The Last Supper

In the 22nd chapter of Luke is one of the three gospel accounts of the last meal that Jesus has with His disciples. It was on the first day of the Feast of Passover and Jesus, the Passover Lamb sent by God, was getting together with His closest friends to celebrate the traditional meal. 

"Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was approaching . . . Then came the first day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed, and He sent Peter and John, saying, 'Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it' . . . And when the hour had come He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him. 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' ".

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There were seven major Jewish feasts, and three of them ran together at the beginning of the Hebrew calendar. The timing of the new year was established by God through Moses at the first Passover and the first three were agriculturally based occurring in the Spring harvest time. Passover remembered God's deliverance of the Hebrew people out of Egypt and their protection from the 10th plague. The meal that they ate was prepared in a hurry so Unleavened Bread was a symbol that they must always be ready. And because leaven represents evil the bread without leaven is also a symbol of cleaning out evil from one's life. The celebration concludes with the Feast of First Fruits, thanking God for His provision for the people.

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The context then of Jesus last supper was a Passover meal. The unleavened bread looked like a large cracker, stripped because of the way it was cooked. So when Jesus takes some of this bread, He gives thanks and; 

"He broke it, and gave it to them, saying 'This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me' ". 

The bread that they were eating was the bread from the old covenant. It was eaten once a year, just as it was only once a year when the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat for the sins of the nation. Here Jesus was telling His disciples that this bread was always looking forward toward Him and from now on when they would eat it they would remember that it was His body that was broken for them, It was His body that was lashed with stripes for their healing (Isaiah 53:5) and it is new life in Him that is the bread that feeds their souls.

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Jesus then takes a cup which if filled with wine. He has already told His disciples earlier in John 15 that 

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser" 

and they needed to abide in Him to be able to bear fruit. The fruit of the vine at the Passover meal represented the blood from the slain lamb that was applied to the door posts and header on the night before their ancestors left Egypt. Jesus at the beginning of the meal gives thanks for the cup and says; 

"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". 

Then after they eat the bread He again takes the cup, saying; 

"This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood". 

Here Jesus was telling His disciples that the Passover cup was always looking forward to Him and from now on they would remember that the blood He shed on the cross would make Him the Passover Lamb. Indeed, at the moment of Jesus death the curtain in the temple that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies was torn if two from top to bottom. No longer would there be need for the high priest to sprinkle blood once a year for the sins of the nation. By the shed blood of Jesus God could give new life to the spirit of man. 

This was a new provision from God, a new covenant that would bring men into the kingdom of God. And that is what all the disciples of Jesus should remember when they would eat the Passover meal.

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The early church was a Jewish church. They still observed the Jewish feasts but now they understood the complete symbolism of the different parts. Jesus was the Passover Lamb, the Unleavened Bread, and His resurrection came on the Feast of the First Fruits. He was the first to be resurrected, a promise that one day they also would be. 

This early Jewish church recognized that because there was no longer a separation between God and man they could remember Jesus as often as they wanted in their fellowship meals through the bread and the wine. Eventually Gentiles would become believers and greatly outnumber the Jewish members, and the understanding of the Passover context in the communion meal would be lost.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

"Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Jesus therefore lifting up His eyes, and seeing that a great multitude was coming to Him, said to Philip; 'Where are we to buy bread, that these may eat?'" (John 6:4-5)


The context of Jesus feeding the 5000 in this story is that it was at the beginning of the feast of Passover. A great number of people were following Jesus because He was healing the sick. They were away from home, hungry, and not having the Passover celebration with their families. Andrew finds a boy with five barley loaves and two fish and Jesus blesses this food and distributes it to the multitude. Everyone eats as much as they want and twelve baskets full of leftover fragments were gathered. 

In a sense, Jesus, the Passover Lamb, is having a Passover meal here with the Jewish nation. In Jewish tradition at the feast of Passover a chair is left at the table empty and this is for Elijah, a great prophet of the past who was prophesied to one day come again. He would either proceed, or be, the Prophet Messiah who would deliver the Jewish people from their oppressors.


The multitude does not understand Jesus as the Passover Lamb but the sign of the multiplication of loaves and fishes does lead them to believe that He is this promised Prophet and they want to seize Jesus and make Him king. Jesus escapes to the mountains alone and later that night walks on the water to the boat of His disciples and arrives at the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The multitude find Him there the next day and Jesus tells them; 

"you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you." 

The people ask Jesus to tell them what the works of God are and He replies; 

"This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent." 

Understand here that the people have seen Jesus heal the sick and feed the multitude. Their theology permits them to comprehend Jesus as a Prophet in the vein of Moses or Elijah but not as God come in the flesh. So they inform Jesus that Moses gave the nation bread out of heaven (the manna) to eat, that this was a sign that Moses was from God, and that Jesus should confirm to them that, because of the sign of the multiplication of loaves, He too was the Prophet that would deliver them.

Jesus answers them; 

"it is not Moses who has given you bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world . . . I am the bread of life; he who come to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst." 

Jesus was telling the people that there was something much greater than Moses or Elijah here. Moses prayed to God in the wilderness, after the people grumbled about being hungry, and God provided manna as food everyday until they entered the promised land. The Son of the Father God that Moses prayed to was in their midst. And He was more than a healer, provider, and political deliverer. In Him was eternal life. 

"No man has seen the Father, except the One who is from God . . . he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die . . the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh . . He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

God provided food for the people in the wilderness and yet death still came to their physical bodies. God now has provided, in Jesus, food that would spiritually lead them to eternal life and physically lead to a bodily resurrection on the last day. Jesus gave up His flesh on the cross for the sins of man. By believing in Jesus we are partaking of the bread that comes down from heaven. 

"It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." (John 6:63)

The Old and The New Covenant

The blood that runs through my veins is pretty much the same blood that ran through the veins of Adam and Eve. Each beat of my heart counts forward to a brand new day, and looks back to where I came from. My children have pretty much the same blood that Jackie and I have. We are family, and by blood part of a clan, a people, and all who have gone before us. But I am not just life composed of flesh and blood. I have an eternal spirit, a spirit which has been reborn through Jesus Christ, and this makes me as well a part of a family with all those who also have a reborn spirit, either here on Earth or with the saints in Heaven.

In Genesis is the account of how God called Abram to be the father of a people who would have a special relationship with Him. God changes the man's name to Abraham, and requires that he and his male descendants be circumcised. He makes a covenant with Abraham, ratified with a sacrifice of innocent blood, and dependent solely on the faithfulness of God to be accomplished. The covenant is a promise of land with specific borders, a promise of multiplication of Abraham's offspring, and a promise that some of them would be kings. The promise of kings was looking forward to David, and his descentent, Jesus.

Abraham didn't quite know how all of this was going to work out because he is 86 and his wife is 76. So he has relations with his Egyptian servant Hagar and from their offspring came the Arab nations. Fourteen years later (God sometimes likes to make things even more amazing) Sarah gives birth to Isaac, and later Isaac's wife gives birth to the twins, Easu and Jacob. Esau is the first born, but sells his birthright to Jacob. The descendants of Esau end up in Edom, which is part of present day Jordan, and would be the line from which most of the present day Arab Palestianians come from. God confirms his promise to both Isaac and Jacob, and Jacob has 12 sons. Jocob with 11 of his sons and family join his 12th son Joseph in Egypt because of a famine in Cannan. During the 400 years they are there the people grow to become a nation within a nation of about 2 million, which makes the Pharaoh very nervous. The Egyptians severly opprress the Hebrews, who call out to God, and God raises up Moses and his brother Aaron to lead the nation back to the land that God promised.

Because the Pharaoh does not want the Hebrews to leave, God sends a series of 10 plagues upon the Egyptians. The last one is an angel who will kill the first born of everyone in the land. But God has a plan to protect the Hebrew people. They gathered together as families, including with them neighbors who lack enough family, selected and killed a lamb without blemish, and put some of the lamb's blood on the door posts and header. They were to cook the lamb with fire, eat it, and share a meal including unleavened bread and bitter herbs. "And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you. Now this day shall be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanant ordinance". (Exodus 12) This was the first of seven major feasts that God would give the Hebrew peole, and it was known as Passover, because when God saw the blood He would "pass over" the households, sparing them from God's judgment.

The feasts of Passover celebrated afterwards by the Jewish people were looking back to the deliverance God had provided, and looking forward to the coming King who would one day rule the nation, and nations, from Jerusalem. This feast had an important place in the New Testament. Jesus fed the 5000 on a Passover and His last meal was a Passover meal. John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to the water and cried out; "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world". And Paul, urging the Corinthians to walk in holiness wrote; "you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed". As mankind we are family because we share the same blood. As born-again believers we are an even closer family because we have been delivered and changed by the shed blood of Jesus.

More On Baptisms

All of the first to believe in Jesus as Lord and Saviour were from a Jewish background. They knew that God had interaction with them as a people, a nation, and as individuals. They believed that all non-Jewish people (Gentiles) were pagans who worshipped false gods. The Jews had laws, feasts, scripture and prophets given to them by God, and the early church recognized Jesus as God, come in the flesh to the Jews. John prepared the way with his baptism of repentance. Jesus died and rose from the grave and the people recognized that He had become for them The Lamb from the feast of Passover who would not only take away their sins, but who would also create in them a new spirit. The Holy Spirit came down upon the Jewish believers at Pentecost, empowering them with the gifts of the Spirit, and all new believers (who were Jewish) would be baptized into this new life in the name of Jesus.

As time went on something wonderful happened. God directs Peter in Acts 10 to go to the household of Cornelius, who was a righteous and God-fearing man, but who was also a Gentile. Peter preaches and "While Peter was still speaking . . . the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening . . . And all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles also. For they were speaking with tongues and exalting God". Peter immediately realizes that the household of Cornelius had the Holy Spirit poured out upon them in the same way that had happened to him and the others at Pentecost. This meant that Gentiles were able to have faith to believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Peter reports to the church later; "And I remembered the word of the Lord, how He used to say, 'John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit'. If God therefore gave to them the same gift as He gave to us also after believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?" So at the house of Cornelius Peter orders the Gentile believers to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

Two of the first to go out into the Gentile world on a regular basis are Paul and Barnabas. One of the places they go to is Iconium, speaking to both Jews and the Greeks. Acts 14 says that "they spent a long time there speaking boldly with reliance upon the Lord, who was bearing witness to the word of His grace, granting that signs and wonders be done by their hands." (Note here that Barnabas was not an apostle, yet signs and wonders were part of his ministry). Later on in Acts 15 there arises a dissension between a group in the church who believed that all Gentile believers needed also to be circumcised (a requirement that God gave Abraham for all of his descendants), and Paul and Barnabas, who were converting Gentiles but not requiring them to be circumcised or to follow Jewish customs. In the Jewish mind, circumcision was the initation into the family of God, a family that was always Jewish, and thus a family that should always follow Jewish law and tradition. Peter responds by recalling his testimony as to what happened with Cornelius. God directed Peter to Cornelius with a vision, showing Peter in the vision that Gentiles would also be acceptable to Him. "God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith . . . We believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way that they ae also." Peter is saying that God's grace comes through faith, for both Jews and Gentiles, and that it does not make sense to impose a burden of law and tradition upon the Gentiles, when it was a burdensome stone for even the Jews to carry.

A little while later Acts 19 reconts Paul's first visit to Ephesus. Here he finds some disciples, and noticing that there was something lacking he asks; "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" They respond that they had never even heard of a Holy Spirit. "Into what then were you baptized?" And they answer; "Into John's baptism." Paul tells them that John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was coming after him, that is Jesus. Paul baptizes them in the name of the Lord Jesus (because of their expressed faith), and then he lays his hands upon them and they received the Holy Spirit, and began speaking in tongues and prophesying. (Notice that scripture does not give a specific order. the household of Cornelius first received the Holy Spirit, and then was baptized).

When we look at the evidence of people being baptized into the church today we might be inclined to ask the same question. "Into what then were you baptized?" Yes we have a baptism in the name of Jesus, but usually we do not see the signs and wonders, the tongues and prophecy, the glorifying of God by the baptized. Has baptizm become a Christian form of circumcisn, or is entry into the family of God still by faith?

Go Therefore Into All The Nations

John had a baptism of repentance. The disciples of Jesus, while He was still on the earth, would also baptize people, and this as well was a baptism of repentance. It was a public proclamation of the desire of the heart to be right with God. And it prepared the heart to receive what Jesus accomplished by His death and resurrection. Scripture records the last instructiion Jesus gives His disciples before His ascension into heaven, and this has to do with a new type of baptism. In Matthew 26 Jesus says; "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you."

The account in Mark goes as follows; "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved, but he who has disbelieved shall be condemed. And these signs will accompany those who have believed; in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues . . . they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."

In Luke Jesus tells His disciples that it is written that "repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations . . . And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."

And finally in Acts 1 we read; "And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father promised . . . for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now . . . you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses . . . even to the remotest part of the earth".

God invites us to come into a relationship with Him through a rebirth of our spirit. The first step in doing that is to repent of our disobedience toward God the Father. Water baptism is a declaration of repentance and a proclamation of faith in Jesus as our Savior and Lord. In telling His disciples to go into the whole world to baptize Jesus is teaching that repentance and faith are needed to be reconciled to God.

But Jesus not only invites us to come in, He also sends us out, in the power of His Spirit, to be able to witness in word and in power; proclaimng the good news that in Jesus there is salvation, healing and deliverance. Water baptism speaks of the repentance and faith that leads to our spirit being born again. Spirit baptism speaks of a surrender in our soul to the moving of the Holy Spirit who resides in us at salvation. When I asked Jesus to come into my heart as Savior and Lord I also asked Him at that same time to fill me with the Holy Spirit. My desire was for that power to be evident in my life. It was at that time that I took a step of faith and yielded my voice to a new language. But in the instant before I spoke I knew that Jesus would give me those tongues and I was flooded with a wonderful revelation of the presence of Jesus in my heart.

I believe that the Father's intent was to have all new believers equipped with supernatural power from the Holy Spirit. In Acts 8 Peter and John go to Samaria. The people had been baptized in the name of Jesus, but there was not any evidence of that supernatural power. When the apostles laid their hands on them the people received the Holy Spirit, and the implication in the text is that there were outward signs (perhaps tongues and prophecy), enough so that a guy named Simon offered money to the apostles so that he could impart the Holy Spirit. The lesson here is that the Holy Spirit brings Jesus to us, the Holy Spirit resides in us from the moment of salvation, and He should move in power in our lives from that point. But often we do not see that power. So for many there is a need for a release, a flooding of the Spirit into our souls, a surrender. This can happen through the laying on of hands of believers, or while we are standing alone in our shower.