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INTRO
On Friday I had the privilege of performing a wedding ceremony for two people that I love dearly, named Shane and Susan.
I love these guys.
They were just kids in my youth group when I first met them many years ago and I’ve got to see them grow into pretty great adults.
I’ve got to help them and counsel them through difficult life decisions.
And then I got the privilege of performing a ceremony to celebrate the covenant that they have made with each other, to live the rest of their lives together.
That’s what a wedding is.
It’s not just an expression of love.
It’s not just a promise.
It’s not just a commitment.
A wedding is a covenant.
Michael Horton — A covenant is a relationship of “oaths and bonds” and involves mutual, though not necessarily equal, commitments.
In a covenant, both parties take oaths; they make commitments.
[INTRO]
And those commitments form very real and significant bonds.
Because marriage is a covenant, there is a legal aspect to marriage.
In the US and in many other countries, the government actually holds you responsible in some ways to the commitments that you make to each other.
And certainly, in the church, we hold you responsible to the commitments you’ve made in marriage, because in a Christian marriage, marriage is not just a covenant before the state, but it is a covenant before God.
Covenants are weighty commitments.
Now, there’s two parts of the marriage covenant, though.
There’s the ceremony.
That’s when the pastor or other officiator gets up and speaks and vows are taken by the bride and groom and all that.
We tend to think that the ceremony is the event that makes the marriage official.
And that’s true, in a sense.
Once the ceremony happens, the marriage is solid.
It’s done.
But, there’s a second event that is, in some ways, far more significant.
In ancient cultures, once the ceremony was done—which could take moments or weeks, depending on the culture—then the bride and groom would go into their tent to consummate their marriage.
To consummate something is to make it complete or prefect.
So a married couple leaves the celebration and they take their first step in living out their lives together—that happens in the tent, in the bedroom.
There’s two parts of a covenant: the ceremony and the consummation.
PAUSE
So, we’re talking about the Lord’s Supper—often referred to as communion or the eucharist—and today and I want to specifically answer the question, ‘Why do we do this ceremony?’
Is it just a symbolic ceremony?
Or is it more?
Several months ago when we were in , talked about how we do the Lord’s Supper.
Today, we’re more concerned with why we do it.
The disciple Mark recorded one of the shortest and most significant accounts of the event we call the Lord’s Supper.
This is the last Passover meal that Jesus spent with his disciples before going to the cross to die for the sins of the world.
Mark wrote,
(CSB) — As they were eating, he took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.”
Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
I want to focus on two parts of this passage.
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First, Jesus says that the cup that we drink is his own blood of the covenant.
This meal that Jesus shared with his disciples was a covenant ceremony, much like a marriage ceremony.
This meal was the establishment of a covenant between Jesus and His people.
That’s why Jesus said that his blood of the covenant was poured out for us, his disciples, his covenant people.
This event is much like the wedding ceremony.
This ceremony formed a covenant between God and His people.
And when Jesus died on the cross and his blood literally spilled out, that was much like the signing of the marriage license.
Jesus’s death legitimized the covenant between Jesus and the church—it wrote the covenant in ink, so to speak.
But, then notice this.
Jesus said that he would not drink wine again until he drank it new in the Kingdom of God.
Why?
Well, that was a figurative statement Jesus made to communicate that the covenant won’t be complete, it won’t be perfected, or we could say, it won’t be consummated until the fullness of the Kingdom of God comes.
Jesus is pointing to the future when he returns to earth for His church, when he makes all things new.
Jesus is pointing to the new heaven and the new earth.
He’s pointing to the, what the church often refers to simply as, ‘heaven.’
Jesus made it clear that there is a period of time between the ceremony and the consummation of God’s Kingdom.
Jesus performed the ceremony with his disciples when he came the first time.
He made the wedding between Christ and the Church official.
The license is signed and the covenant is established.
It’s legally binding.
But, the terms of the covenant have not yet come to fruition.
The fullness of the promises of the covenant have not yet occurred and will not occur until Jesus returns.
[INTRO]
In legal terms, you could say that the covenant has been ratified, but it has not yet been consummated.
[PAUSE]
People always want to know why Jesus hasn’t returned yet.
What’s he waiting for?
The answer to that question has to do with the specific circumstances of the covenants between God and his people.
In a marriage oaths are taken and promises are made by both parties.
The oaths are the vows that are given.
And the promise is, till death do us part.
When marriages fail it is often because the vows are broken.
The promise of ‘until death’ is abandoned because the condition of the covenant was not met when the vows were broken.
That could be adultery or abuse or something like that.
Side note: I’m not saying that’s what God wants to see happen with broken vows; that’s just how covenants work.
In the same way, the promises of biblical covenants don’t come to fulfillment until the oath is kept.
In the Bible, there are two covenants, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
Many people have identified multiple covenants in what we call the Old Testament, in the Bible.
But, the Old Testament covenants are all different revelations of the same covenant between God and His people that began in the beginning.
I want to look at the failure of the Old Covenant on the part of humankind.
And then to the grace of the New Covenant where God takes responsibility for the vow and the promise.
We are going to do that because Jesus said that the ceremony of the Lord’s Supper is about the covenant that God established with His church through Christ’s blood.
It is the holy ceremony that preceeds the fulfillment of God’s promise to His people.
So, what I’d like to do is go through several of the revelations of the Old Covenant and demonstrate the reason that the consummation never came in Old Testament times.
And then I’d like to go to the New Covenant and give some application that flows from our understanding of the New Covenant and our celebration of that covenant when we partake in the Lord’s Supper.
Does Scripture read as one book from Genesis to Revelation?
Is there one plot?
And related to this, one people?
Or does the Old Testament give us one plan of salvation for one people (Israel) while the New Testament gives us a different plan of salvation for a different people (the church)?
Does Scripture read as one book from Genesis to Revelation?
Is there one plot?
And related to this, one people?
Or does the Old Testament give us one plan of salvation for one people (Israel) while the New Testament gives us a different plan of salvation for a different people (the church)?
Michael Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 20.
a covenant is a relationship of “oaths and bonds” and involves mutual, though not necessarily equal, commitments.
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