Passage: Mark 14:22-26
The Big Idea
At the last Passover, Jesus turned a feast of remembrance into the inauguration of a New Covenant. The Passover lamb was about to be fulfilled once and for all, so the focus shifted to the bread and the cup: His body broken and His blood poured out. The New Covenant is God’s one-sided promise of grace, paid for with the most precious blood in the universe. It brings forgiveness, a personal relationship with God, and His inner work in our hearts. Every day we choose: believe, or bail like Judas.
Last Meals
Today we look at the most famous meal in history: the Last Supper.
In American prisons, a condemned prisoner is often allowed to choose a last meal. Some choices are surprising. One man asked for a burrito and Mexican rice. Another for two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Another ordered fried chicken, fried shrimp, fries and strawberries. One requested six fried eggs, sixteen strips of bacon, hash browns, a steak, pineapple sherbet, three kinds of soda, hot sauce, coffee… and four antacid tablets.
Jesus knew this was His last meal too. And what He chose to do with it changed the world.
Bail or Stay?
Let’s set the scene. Jesus had just spoken lovingly with Judas, even knowing Judas was betraying Him. Jesus loved him and honored him to the end. Then Judas left the dinner (John 13:30).
Confronted with his betrayal, Judas bailed as soon as he could. He knew enough about Jesus’ person and mission to make his decision, and he decided he would never put his trust in Jesus, even though Jesus had nothing but love, grace and mercy for him.
Jesus was about to unveil a whole New Covenant, a whole new way to know God, receive His blessings and be filled with His very presence. And Judas walked out!
God doesn’t override your will. You’re free to choose. So will you bail like Judas? Or stay like the other disciples, to hear His good news, His New Covenant, all that Jesus is going to do for you?
What Is a Covenant?
A covenant is a binding agreement. There was an old covenant, the Law given through Moses. It said, in effect: keep My commandments, and you’ll live and be blessed (Leviticus 18:5; Deuteronomy 28). The problem was on our side. After centuries, no one kept it. (God knew that would happen.)
That’s why God set up the sacrificial system: to show His people that they needed something besides the Law to deal with their sin. It pointed them to a perfect sacrifice that would come one day. Jesus is that sacrifice.
He is the different way to have a relationship with God, based not on how well we keep the Law, but on His work and our faith in it.
Greek had two main words for an agreement:
- Synthēkē: an agreement between equals, each with obligations.
- Diathēkē: an arrangement whose terms are set by one party, for the benefit of another.
The New Testament uses the second word, diathēkē. The New Covenant is an arrangement God made on our behalf and then extended to us. That’s grace.
The Bread and the Cup (Mark 14:22-25)
As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “Take; this is My body.” Then He took a cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And He said, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
For centuries, Israel celebrated Passover by sacrificing a lamb, remembering how God saved them in Egypt through the lamb’s blood. In this one weekend, Jesus changed everything.
- He would become the true Passover Lamb, so the feast would never need another lamb. When the real thing arrives, you don’t need the pictures anymore.
- With no lamb, the focus of the meal shifted to the bread and the cup.
- The lamb’s sacrifice was in the past, but we need its effects today. We remember the Lamb, and Jesus teaches us to commune with Him through the bread and the cup in the present.
His sacrifice as the Lamb of God fulfilled everything the old covenant required. The New Covenant stands on the finished work of that sacrifice. The price was paid, and it wasn’t cheap.
In one act, Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of the Old and established the New.
The bread
The unleavened bread used at Passover is a striking picture of Christ:
- It’s unleavened. In Scripture, leaven often pictures sin. Jesus was without sin.
- It’s striped and browned by the fire. Jesus bore the stripes and the fire of God’s judgment against sin.
- It’s pierced with holes. Jesus was pierced by nails and a spear.
- It’s broken. Jesus’ body was broken for our sin.
The bread doesn’t become His physical flesh, but it’s a vivid representation of it.
Peter says He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:24).
One more thing: unleavened bread is wonderful fresh, but it quickly turns hard. That reminds us to feed on Jesus, the Bread of Life, every day: learning, thinking about Him, and living by His truth. We can’t just store up the Word and carry it around unused, saving it for some future spiritual hunger. If we don’t feed daily, we’ll reach into the basket and find bread as hard as a rock.
The cup
- The price of the New Covenant was nothing less than His blood, the most valuable thing in the universe: the precious blood of the Son of God. That’s what it cost to offer us grace. Free forgiveness and transformation for us required an infinite cost for Him. Blood means life, and the life of God was the price.
- Wine is produced through crushing. Grapes are picked and trampled to release their juice.
- Jesus was about to be crushed under the combined weight of religious Israel and mighty Rome. More importantly, He was about to be crushed by His own Father’s judgment against sin (Isaiah 53:10).
- On the cross, Jesus was made sin for us, and the full force of God’s wrath against sin was poured out on Him. Paul says God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
What the New Covenant Gives
What is the New Covenant, and why does it matter? It’s everything we need to become all God intended us to be. It’s called grace.
Through Jeremiah, God promised a new covenant, not like the one He made with their fathers when He led them out of Egypt, which they broke, though He was a husband to them. God would write His law on their hearts. He would be their God, and they would be His people. No one would need to urge a neighbor to “know the LORD,” because everyone, from the least to the greatest, would know Him. And He would forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sin (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
- Forgiveness. “I will remember their sin no more.”
- A personal relationship with God. “They shall all know Me.”
- God’s inner work. “I will write My law on their hearts.”
In every season of life, the New Covenant provides everything we need, both to begin a relationship with God and to grow in it. All of it was accomplished by what Jesus did on the cross.
The cross is the living source of God’s grace for me:
- Whenever I’m angry, sad or discouraged, I run to the cross and remember His love and compassion for me.
- Whenever I’m proud, I run to the cross and remember my sin and its great cost.
- Whenever I’m tempted, victory is found in one place: the cross.
It’s meant to be my source of life, my everything.
The only question is: will I believe in Jesus and what He did on the cross, or will I bail like Judas? Every day, in every circumstance, we choose to believe or to bail.
There’s no other way to live, no other path to the life God intends for you. All other paths lead to destruction.
That’s why the Lord’s Supper matters so much. It reminds us of the Way. Jesus is the Way: Jesus on the cross, giving His body and His blood, the New Covenant of grace. And the living Jesus is with us in the Spirit as we share this meal. Communion is a delight to anyone who truly knows Him.
A Song on the Way Out (Mark 14:26)
When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
The Passover traditionally closed with songs from Psalms 113-118, which celebrate the rejected stone that became the cornerstone and call us to rejoice in the day the LORD has made (Psalm 118:22-24). Jesus sang those words on His way to Gethsemane.
Grace Takeaway
At His last meal, Jesus didn’t ask for anything for Himself; He gave Himself. The bread is His body broken, the cup His blood poured out, and together they announce a New Covenant: forgiveness, a relationship with God, and a heart He writes on from the inside. Judas walked out before he heard it. Don’t bail. Stay at the table, feed on Jesus every day, and live from the finished work of the cross.
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