The Old Testament Background to the Lord's Supper

Anyone who is familiar with the goings on at the Last Supper could probably recite the following lines from heart:

"The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.'” – 1Corinthians 11:23-25

What most folks don’t realize is just how pregnant with meaning those few sentences are. So today I wanted to look at some of the streams of Old Testament themes which converge together in Jesus’ words at the Last Supper.


The New Passover:

The immediate context of the Last Supper was the celebration of the Jewish holiday of Passover.  This festival, of course, originates with the night the Lord struck down the Egyptian firstborns and spared the Jewish households.  Here is what Moses instructed them to do:

"The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household.  If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it.  Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.  You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.  They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.  […] 

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.  This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.  […] 

When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this observance?’ you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed down and worshiped. 

- Exodus 12:1-8,13-14,25-27

There are a couple things to point out.

First, the Passover meal consisted in a lamb which was consumed by a family.  At the Last Supper, Jesus begins a Passover liturgy but there is no mention of a lamb.  That is, until Jesus says over the bread:

“Take and eat, this is my body.”  

By doing this, Jesus was instituting a new Passover meal in which He is consumed as the Passover lamb.  [For more, see the Early Church background here.]


New Covenant:

The next thing to call attention to is when Jesus says,

“This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood.”  

Where is He getting that from?

As Christians we talk about the New Covenant vs the Old Covenant.  Do we know what we’re referring to when we say “Old Covenant”?

The words Jesus says over the cup at the Last Supper are drawn from the initiation of the covenant between God and the Israelites.  Let’s scoot back to the book of Exodus:

"Moses came and told 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 that the Lord has spoken we will do.' And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve pillars, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed oxen as offerings of well-being to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar. 

Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, 'All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.' Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, 'This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.'” – Exodus 24:3-8

Here we observe the Old Covenant being instantiated with a sacrifice and with blood.  Jesus is doing the same when He says the content of the cup is His blood and offers it to His Apostles.  He is instituting a new covenant.

This should bring to mind another Old Testament prophecy, one in which God promised to form a new covenant:

"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.  

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says 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. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more." – Jeremiah 31:31-34

This is fulfilled when Jesus pronounced those words over the cup.


Remembrance Offering

Lastly, you’ll notice how Jesus says,

“Do this in remembrance of me.”

Modern audiences might suppose the word “remembrance” simply means the mental act of remembering something.  As if the purpose of the Lord’s Supper is merely to call to mind what Jesus did.

But note how the Passover was described as both a memorial (sometimes translated as a “remembrance”) and a sacrifice:

This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. 

This is indicative of a Hebrew idiom which connects the word “remembrance” with an offering made to God.  You can see this in the book of Leviticus where the law describes a grain offering.  It says:

"This is the ritual of the grain offering: The sons of Aaron shall offer it before the Lord, in front of the altar. They shall take from it a handful of the choice flour and oil of the grain offering, with all the frankincense that is on the offering, and they shall turn its memorial portion into smoke on the altar as a pleasing odor to the Lord. Aaron and his sons shall eat what is left of it; it shall be eaten as unleavened cakes in a holy place; in the court of the tent of meeting they shall eat it."  – Leviticus 6:14-16

You can also see this in the New Testament in the Acts of the Apostles, when the alms offered by Cornelius are described as a “remembrance” or “memorial”:

“He stared at him in terror and said, ‘What is it, Lord?’ He answered, ‘Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.’” – Acts 10:4

Looking back, when Jesus says “Do this in remembrance / memory of me”, the Jewish ears in the room would hear the language of instituting a sacrifice and offering.  This brings us to one final  prophecy of the Old Testament, found at the beginning of the book of Malachi:

“'My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and a pure offering will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,' says the Lord Almighty." – Malachi 1:11

This was fulfilled when the Lord’s Supper (aka, the Mass) was celebrated by Gentile Christian converts.  


The Source and Summit:

Let’s put it all together.

When you read the account of the Last Supper, you are seeing:

• The initiation of a New Covenant between God and humanity
• The establishment of a new Passover meal, in which Christ is the lamb who is consumed
• The pattern of the communal Christian worship in which Christ’s sacrifice is offered to the Father

Happy Triduum!