THE BOOK OF MATTHEW
Lesson 90, Chapter 26 Continued 2
We open today with what is known as the very intriguing Last Supper. Clearly
from the way in which this event is covered in all the Gospel accounts, each
writer sees it as dramatically meaningful for those who love and trust in Jesus of
Nazareth, as well as one of the great mile markers along the road of Redemption
History. When we closed our study of Matthew 26 last week, we were at the
point that Jesus was revealing that He was about to be betrayed by one of His 12
disciples. Naturally 11 of those disciples were shocked and shaken at this news,
and probably just a little bit confused. The 12
th
disciple, Judas, had to be equally
startled as he wondered how in the world Yeshua could know about the secret
plot he had hatched just hours earlier with some members of the senior
priesthood to turn Christ over to the Sanhedrin in order to condemn and then kill
Him. So as each disciple, in turn, asks if it is going to be him, it finally arrives to
Judas who deceitfully asks the same question. To which Yeshua responds in
affirmation: “the words are yours”.
Now unmasked as the betrayer, apparently Judas remained with the 12 a little
longer, reclined at the table, as Yeshua led a solemn ceremony that we’re going
to dissect today with some tender care. One would think that Judas might have
fled at this point, or there would have been some kind of narrative by Matthew
about the other disciples’ reaction towards their fellow disciple Judas, but weirdly
there is none. Rather things just seem to proceed as though nothing out of the
ordinary had happened. Bible scholars have, for centuries, pondered why
something as obvious and expected as Judas fleeing, or the other disciples
becoming enraged, or Jesus ousting him from His presence wasn’t recorded by
any of the Gospel writers. I won’t present the handful of speculations to try to
explain this other than to say that up to this point what we’ve witnessed is that
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Christ’s close circle of 12 have been self-promoting and self-concerned all
along. I can’t escape the sense that because of this rather unseemly mindset the
innocent 11 were more relieved that they weren’t seen by Jesus as the betrayers
than saddened at the fact that their Master’s life was soon to be snuffed out on
account of the wickedness of Judas. So, they just sort of compartmentalized the
thought of it (something men have always been good at doing, for the better or
worse), and moved on with their meal and the accompanying traditional holiday
ceremony. Yeshua, too, seems to have set this tragic reality aside for the
moment to do something that would become a centerpiece of institutional Church
liturgy; something that much later came to be called Communion.
Let’s read a section of Matthew 26.
READ MATTHEW CHAPTER 26:23 – 30
Verse 23 says that the disciple that dips his matzah in the bowl along with Christ
will be the one that betrays Him. Verse 24 says that Yeshua reveals that this
betrayal will result in His death; however, what lays in store for this betrayer is so
terrible to contemplate that having never been given life by his mother to begin
with would have been far better for him. And verse 25 exposes to the group that
the betrayer is Judas.
I want to pause for just a moment to highlight something that sometimes comes
up among Christians about this scene. It is this: since it was written (it was
prophesied, as in determined-by-God) that the Messiah was to be unjustly killed
upon a cross, and therefore was something that had to happen as the pivotal
moment in Redemption History, then the fact that it was largely due to the actions
of Judas needs to be taken into account with some mercy in mind. That is, it
seems to be that Judas was predestined from ages past to be the facilitator of
this immense tragedy that at the same time is the crown jewel of atonement for
humanity. Therefore, Judas perhaps should be seen as pitiable, and even
exonerated by God for his treason against Yeshua since it always would
necessarily have to fall upon someone close to Him to do the dirty deed. And,
since God doesn’t make mistakes, then for Judas to ever have been admitted to
the group of 12 as one of Jesus’s closest and first disciples, Judas actually was
a Believer who made a lamentable mistake for which he repented and was
forgiven… and what he did wasn’t all that different from another disciple that
gathered the unfortunate nickname of Doubting Thomas.
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By the way, I’ve heard this same logic applied to Hitler, the author of the
Holocaust. That is, it was Hitler that God predetermined to use to drive the Jews
back to their homeland, and it was the guilt of the world for not intervening and
helping the Jews that provided the momentum to officially give back the Holy
Land to the Jews to re-form their ancient nation. Hitler had always identified
himself as a Christian, right up to his suicide. Therefore, in the end, Hitler was
God’s tool as the facilitator of something terrible in order to bring about
something good. One could wonder about this troubling and distasteful
conclusion, except for one thing: Yeshua said this about the one who would
betray Him… “It would be better for him that he had never been born”. This
can only be speaking about the eternal torment that Judas would suffer, and no
doubt for Hitler as well. Bottom line: never, ever, is evil acceptable to God even if
in the end some good evolved from it. Never, ever, is betraying Him, or walking
away from our allegiance to Him, acceptable. While there is no way for me to
forensically discover exactly what Judas’s mind was towards Christ, there is not
one recorded word said about him that implies that when He first became a
disciple of Yeshua that it was not out of sincerity. All we really know about Judas
is that at some point he became disenchanted, or full of doubt, or simply greedy,
and turned away from God’s Son as His Lord and Messiah.
With verse 26, the Last Supper (or Lord’s Supper) ceremony begins. I’ve spent
much of your time over the last few weeks slicing and dicing the biblical Feasts of
Passover and Unleavened Bread in order to bring you to the important
conclusion that it is impossible that the supper we are reading about was the
biblically ordained Passover meal (or seder as it is known within Judaism). Briefly
that is because the Passover meal is always eaten not on Passover but rather on
the first day of the 7-day feast that begins the following day… the Feast
of Matzah. And, the Apostle John tells us that Christ was crucified on Passover
(also known as Preparation Day in that era). It was during the daytime on
Passover afternoon that the Passover lambs were slaughtered and then cooked.
Since you can’t have the Passover meal without the cooked lamb, then there is
no way that the Last Supper was also the biblical Passover meal. Let’s hear
what the Apostle John says about all this.
CJB
John 19:13-18
13
When Pilate heard what they were saying, he brought
Yeshua outside and sat down on the judge's seat in the place called The
Pavement (in Aramaic, Gabta);
14
it was about noon on Preparation Day for
Pesach. He said to the Judeans, "Here's your king!"
15
They shouted, "Take
him away! Take him away! Put him to death on the stake!" Pilate said to
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them, "You want me to execute your king on a stake?" The head cohanim
answered, "We have no king but the Emperor."
16
Then Pilate handed
Yeshua over to them to have him put to death on the stake. So they took
charge of Yeshua.
17
Carrying the stake himself he went out to the place
called Skull (in Aramaic, Gulgolta).
18
There they nailed him to the stake
along with two others, one on either side, with Yeshua in the middle.
And then at the end of John chapter 19 he reinforces this by saying:
CJB
John 19:42
42
So, because it was Preparation Day for the Judeans, and
because the tomb was close by, that is where they buried Yeshua.
John uses the clearest language of all the Gospel accounts to pinpoint the day of
Christ’s crucifixion. As we’ve already learned, Preparation Day was a nickname
used for Passover Day, because Passover Day was when all preparations for the
Passover meal were, by custom, made. That is, because immediately after dark
the now-prepared Passover meal was to be eaten; and since a new day begins
upon sunset, then Passover ends and the 1
st
day of Matzah begins. And the
1
st
day of Matzah is a biblically ordained Great Sabbath (not the regular 7
th
day
Sabbath) in which no work was to be done (including no food preparation). So,
while the Last Supper indeed occurred on Passover, it was at the first hour or two
of the day (which occurs just after sunset); it happened several hours before the
slaughter of the lambs that would occur later on Passover Day.
Notice something else that is sort of buried in this verse from John 19: John says
“it was Preparation Day for the Judeans”. Our eyes sort of skip over this, but
when we pause to reflect upon it, it is kind of an odd thing to say. Who else would
Preparation Day be for? The issue is this: in Greek the word that the CJB
correctly translates as Judeans is Ioudaios. While this is regularly translated into
English as Jew or Jewish, that misses the mark. The literal meaning (depending
on the context) generally speaking is Judean or a person considered to be part of
the tribe of Judah. And, these two identifications are not precisely the same.
A Judean was a resident of the Roman governing district called Judea. It’s like
saying Floridian, or Californian, or New Yorker. The difference is that this term
only applied to a resident of the district of Judea that was also a Hebrew (a
gentile living in Judea probably wouldn’t have called himself a Judean). On the
other hand, a person from the tribe of Judah is technically a Judahite. While
Judahite is a tribal identification, Judean is a national identification. In Yeshua’s
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era, because the tribe of Benjamin had centuries earlier sort of folded with and
into the tribe of Judah, then even a person of the tribe of Benjamin would, by
Christ’s era, usually call themselves a Judahite. Tribal affiliations had become
something of the distant past for the Hebrews, and not a usual part of their
identity or conversation, but it did come up time to time the same way that on
some occasions we all might talk about our distant ancestry. So, when John said
it was Preparation Day for the Judeans we must understand that this meant that
it was Preparation Day for the residents of Judea. In the traditions developed by
the Hebrew residents of Judea, Passover Day at some point became deemed
Preparation Day. But, neither Christ nor His disciples were Judeans; they were
Galileans. Galileans had developed their own set of traditions about celebrating
the feast days that were separate from the Judeans. So, the implication by the
Apostle John is that the Galileans hadn’t nicknamed Passover Day as
Preparation Day; rather that was an innovation of the Judeans. Remember that
all but the Judeans had to pack up and travel anywhere from a few to several
days to come to Jerusalem for the holidays of Passover and Unleavened Bread
so it is easy to see why out of practicality some traditions had to be created to
allow for this.
So; the Lord’s Supper was some kind of a traditional Galilean pre-Passover
event that the Judeans did not practice. Among Christian Bible scholars it is
common for them to observe that when we read of the bowl that Christ says He
and the betrayer would put their bread into, and when we read of partaking the
wine, that we are to equate this to the Passover seder protocol. While we don’t
know for certain, the earliest documentation about the customs and protocols of
the biblical festivals is the Mishna. That problem is that the Mishna was created
in the 3rd century, well after the time of Christ. That said, most of what eventually
became written down were but the long-time practices that until then were
handed down as oral traditions. In other words, it wasn’t that upon the writing
down of the Mishna that all new traditions were suddenly created; rather most of
what we find in it had already been practiced for a long time. Only now it was
finally formally documented. This means that the way Passover and Unleavened
is celebrated today is likely very similar to how it was in Christ’s era. Therefore, it
is often claimed that the bowl the matzah was dipped into may have contained
the salty water used in the ceremony, or perhaps it was the harosheth (a sweet
mixture of apple and honey), or maybe even the bitter herbs. I don’t think it was
any of these because this wasn’t the Galilean version of the Passover seder;
rather it was some kind of pre-Passover meal.
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Further, the CJB saying that it was matzah that was being dipped into the bowl is
David Stern’s assumption. Most other English translations simply say “bread”.
However, the Greek word is cheir, which means neither matzah nor bread; it
means something like “hand”. So literally the idea is that someone dipped their
hand into a bowl meaning they used their hand to dip some unnamed food item
into the bowl. It is only assumed that the thing that was dipped was regular or
unleavened bread, but it is not stated in the passage. Because biblically it
is not required to eat unleavened bread on Passover Day, then different
Christian denominations have interpreted how to do Communion differently.
Some use regular leavened bread, some use only unleavened. The only reason I
would favor unleavened bread is because Jesus identifies this bread with His
body, which is a sinless body, and leaven is the standard biblical metaphor for
sin.
Verse 26 explains that Christ, as the officiator of the ceremony, took the bread
(probably it was matzah) and broke it and then gave it to His disciples. This was
customary Jewish mealtime protocol. When He broke the bread, and before
distributing it, He would have made the blessing over it (what the CJB says is
the b’rakhah) with the customary words: “Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu melech
ha’olam hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz”. In English, “Blessed are you O Lord
our God, king of the universe who brings forth bread from the earth”. But then He
said something that was anything but customary. He says that they are to take
and eat this matzah as representative of His body. I’m not at all sure how His
disciples might have thought about this; in fact, this (along with the next blessing
and what Yeshua says it is to represent) must have caused the deepest
consternation among all of His would-be followers. Which is, I think, why the
Apostle Paul thought it so necessary to carefully explain it (we’ll get into that
shortly).
Next, in verse 27, Yeshua takes the cup of wine and tells all to drink of it. But
before He or they partake of it, in verse 28 we’re told that He makes a blessing
over it, and then tells the disciples that this wine represents His blood, but also it
is in the sense of validating a new covenant. And that the blood (represented by
the red wine) is to be seen as His shed blood on the behalf of many that atones
for their sins. There is so much here to unpack.
First, the blessing He would have said over the wine is: “Barukh ata Adonai
Eloheinu melekh ha’olam borei p’ri hagafen”. In English: “Blessed are you O
Lord our God, king of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine”. That Jesus
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used those words is confirmed by verse 29 when after the blessing over the wine
He tells His disciples that He won’t be drinking this “fruit of the vine” until He
does so with them in the Kingdom.
We should understand that this blessing over the bread and the wine was rather
standard over meals and not confined to the religious holidays. What is different
is how Yeshua uses them as symbols and metaphors for His body and His blood.
How were we meant to understand all this? Let’s begin by saying that body and
blood together essentially mean all of what Jesus is as a human being. It is
symbolic of Him as a created being, brought into this world by his human mother
Miriam. So, the idea is that His followers are to fully identify with Him in His
humanity and in His death (and later His resurrection). Yet it is also here that we
get a fuller statement of the mysterious redemptive nature of Christ’s body and
blood. It is here that we learn that the sacrifice of His body and blood (His entire
being) will enact a forgiveness of sins for “many”. That speaks not of His
humanness but rather of the divine aspect of His nature; and I’m sure it was
something that must have perplexed His disciples. Further, the recorded words
do NOT say that His sacrifice forgives “all” but rather forgives “many”. The
translation of “many” and not “all” is correct and of course in no way mean the
same thing. Who are the “many” according to Yeshua who are forgiven? That is
yet to be defined. There is more to sort through, however.
We’ve discussed on a few occasions that Yeshua has been characterized as the
second Moses throughout Matthew’s Gospel. Moses was Israel’s first mediator
and also the redeemer of Israel; Jesus is the second. Therefore, we see Christ
use terms and symbols that Moses and the Prophets utilized (in order to cement
that connection), and one of the chief ones used is the spiritually necessary
element of blood in covenant making. In Exodus chapter 24 we read:
CJB
Exodus 24:4-8
4
Moshe wrote down all the words of ADONAI. He rose
early in the morning, built an altar at the base of the mountain and set
upright twelve large stones to represent the twelve tribes of Isra'el.
5
He
sent the young men of the people of Isra'el to offer burnt offerings and
sacrifice peace offerings of oxen to ADONAI.
6
Moshe took half of the blood
and put it in basins; the other half of the blood he splashed against the
altar.
7
Then he took the book of the covenant and read it aloud, so that the
people could hear; and they responded, "Everything that ADONAI has
spoken, we will do and obey."
8
Moshe took the blood, sprinkled it on the
people and said, "This is the blood of the covenant which ADONAI has
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made with you in accordance with all these words."
So, in the Last Supper, by use of the blessings and the symbolism of the wine as
blood… Christ’s blood… it is the necessary element to ratify the new covenant.
What is the new covenant? First we need to hear something that may be a little
uncomfortable; not all of the ancient Greek New Testament transcripts include
the word “new”… only some. What we find often as not in the oldest Greek
Manuscripts of the Gospels is that Christ is quoted as saying “This is the blood of
the covenant, which is shed for many for forgiveness of sins”. The lack of the
word “new” is not some anomaly with the Book of Matthew; we find the same
thing in Mark’s Gospel. Most ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts of Mark
do NOT have the word “new” in front of the word “covenant”. Mark 14:24 reads
almost identically with Matthew 26:28. It is the conclusion of a number of
excellent Bible scholars and researchers that the reason the word “new” even
appears in some of the ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts of Matthew
and Mark is because it was added centuries later by early Christian Church
institutional authorities to make it conform with Luke 22:20. All the ancient Greek
manuscripts of Luke seem to include the word “new” in front of the word
“covenant”; so Luke writes that it is the New Covenant that Christ is ratifying with
His blood. So why is it that all the manuscripts of Luke’s Gospel call it the “new
covenant”, but the manuscripts of Mark and Matthew often simply call it the
“covenant”? A clue is that the Gospel of Luke was written AFTER both
Matthew’s and Mark’s. There’s a very good reason that Luke would have
added the word “new” to form “new covenant” and we’ll soon talk about what
that reason may have been.
So, what does this mean theologically if Yeshua only said “this is My blood of the
covenant” and not “this is My blood of the New Covenant”. I’ll muddy this up a
bit further by saying that the CJB adds the word “ratifies” to form “My blood that
ratifies the New Covenant”. “Ratifies” (or anything like it) does not appear in any
ancient Greek manuscript of Matthew. Inserting the word “ratifies” serves an
interpretational purpose for the author of the CJB by assuming there is
a new covenant in need of being ratified by Yeshua’s blood, as opposed to the
text speaking about what can only be the existing Covenant of Moses. One could
easily construe this verse to mean that adding Yeshua’s blood upon the
Covenant of Moses does something that up to now it couldn’t do: making one
sacrifice on behalf of many.
I’ve heard it said by countless Pastors that the real innovation that has been
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created is that Yeshua’s blood forgives sins while the Covenant of Moses, with
its animal blood sacrifices, only “covers” them (whatever good that does, or
whatever that is supposed to mean). That is biblically not correct. Long before
Yeshua was born, a person who sinned and made the sacrifice that the Law of
Moses called for indeed had their sin forgiven and it is said so unequivocally
countless times in the Torah. Sincere repentance was also needed, but that
along with the proper altar sacrifice indeed forgave sin in God’s eyes. So, we
can’t look there for what the difference might be between the efficacy of the
blood of bulls and goats spilled on the altar versus the blood of Christ spilled
upon the cross as concerns atoning power.
Yet, if we assume that the covenant Yeshua spoke of was indeed
a new covenant, then what exactly is He referring to? Because whatever it is, we
certainly don’t find in the Gospel accounts the record or even implication of Him
creating some new named covenant from whole cloth; something that had never
before existed. The usual interpretation is that He is speaking about Jeremiah 31;
and I agree that indeed if He ever actually spoke of a “new” covenant, then
Jeremiah 31 is the logical place to look for it. I’m going to first read the part that
most Christians have heard quoted by our Church authorities. Then afterward
I’m going to read the verses that follow this short passage that puts what was
said into its proper context.
CJB
Jeremiah 31:30-32
30
"Here, the days are coming," says ADONAI, "when
I will make a new covenant with the house of Isra'el and with the house of
Y'hudah.
31
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the
day I took them by their hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt;
because they, for their part, violated my covenant, even though I, for my
part, was a husband to them," says ADONAI.
32
"For this is the covenant I
will make with the house of Isra'el after those days," says ADONAI: "I will
put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
Here is another version of this last verse that I want to share with you in the way
that it is more customarily translated in English Bibles.
NAS
Jeremiah 31:33 "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.
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Where the CJB says the Lord will put the Torah within people’s hearts, all other
English versions say the Lord will put His Law into their hearts. So; is this
implying the creation of a brand new, never before existing “Law” that God will
put into the hearts of those He has elected? The institutional Church historically
sort of ignores this part of the verse and says that really what is put into our
hearts is the Holy Spirit. So, with this innovation, the Holy Spirit replaces the Law.
That is anything but what the passage says. So what law is this talking about? It
is either the Law that already existed (the Law of Moses), or it is some
mysterious, unspoken, brand new law that is nowhere found in the Bible. Rather,
the only new feature about this new covenant that Jeremiah records is that
instead of it existing only on slabs of stone or on sheep skins… that is, the Law as
something that is external to humans… rather God will miraculously write His Law
on the minds (the hearts) of His people. The external becomes internal.
Even more, who exactly, does God make Jeremiah’s new covenant with? Verse
31 explicitly says He will make it with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
That is, all the tribes of Israel. No inclusion of gentiles here; and certainly, no
mention of the gentile Church. And yet, that is exactly how the institutional
Church spins this passage to mean. I promised we’d read a little more of
Jeremiah 31.
CJB
Jeremiah 31:34-36
34
This is what ADONAI says, who gives the sun as
light for the day, who ordained the laws for the moon and stars to provide
light for the night, who stirs up the sea until its waves roar- ADONAI-Tzva'ot
is his name:
35
"If these laws leave my presence," says ADONAI, "then the
offspring of Isra'el will stop being a nation in my presence forever."
36
This
is what ADONAI says: "If the sky above can be measured and the
foundations of the earth be fathomed, then I will reject all the offspring of
Isra'el for all that they have done," says ADONAI.
That passage makes two things very clear about whatever this new covenant is:
First, God’s ordained laws will not disappear. And second, to make the point as
graphic as possible, the Lord says that if these laws do ever leave His presence,
only then will Israel and their offspring stop being a nation. The Law remains in
force, and only should the sky (the Universe) be measured and the earth
fathomed (an expression meaning something that cannot and will never happen),
would God reject Israel. Yeshua reinforces these thoughts 700 years later.
Using very similar imagery to what Jeremiah recorded, during the Sermon on the
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Mount Jesus says:
CJB
Matthew 5:17-19
17
"Don't think that I have come to abolish the Torah or
the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete.
18
Yes indeed! I
tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a
stroke will pass from the Torah- not until everything that must happen has
happened.
19
So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches
others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But
whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of
Heaven.
In Jeremiah 31 God says the Law is going nowhere, however He is going to
place that Law within humans as opposed to it existing only outwardly; and Christ
reinforces that thought in Matthew 5 and really throughout His Sermon on the
Mount. Assuming that Jeremiah 31 is the source of this “new covenant”, then the
one thing we do know is that it is not a covenant that replaces anything, and
especially not the covenant of Moses. Biblically no covenant made between God
and man is ever abolished or replaced; but new ones do get added. In my
opinion, at the Last Supper, Yeshua announces that the moment of the
prophesied new covenant of Jeremiah 31 has arrived, and it goes into effect
upon the moment His blood is shed on the cross. Further, what the new covenant
is, is the Laws God gave to Moses (the Torah) that have now miraculously been
placed into the hearts and minds of His chosen. That is, no more mechanical
obedience to what is essentially a rule book, but rather the sincere intent and
substance underlying the Law of Moses will become melded into the minds of
those who love God and demonstrate faith in Him by loving and committing
themselves to His Son, Jesus Christ. The new covenant in Christ’s blood didn’t
void the Law of Moses; it internalized it into our very nature enabling a deeper
devotion to it, and providing the ability for Believers to carry it out in the loving
and righteous spirit God intends. This would be symbolized by the very real act
that would happen in about 50 days after Yeshua’s death. On the Feast of
Shavuot (Pentecost) the Holy Spirit would come as the embodiment of the Law,
and dwell within us.
Some 30 years after Christ’s execution, the Apostle Paul felt the need to instruct
about this Last Supper ceremony of bread and wine to his fellows, no doubt
because it greatly troubled especially the Jews. The idea of eating bread as flesh
and drinking wine as blood smacked of cannibalism to the Jewish people and in
any case eating blood of any kind was expressly forbidden. So even Yeshua’s
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symbolic representation didn’t go over well at all. As a result, the Jewish scholar
Paul having gone to the elite Rabbinic school of Gamaliel, did what trained
Rabbis do: He made a drash (a midrash) about it and taught it to his followers.
CJB
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
23
For what I received from the Lord is just what I
passed on to you- that the Lord Yeshua, on the night he was betrayed, took
bread;
24
and after he had made the b'rakhah he broke it and said, "This is
my body, which is for you. Do this as a memorial to me";
25
likewise also the
cup after the meal, saying, "This cup is the New Covenant effected by my
blood; do this, as often as you drink it, as a memorial to me."
26
For as often
as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord,
until he comes.
We have here a perspective that Paul adds to the Last Supper ceremony that it
appears Yeshua didn’t include, because it is here that we find the instruction:
“As often as you drink it do it as a memorial to me”. There is no instruction in
Matthew 26 from Christ for his disciples to repeat this ceremony. It is presented
as a one-time event. No instruction exists in Matthew or in Mark that this bread
and wine ritual was to be repeated as a memorial to Yeshua. But, such an
instruction does exist in Luke 22. So why in Luke does his Gospel account refer
to the covenant Yeshua is talking about as “new”, and that the taking of bread
and wine is meant to be a repeated memorial to Him, but the other Gospels
don’t? The connecting tissue must be Paul’s midrash on the subject. Recall that
Luke, the Gospel writer, is the same as Luke, Paul’s traveling companion and
student. Luke heard this interpretation from Paul and so when Luke wrote his
Gospel it would seem that he incorporated Paul’s understanding of the meaning
of the Last Supper by what we just read in 1Corinthians 11.
Look again at Matthew 26 verse 29. This statement is also a prophecy of His
death and resurrection, although no doubt the disciples didn’t understand it that
way at the time. That is, the reason He won’t be drinking wine again is because
He only has perhaps as little as 16 more hours to live. Could it mean that He
won’t be celebrating the Passover again until after His death and resurrection?
But will at a later time in the Kingdom of Heaven? Yes, it could, but I don’t know
that it does. It’s rather ambiguous.
One of the important take-aways from this verse comes at its end when He
speaks of the Kingdom and who the owner of it is: His Father. Never does Christ
called the Kingdom of Heaven, His Kingdom, and we should never think of it as
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such. He will rule over it with all authority; but He will do so as His Father’s
agent.
I cannot close today’s lesson without pulling it together and encapsulating it in
the best possible context. Isaiah 53 does that in a far superior way than I could
ever conjure up.
READ ISAIAH CHAPTER 53 all
We’ll continue with Matthew 26 the next time we meet.
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