surrounded me, yes, they surrounded me;
In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off.
12 They surrounded me like bees;
They were extinguished as a fire of thorns;
In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off.
13 You pushed me violently so that I was falling,
But the LORD helped me.
14 The LORD is my strength and song,
And He has become my salvation.

15 The sound of joyful shouting and salvation is in the tents of the righteous;
The right hand of the LORD does valiantly.
16 The right hand of the LORD is exalted;
The right hand of the LORD does valiantly.
17 I will not die, but live,
And tell of the works of the LORD.
18 The LORD has disciplined me severely,
But He has not given me over to death.

19 Open to me the gates of righteousness;
I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to the LORD.
20 This is the gate of the LORD;
The righteous will enter through it.
21 I shall give thanks to You, for You have answered me,
And You have become my salvation.

22 The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief corner stone.
23 This is the LORD'S doing;
It is marvelous in our eyes.
24 This is the day which the LORD has made;
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
25 O LORD, do save, we beseech You;
O LORD, we beseech You, do send prosperity!
26 Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD;
We have blessed you from the house of the LORD.
27 The LORD is God, and He has given us light;
Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.
28 You are my God, and I give thanks to You;
You are my God, I extol You.
29 Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good;
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
Psalms 118:1-29 (NASB)


The Lord Jesus walked out into the darkest night of His life singing these wonderful Psalms of Joy in the Lord. And remember what we read about Him in Hebrews 12:2 – “Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” What is that joy which was set before Him? It was this covenant, sealed in His blood which was poured out for many. He says “for many,” not all. Though the power of His blood is sufficient to redeem all of humanity, ultimately it will only be redemptive to those who turn from sin and self, and call upon Him by faith as Lord and Savior. And many have. Many will. Many in this sanctuary have. But perhaps not all. If you have never received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we invite you to do that this very day. Just as He gave the bread and the cup to those at His table, so He gives His body and His blood to you, and says, “Take it. It is for you.”