Communion- Covenant

The Covenant of Grace: Unpacking the Meaning of Communion

Introduction:

Communion is a vital act that embodies God's covenant of grace with His people.

Communion illustrates the commitment of God to His people, it invites them to participate in the new covenant established through Christ's sacrifice.

There is a covenant aspect of Communion, Christians can better appreciate the intensity of God's love and commitment to them.

Through Communion, believers are reminded that they are in a covenant relationship with God, which invites them to live out their faith in unity and grace, reflecting Christ's love in every aspect of their lives.

Two weeks ago we started an Easter series. We jumped forward in time a little to Christ’s Gethsemane moment. We had talked about how we all have a Gethsemane moment at times.

Maybe we’re facing one currently, or facing one in the future, but we must be reminded that when we decide not my will, but God’s Will be done that is when there is a shift in those Garden moments.

When life has us on our knees we have to make that decision that Jesus is still our King.

This morning I went to walk back before the Garden and bring us back to the table. The meal before the Garden.

The Passover: Before the agony, and before the rest there was laughter, fellowship and meal.

I think that is a sermon within a sermon, before the trials come there tend to be a time of rejoicing, a time of a laughter, a time of reflection.

Before the struggle we often are on top of a mountain, before the pain there was the passover.

The Passover is one of the most significant celebrations in all of Jewish History. It is the annual rememberance of how God had delivered the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Every year families would gather, eat a specific meal, and remember what god had done for them. It was sacred, joyful, and full of meaning.

This was the meal that Jesus and the Disciples would have shared that filled their bellies and made them fall asleep. This was a time of fellowship, a time of laughter, a time of encouragement. These men had shared 3 years together up to this point, this was a family.

Within all of this Jesus knows this is the time of the betrayer, this is the time he would enjoy their company for a while. This was the last joyful moment he would have until his resurrection.

Jesus teaches us something in this moment, within the joy, within the anguish. He takes a moment to do some more teaching and He teaches us of the great Sacrament known as the Lord’s Supper. This introduction would carry them for a lifetime.

Matthew 26:26–29 MEV

As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take and eat. This is My body.” Then He took the cup, and after He gave thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”

Now I want to pause here and introduce a word that the Church uses to describe this moment. This is called a sacrament. That word simply means a sacred act — a holy moment — a visible, physical sign of an invisible, spiritual grace. When we take Communion — the bread and the cup — we are participating in a sacrament. We are doing something we can see and touch and taste that points to something deeply spiritual happening in our hearts and in our relationship with God. And at the very center of this sacrament is one word that I want us to dig into this morning. Jesus says, "This is My blood of the new covenant." That word — covenant — is everything. And that is exactly where we need to go next.

1. What is a covenant?

Now if you are newer to the faith, or newer to the language of the Bible, you may have heard the word covenant and quietly wondered what it actually means. It is not a word we use much in everyday life, so let me break it down as simply as I can.

A covenant is not the same as a contract.

A contract is what you sign when you buy a car, rent an apartment, or start a new job. Contracts are built on conditions — you hold up your end, and I will hold up mine. And if one person stops doing their part, the contract can be broken and canceled. We have all seen that happen. Someone misses too many payments, breaks too many rules, and the whole thing falls apart. Contracts are only as strong as the people keeping them. But a covenant is something completely different. A covenant is an unbreakable promise. It is a binding commitment between two parties that goes far deeper than signatures on paper. In fact, in the ancient world, covenants were not signed — they were sealed. And they were often sealed with blood. Because the idea behind a blood covenant was this: I am so fully committed to this promise that I am laying my very life on the line for it. This is not casual. This is not temporary. This is everything. Now here is what you need to know: God is a covenant-making God. From the very beginning of Scripture, we see God entering into covenants with His people. He made a covenant with Noah — a promise never to destroy the earth with a flood again, and He set a rainbow in the sky as the sign of it. He made a covenant with Abraham — a promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. And He made a covenant with Moses and the people of Israel — a promise that He would be their God and they would be His people.

Exodus 24:3–8 MEV

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances. Then all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do.” Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent young Israelite men who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of young bulls to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. He took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people, and they said, “All that the Lord has said we will do, and we will be obedient.” So Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

What was happening in this Scripture was very serious and incredibly meaningful.

The people in this moment were saying that they were all in.

We are bound to God.

God was saying the same thing back to them.

The covenant was sealed and confirmed with blood. It was not a handshake, it was a life-level commitment.

So when Jesus said “This is the blood of the new covenant.” everyone understood the weight of those words. They knew what a covenent meant. They knew what it cost.

Jesus was not just making a toast and saying something poetic, He was saying: What I am about to do on that cross is going to ratify something. It is going to seal something. Not with the blood of an animal, but with my own blood.

So when we come to the table we are not participating in a nice church tradition. We are declaring our place in a covenant-binding, unbreakable, God-Initiated promise that He will be our God and we will be His people!

A. Remember the Covenant.

Now if we fastforward just a few decades We see the Apostle Paul.

Paul was not at the Passover, He wasn’t there when Jesus instituted this, he was simply impressed by Christ to tell these believers, years removed from the institution at the Passover table that we are to Remember this covenant.

He says in 1 Corinthians 11 vs 23 “… For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you… As often as you do this.… Remember me”

i. Jesus says “Do this in rememberance of Me.” We often think to ourselves that sounds easy, but the Greek word for this phrase here is “Anamnesis.”

It means more than a fond memory, it means to bring something into the present again.

To actively bring something into the current moment.

When we take Communion we are not just looking back at a historical event from 2000 years ago. We are making it present. We are delcaring: What Jesus did on that cross is alive and active and real right here, right now in my life today.

ii. Secondly, Paul is saying that you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. Every time you take Communion you are making a proclamation.

You are declaring something loudly, with the act itself, the world around you, Jesus died for me. The price was paid, the covenant is real.

I belong to Him!

iii. Communion is not just a backward looking act, but a forward looking one too.

Every time we partake in Communion we are saying we’re ready.

We ar ea covenant people and we believe our King is coming again!

Communion is not just a ritual that we do because it’s Easter, or It’s Christmas. it is a living breathing Spirit filled delcaration of a covenant relationship with God.

A Covenant declaration that we belong to Him, and He is our King!

2. Rejoice in Redemption

When we hear the term New Covenant, we might ask ourselves this question. Why do we need a New Covenant?

Let me tell you something quickly, God has had it planned forever.

The Prophet jeremiah wrote about this 600 years before Jesus was sitting at this table making mention of this New Covenant.

The new covenant was not a backup plan. It was not God scrambling to fix something that went wrong. It was always the plan. God had already seen it, already declared it, and was already working toward it. Now notice what God says about how this new covenant is different from the old one. He says: the old covenant, I wrote on stone tablets. This new covenant, I am going to write on your hearts. Under the old covenant, following God was largely about external rules — a long list of laws you had to keep, rituals you had to perform, requirements you had to meet. And the people kept failing. They kept breaking the covenant. Not because the law was bad — the law was holy and good and given by God — but because they were trying to change their behavior without a transformed heart. And you cannot sustain lasting change from the outside in. Transformation has to go from the inside out.

And so God said: I am going to do something new. I am not just going to give you rules to follow. I am going to write My ways on the inside of you. I am going to transform who you are at your very core so that you want to follow Me — not out of obligation, not out of fear, but out of love. And then comes the most stunning line in this entire passage: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." That word iniquity is another theological term worth knowing. It simply refers to moral wrongdoing — the things we have done that have created distance between us and God. The failures, the mistakes, the sins. And God says in the new covenant, I will not just forgive those things — I will not remember them. I will remember your sin no more. For every new believer in this room, I need you to stop and let that settle into your spirit. When you gave your life to Jesus, you stepped into a covenant with a God who looked at every mistake you have ever made, everything you are ashamed of, every moment you wish you could take back — and said: I will remember your sin no more. That is the covenant. And Jesus sealed it with His blood at that table. This was always the plan. God has been working toward this moment since before you were born.

We need to rejoice in the Redemption that the Lord brings us.

In Matthew 26 we read that the blood was shed for the Remission of sins.

Remission means the complete cancellation, the wiping away, the full removal of something.

Jesus is announcing to us that His blood does not cover sins like a blanket thrown over a mess. His blood causes your sins to retreat. It cancels them out.

they no longer define you. They no longer own you. They no longe rhave the final word over who you are.

That is Redemption, the word Redemption means to buy back. When you have a debt that you could not pay in Ancient times, a person who was related to you, called a Kinsman Redeemer, could take on your debt and buy it back from you.

They can restore what was lost.

The person who was indebted is now free, the price was paid.

That is what Jesus did on the cross for you and I. We wer ein debt to sin.

We were bound by it.

We were captive to it.

We were unable to set ourselves free no matter how hard we tried.

He did not buy it back with money, silver or with gold.

But he bought it back with His own blood.

HE REDEEMED US.

The bread and cup at the table was a declaration of this redemption every single time we receive them.

When you hold that bread in your hand, you are holding a declaration His body was broken so mine could be made whole.

When you lift that cup you are saying that His blood was shed so I could be redeemed so I could be bought back.

The God of all creation looked at a broken, imperfect struggling people and said they are worth it i will pay the price!

This Changes Everything

Since what we have talked about today is tru then being in covenant with God changes everything.

Not just what happens to us one day when we leave this earth.

Everything.

Right now.

Monday morning when the alarm goes off.

Tuesday afternoon when things get hard.

Every single ordinary day of your life.

1 Corinthians 11:26 MEV

As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

You are a proclamation.

Every time you come to this table, you are declaring something.

And that declaration should not stay inside the walls of this building.

It should follow you out the door and into your home, your workplace, your school, your neighborhood. You carry the covenant with you wherever you go.

This covenantal relationship changes everything.

It changes your identity.

You are not just a person trying hard enough to be good enough for God. That is not who you are anymore.

You are a covenant child of God. You have been redeemed.

You have been forgiven. You have been welcomed into God's own family.

Jeremiah said it — I will be their God and they shall be My people. That is you. You do not have to earn His love because He already sealed it with the blood of His Son.

You are not working toward acceptance — you are already accepted in the covenant. It changes how you see other people. When you truly understand that God was willing to enter into a covenant with broken, imperfect, sinful people — it completely changes how you treat the broken, imperfect, struggling people around you.

Because you know you did not deserve the covenant either.

You extend grace because you have received grace.

You forgive because you have been forgiven.

You show up for people because God showed up for you. The covenant is not just personal — it is communal. We are covenant people together, and that shapes how we treat one another.

It changes everything becasue It changes how you face hard days. When the difficult season comes — and it will come — you do not face it as someone who is alone, forgotten, or unloved. You face it as someone who is in covenant with Almighty God.

He is bound to you.

He has committed Himself to you.

His very nature as a covenant-keeping God means He will not walk away.

He does not break His covenants. And that means that in your hardest moment, you are held by the God who cannot and will not let go.

IT changes everything because it changes how you worship. Remember — Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn before they went to the most difficult night of their lives.

Matthew 26:30 MEV

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Maybe they sang, I heard an old old story how a Savior came from Glory, who gave His life on Calvary to save a wretch like me.

Maybe the sang, Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

Obviously these are newer hymns, but my point is this.

They went to Gethsemane with a song still on their lips.

Because they knew who God was.

Because they trusted the covenant even when the circumstances were terrifying.

And we can do the same. We can worship in the garden moments of life because we know the One who holds us in covenant love.

Church — we are in covenant with God. And that changes everything.

I want to close by bringing us back to that table one final time. That upper room. That last joyful meal before the cross. Jesus, knowing full well what was coming — the betrayal, the arrest, the beatings, the nails, all of it — chose to sit down with His people. He chose to break bread.

He chose to share the cup.

He chose to enter into covenant with us.

Not because we deserved it.

Not because we had earned it.

Not because we had it all together.

But because that is who He is.

He is a covenant-keeping God.

He is a God who does not love from a distance but moves toward us, sits down with us, and seals His commitment with everything He has. And He is still extending that invitation today.

He is still at the table, holding out the bread and the cup, saying: this is for you. Come and receive it. If you have been far from Him — He is calling you back to the table.

If you are brand new to this faith and still figuring out what all of this means — He is welcoming you in.

If you are in the middle of your own Gethsemane right now, if you are on your knees under the weight of something heavy — He is reminding you today that you do not face it alone.

You are in covenant with the King of kings.

Receive that today. Walk in it. Let it change the way you see yourself, the way you treat others, and the way you live every single day.

Because we are in covenant with God. And that — that truth — changes everything.