Jesus is the Passover Lamb of the New Covenant

Jesus is the Passover Lamb of the New Covenant

Maundy Thursday

INI

Christians know good and well the important days of the church year – that being Christmas and Easter. Christmas, the time being when God incarnated into flesh to be a servant to men. Easter, the time when Christ was vindicated by the Father from an unjust death. But here’s the thing: Christmas and Easter don’t mean much without Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. What is the Christian Significance for Maundy Thursday? Why is today every bit as significant as Christmas in the life of Christ and the Church? Simply, it’s because today marks the day when the old passed away and the new has come. It marks the completion of the old covenant, and the establishment of a new one.

We call today “Maundy” Thursday, because Maundy comes from the Latin word “mandatuum” which means “command”. As we observe from our Gospel text, Jesus gave a new command to His disciples on this night. He commanded them to love one another as He has loved them. In this way, He taught His disciples that their lives are marked by service – for just as Jesus served His disciples by washing their feet, so also are we to do unto others. For a servant is not greater than his master.

Yet, Jesus also gave another new command on this night. And He gave it on a night when the observing something old. During the Passover, Jesus said: “Take, eat. This is my body” and “Take, drink this cup is the NEW COVENANT in my blood.” The old has passed away, and Jesus has brought the new.

In this sanctuary, you’re present with Jesus tonight – just like the disciples were in the Upper Room. And you’re about to receive the benefits of this new covenant in your eating and drinking of Christ, the Passover Lamb. For in Christ’s own instituting words, it shows us that He gives the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Because Jesus is the True Passover Lamb in the New Covenant.

The old covenant is seen in the Old Testament reading from Exodus 12. That meal provides for us the context of the Upper Room meal with the disciples. When God’s people were slaves in Egypt, they were commanded on the 14^th day of the month to sacrifice a lamb and roast it that the sacrifice may be eaten. They were to smear its blood over the doorposts of their homes. And when the angel of death that passed over each home that night, saw the blood over the door, then the firstborn in the house was spared. Because the blood of the Lamb redeemed them.

That was the context of the meal that Jesus and His disciples ate on Maundy Thursday. But this feast and observance wasn’t meant to be permanent. Rather, the eating of this Passover Lamb was meant to point to another Lamb: which is Jesus. Jesus is the true Passover Lamb, and He is the fulfillment of all those slaughtered Passover Lambs from centuries of observance.

Yet this Passover meal was the meal Jesus celebrated with His disciples in the Upper Room. Yet it wasn’t the ordinary things happening like years prior. It wasn’t the typical seder meal anymore. The ritual departed from the normal flow at the end of the Supper. Because Jesus gave something different to His disciples. He mandated something new. “He took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup after supper saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

            This is what Jesus gave His disciples on that night. And we are here to be served by our Master with these same divine gifts. For the true Passover Lamb, Jesus, had His blood smeared upon the cross. Whosoever is marked by this blood of the Passover Lamb shall not see the judgment of the Father. For through this blood, God delivers us from sin, death, and the devil.

And here our Lord gives this new command to you even still to this day. He gives Himself, the true Passover Lamb – each week – that you may never forget of His saving love. And that you may never despair of death. For the Lamb of God has taken away the sin of the world. So, take and eat His body. Take and drink the blood of your Passover Lamb, shed for you.

There were many covenants, or what we might call promises, made between God and His people in the Old Testament. He made one with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. But the old covenants made with these men were never meant to stand alone. They were always to find fulfillment. They were always to point forward to the incarnation of God who took on human flesh to save all humanity from their sins. So, when Jesus says, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood” – Jesus says that because the blood of lambs and goats are no longer pleasing to the Father. Jesus blood, smeared on that prickly cross, is pleasing to the Father. This blood brings about a new promise.

This new covenant in Jesus’ blood isn’t plan B. It was always God’s plan. It was prophesied before Jesus in Jeremiah 31, which 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, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them our of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But 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. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “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.”

            This new covenant is sealed with the blood of our Paschal Lamb. And by His blood, we know God. Our sins are forgiven. And God writes His will for us on our hearts, as we live under this new covenant. The old has passed away and the new has come.

The old covenant was marked with human error and sin. Mankind constantly broke the old covenants. It reminds us of the old Adam that each of us have – the part of us that clings on to and loves sin. It reminds us of the original sin we’ve inherited from Adam, and how the desires of the old Adam are corrupted and insincere. They don’t look to God as the author of life.

But here now with the new covenant, there’s true transformation and renewal as we receive the blood of this covenant. For in the Lord’s Supper, Jesus’ body is given and His blood is poured out for us – it cleanses us, forgives us, and sanctifies us that in the forgiveness received, we may have a holy desire and will to please God in what we say and do, not transgressing against this new covenant which God has established for us. So, we eat and drink in this new covenant with hearts that trust in the work of God. And through it, our faith is strengthened and renewed time and time again, as God works on our behalf, so that the evil one would not snatch us out of God’s hand.

In Christ, the Passover Lamb who established the new covenant in His blood shed on the cross, gives Himself to you now. So we need not fear the angel of death, for our hearts are marked with the blood of the Lamb.

INI

Pastor Joshua Ralston