Remembrance
A Devotional Communion Service
Study Guide, July 17, 2016
Pastor Clay Olsen
The Bread
Luke 22:15-20- “And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” 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.” 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.” NASU
Every year they remembered the covenant that God had made with the people when He essentially ‘adopted’ them as the children of Israel and gave them a covenant.
Ex 24:3-”Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do!” NASU
Ever since the Fall of Man, there has been that conflict within man of ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’.
There had to be ceremonial laws and sacrificial offerings to all foreshadow the fact that hope was coming; or, ‘The Hope’ was coming…
Heb 10:1-2- “For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.” 10:11-14- “Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” NASU
Now the final Paschal Lamb says to the Disciples, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.”
It would be the last blood from the last Passover Lamb that would be needed to be shed, because this blood from this Lamb would do something that no other blood from any other sacrificial lamb could ever do, and that is; ‘Take away’ the sins of the people.
It was a ‘new covenant’ that God was making with His Disciples in the Upper Room, and a ‘new covenant’ that God was making with us Disciples in this room.
The debt of our sins would be fully paid when the Lamb of God was slain for us, in our place, so that we could have forgiveness from God and eternal life in Jesus Christ.
The Cup
At the Last Supper Jesus was informing His Disciples that He was now ushering in the era of the New Covenant…Jeremiah had spoken about that 600 years earlier.
Jer 31:31-34- “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “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,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “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,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” NASU
One thing to specifically note is that in the New Covenant God promised to internalize His Word in His people.
In the New Covenant the Holy Spirit’s presence will be the “indwelling of the Spirit”.
That part of the New Covenant is what Jesus told the Disciples was now going to be in effect with them and with all Disciples in the Church Age.
John 14:16-17- “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” NASU
There hadn’t been a New Covenant since the day that Moses walked down Mt. Sinai. So when would it start?
“This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in My blood.”
The old covenant had been written in stone by the hand of God, but the new covenant would be written in blood from the body of Jesus.
The new covenant would be based on the sacrificial offering of the Creator Himself.
John 1:10-13- “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” NASU
The provision for the complete atonement, an eternal covering and taking away of the just penalty of sin was now available to all, but it wasn’t automatic. It has always been for ‘as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God’.