This is the blood of the covenant

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

Exodus 24:1-11 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-32 + Matthew 26:1-30

We always make the Passover connection with Maundy Thursday, and rightly so. Jesus celebrated His last supper with His disciples as a Passover meal, before He went on that night, and into the next day, to suffer and to die. It was no accident that Jesus’ suffering and death happened in connection with the Jewish Passover. God had been painting the picture of His Son’s sacrifice into the minds of the Jews for some 1500 years, teaching them to think back to all those one-year-old, male, spotless lambs that were slaughtered in Egypt, and whose blood was marked on the doorframes of their houses, so that the destroying angel, who was targeting all the firstborn sons throughout Egypt, would see the blood on the Israelite houses, and pass over, leaving the house unharmed. All of that was to make them ponder the true Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who takes away the sin of the world, whose blood marks the door of our hearts when we believe in Him as our sacrificial Lamb. And He keeps us safe from the power of the devil. The new Supper, the Lord’s Supper that Jesus instituted on that Maundy Thursday night, is certainly connected to the Passover.

But we shouldn’t forget also its connection to Mt. Sinai. A couple of months after the Passover, the Israelites were gathered around Mt. Sinai with Moses. You heard the account in the Lesson this evening from Exodus 24. God had just given Moses the words of the covenant He made with Israel there at Mt. Sinai, the Ten Commandments and all the other laws and statutes that made up that first covenant. And then, as you heard, God called Moses and the elders of Israel to the mountain. Animals were sacrificed. And Moses took the blood of those sacrifices, sprinkled half of it on the altar, sprinkled the other half on the people and said, This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words.

It’s gruesome when you think about it, isn’t it? Moses walking around with a pale of blood, sprinkling it on the people, and afterward looking around at your fellow Israelites with dots of blood on their faces and on their clothing. It was supposed to be gruesome. Blood stood for death, and only death could seal a covenant between God and sinful men. That’s because of how wrong the world had become since God first created it.

There was never supposed to be any shedding of blood, or any death at all. God made both animals and man to live in harmony with one another and with Him. There was no need for a covenant in the beginning, with Adam and Eve. They were already sinless and in perfect harmony with God. But after they sinned, that harmony was broken, and death was their sentence, and since sin and death spread to their offspring, death was required to establish a covenant of peace with God. God alluded to that death when He told Eve that her Offspring’s heel would be bruised by the serpent. And so, when He finally went to establish a covenant with Israel, God required blood and death: the death of animals, whose blood was sprinkled first on the altar, then on the people who were included in the covenant.

But the death of animals doesn’t earn peace with God, or pardon in His courtroom, or a place in His family for His enemies. Only one death can do that. The death of Jesus Christ, our Lord, which would take place on the very same day, according to Jewish reckoning, on which He instituted the new covenant in His blood. His body would be given into death, and His blood would be shed on the cross, which was the fulfillment of every altar that was ever made, the true altar of sacrifice where the forgiveness of sins was earned for all. Moses sprinkled the altar with the blood of animals. But Jesus drenched the altar of the cross with His own, precious blood, the true cost of our redemption.

And then, like Moses, Jesus applied the blood to His disciples and said, “This is My blood of the new covenant.” He applied it to them, not by sprinkling blood from His veins onto His disciples, but by uniting His body and blood, about to be given and shed, to bread and wine and then giving it to them to eat and to drink.

Just as the blood Moses sprinkled onto the Israelites was not the figurative blood of the covenant, but the actual blood—taken from the same blood that was also applied to the altar—so the blood of Jesus given to us in the Sacrament is not figurative blood, but His real blood, shed on the cross as the redemption price for our sins. But it’s given to us, not in a gruesome way, but in a very pleasant way, a “sacramental” way, as part of a meal of bread and wine—bread that sustains life, and wine that brings joy. If you recall, the elders of Israel also celebrated the institution of the first covenant with a sacred meal together in the presence of God. How much more reason we have to celebrate, because the new covenant is so much better than the old!

The first covenant was founded on laws and statutes and ordinances to be obeyed by Israel; the new covenant is a covenant of laws fulfilled for us by the Lord Jesus. The first covenant threatened death for disobedience; the new covenant offers us forgiveness for our disobedience. The first covenant was sealed with the blood of animals; the new covenant, by the blood of the Son of Man. The first covenant promised Israel a piece of earthly land; the new covenant promises Christians a heavenly country. The blood of the first covenant was applied only once; the blood of the new covenant is applied “as often as you drink it,” to all Christians who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Jesus’ disciples surely didn’t understand Jesus’ meaning on that first Maundy Thursday, because His body and not yet been given into death, and His blood had not yet been shed, and they still didn’t understand that it had to be. But in less than 24 hours, they would see what Jesus meant, see His body hanging on the cross, see His blood flowing freely. But they didn’t have to understand yet on that Thursday night. All they had to do was eat and drink, listen and believe.

The same is true for you. In a few moments, you’ll hear the Savior’s voice speaking again over bread and wine. This is My blood of the new covenant, or, as St. Paul records it, This cup is the New Testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. You don’t have to understand it. Just eat and drink, listen and believe. And know that everyone who eats and drinks, who listens and believes, is included in this blessed covenant of the forgiveness of sins, first instituted on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, on the same night in which our Lord was betrayed. May the true body and blood of Jesus strengthen you and preserve you in the true faith unto life everlasting. Depart in peace. Amen.