Doug McMasters: Well, good morning, beloved.
Doug McMasters: Morning.
Doug McMasters: I just have to say I really appreciated and enjoyed all your singing.
Doug McMasters: It just wafted over me and Royal and I looked at each other and just said, wow, wow, it's wonderful.
Doug McMasters: Let's take our Bibles and go to the Gospel of Matthew.
Doug McMasters: If you would join me there in chapter 26 of Matthew.
Doug McMasters: We're reaching the end of this book.
Doug McMasters: We've been in it for quite some time.
Doug McMasters: We're slowing down as Matthew slows down here to give us an insight into the last days of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Let's take a look at the passage that we're going to be examining this morning.
Doug McMasters: Look at verse 26 of chapter 26.
Doug McMasters: As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed, and broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, Take and eat it.
Doug McMasters: This is my body.
Doug McMasters: Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink from it, all of you.
Doug McMasters: For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: But I tell you, and I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom.
Doug McMasters: And after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Doug McMasters: As we stated last week, this passage that we're looking at is built on it within the context of the Passover, the Jewish annual celebration of their deliverance from Egypt and the slavery that they were in there 1,500 years before.
Doug McMasters: So we stated last week the Passover was a meal that was based on that night when God himself came down and moved through the land of Egypt and slew the firstborn in that last of ten awful plagues against the country because of Pharaoh's hardness of heart.
Doug McMasters: As God came in judgment upon each household, he would pass over the homes that had the blood of a lamb displayed on the outside of the doorposts.
Doug McMasters: Every year from that point forward, the Jewish people would celebrate that wonderful deliverance.
Doug McMasters: God told them that when they did celebrate it, such as he says in Exodus 13, you should tell your sons, this is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt.
Doug McMasters: The Passover was to be instituted as a symbol of what God was doing or about to do by bringing his mighty intervention on their behalf to rescue them from slavery, from the grip of Pharaoh, take them out of Egypt, to deliver them into a land of promise.
Doug McMasters: A symbol.
Doug McMasters: They renewed their vows.
Doug McMasters: And in part of that little ceremony that we had, I asked them to join hands, particularly the hands that had their rings on them.
Doug McMasters: And I laid my hand with my wedding ring band over their hands and prayed that God would bless them.
Doug McMasters: And every time that they felt or saw or sensed the presence of that ring, they would recognize their vows, that they would go back to that time when they had made those solemn commitments to one another.
Doug McMasters: Ten years ago, they gave those rings, quite a bit shinier, to one another.
Doug McMasters: And as they did so, they followed in the words that I led them through.
Doug McMasters: This ring I give you in token and pledge of our my constant trust and abiding love.
Doug McMasters: The rings, they're a seal, a token, a pledge of love and of commitment.
Doug McMasters: We have a number of those kinds of things.
Doug McMasters: Handshakes are a symbol or a token of our friendship and of our openness.
Doug McMasters: What was once literally a, I don't have a knife in my hand, now becomes a symbol of friendship, a symbol of openness and peace.
Doug McMasters: And a handshake becomes a symbol of commitment.
Doug McMasters: We make promises to each other.
Doug McMasters: And there was a day in our society when we would say, let's shake on that.
Doug McMasters: And the shaking of a hand would be the symbol of a commitment to a promise made to one another.
Doug McMasters: And if you had any doubt about it or anybody fulfilling that, you could say to that person, man, we shook hands on this.
Doug McMasters: Our shaking of our hands was a symbol of our commitment.
Doug McMasters: In Matthew chapter 26, Jesus takes the Jewish symbol and transforms it into the symbol of the Christian faith, communion, or the Lord's Supper, we call it.
Doug McMasters: And it's a powerful symbol.
Doug McMasters: And this morning I want us to see how Jesus creates this symbol and what it means.
Doug McMasters: And as we go through this, I only have two points.
Doug McMasters: They each have some subpoints, and hopefully I can lead you through those without confusing you.
Doug McMasters: But the first thing I want us to notice about this passage of Scripture are the surprising elements that are found within the institution of the Lord's Supper.
Doug McMasters: The surprising elements here in the establishment of the Lord's Supper.
Doug McMasters: Within this supper, full of symbolic importance, Jesus arrests our attention with some really shocking details.
Doug McMasters: And the first is this a surprising audience.
Doug McMasters: The Last Supper, as I said a moment ago, or the Passover, as I said ago, was a special meal, a special meal of households, a special meal when families would come together.
Doug McMasters: Here, Jesus is portraying a special version of that meal, not by having the meal with his biological family, but by having the meal with his disciples, indicating to them that he is now viewing them as family, as family.
Doug McMasters: In Matthew chapter 12, Jesus teaching, speaking to the crowd, and his mother and his brothers standing outside and were wanting to talk with them.
Doug McMasters: And someone told him, Matthew 12, look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they want to speak with you.
Doug McMasters: But to the one who told him this, Jesus replied, Well, who is my mother and who are my brothers?
Doug McMasters: And pointing to his disciples, he said, Hearer my mother and my brothers.
Doug McMasters: For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother, sister, and mother.
Doug McMasters: So Jesus here counterculturally is calling his disciples into a meal as his new family, as sort of not a surplanting or a doing away of his biological family, but as an extension of his family beyond blood relationships.
Doug McMasters: And so the disciples, had they thought about it, and I'm not sure they did yet think about it, they would have understood the significance of this surprising gathering because of the audience that was there.
Doug McMasters: That Jesus was inviting them into this celebration as family members.
Doug McMasters: And he was also going to teach them how, as family, they should act with each other.
Doug McMasters: Because it was during the context of this meal that Jesus steps away from the center of it all and grabs a basin and a towel and begins to wash the dust-crusted feet of these men in that room.
Doug McMasters: While they were all looking at each other and arguing about who was the greatest in the room.
Doug McMasters: And that is to be a part of a new family.
Doug McMasters: That he called all of us into a new identity, that he's called us into a new way of life within his kingdom.
Doug McMasters: And the things that we might have counted as markers of our identity are now subsumed by this greater identity.
Doug McMasters: We are now no longer chiefly this ethnicity or that ethnicity or this social class or that social class or to gather predominantly with people of this shade of skin or of that shade of skin.
Doug McMasters: We are here because of Jesus Christ, and we are here as his family.
Doug McMasters: We're not here simply as guests of Jesus.
Doug McMasters: We're here as fellow members of his family.
Doug McMasters: We call God our Father and we call Christ our brother.
Doug McMasters: Now, some people might think that participating in worship in a church service might be irrelevant or a waste of time, but it's not for us because we are here as Christ people.
Doug McMasters: We are here as family together.
Doug McMasters: And like the disciples that evening, we too very often need to learn exactly what that means for us by way of our identity and how we are to act it out in loving, humble service to each other.
Doug McMasters: And so as we sit in this room, or as you sit and I stand here, we look at each other not simply as a single solitary person among others, or perhaps myself with my biological family, or perhaps myself with my friends.
Doug McMasters: No, we're here as spiritual brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and aunts and uncles and cousins.
Doug McMasters: We're family here.
Doug McMasters: We're family.
Doug McMasters: Everyone who is in Christ, gathered together in the name of the Lord Jesus, are worshiping together as family.
Doug McMasters: In the first century, that concept was extremely important.
Doug McMasters: And they looked at that passage where Jesus said, Who is my mother and who are who are my brothers?
Doug McMasters: As one of the most quoted things that they talked about in first century Christianity.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because in those days, when the gospel spread, it divided biological families.
Doug McMasters: It separated people from their own kin.
Doug McMasters: It cut them off from blood relatives.
Doug McMasters: And they found immense comfort in the knowledge that they had a family still, a spiritual family that bound them together as one.
Doug McMasters: And I think that's part of the reason why our fellowship is so sweet here.
Doug McMasters: Because there's not many of us who have been raised in an evangelical family context.
Doug McMasters: Many of us, we're the only Christians in our family.
Doug McMasters: We don't even know Christians at work.
Doug McMasters: The only place that we know believers in Christ is when we come here.
Doug McMasters: And we're like, I'm home.
Doug McMasters: I'm home.
Doug McMasters: I'm with God's people.
Doug McMasters: I'm with my family here.
Doug McMasters: So one of the first surprising notes of this is the fact of the audience that is gathered.
Doug McMasters: The second surprising part of the establishment of the Lord's Supper is the surprising authority that's found in what Jesus does.
Doug McMasters: Israel had lived for nearly 1,500 years under the charter of their national identity and existence, which, when we read the Old Testament, was given to them on Sinai amid thunderings and lightning.
Doug McMasters: If you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure to me among above all people, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom, a priest, and a holy nation.
Doug McMasters: That covenant, that agreement, that treaty, if you will, on the part of God was ratified by a solemn act in which an animal's blood was shed and divided into two portions.
Doug McMasters: One portion was sprinkled on the altar.
Doug McMasters: Another portion of that blood, after the conditions of the covenant were read out, and the obligations of the covenant were stated, and the people pledged themselves to that covenant, Moses sprinkled the people with the blood.
Doug McMasters: And now here is a Galilean peasant in a borrowed upper room within hours of his humiliating death, who is now stepping forward in the middle of a major meal of the life of the people of Israel.
Doug McMasters: And he is saying here, I am putting away the ancient covenant which has knit this nation to God.
Doug McMasters: It is gone.
Doug McMasters: And he is saying, in essence, I am the true offering, I am the true sacrifice.
Doug McMasters: It is by my blood that a new covenant is being enacted.
Doug McMasters: And it is built on better promises.
Doug McMasters: If you think of this simply as that, that is one of the largest ex demonstrations of audacity this world has ever seen.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: Unless the one who spoke is indeed the word of God.
Doug McMasters: That he is the one who is actually establishing a new covenant, and he who is the one who established the old covenant and has the right to say the new has superseded it.
Doug McMasters: It's no wonder then when we read the Gospels, there's this booming voice from the heavens who said, This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.
Doug McMasters: Hear him.
Doug McMasters: You see, Jesus isn't here just to give us a little extra push in our understanding of how to live a fulfilled life.
Doug McMasters: He isn't here just to give us a little extra wisdom to carry out our days with a little more peace than we might ordinarily have.
Doug McMasters: No, he's here to reveal a wholly different relationship that all of us can have with the living God.
Doug McMasters: A relationship that moves past this life into eternity, into the new heavens and the new earth.
Doug McMasters: There's another surprising element here before we get to the significance of all of this.
Doug McMasters: The surprising aim.
Doug McMasters: Jesus and his disciples were celebrating a Passover meal.
Doug McMasters: But Jesus changes it all.
Doug McMasters: He starts doing things with it that are unique.
Doug McMasters: Now, certainly, following the normal course of the celebration, he takes bread, he blesses it, he breaks it.
Doug McMasters: Nothing new there.
Doug McMasters: But then he gives it to them and says, This is my body.
SPEAKER_01: Those words never have been told around a Passover meal before.
Doug McMasters: Do you think those disciples who had been raised in that year after year after year after year would not have perked their ears up when Jesus made those comments?
Doug McMasters: Of course they would have.
Doug McMasters: Hang on a second.
Doug McMasters: What are you saying now?
Doug McMasters: And again, as the meal continues, he takes a cup and he says, drink from it, all of you.
Doug McMasters: This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: Again, people very familiar with the Passover, people very familiar with how it all went.
Doug McMasters: They didn't drink from one cup, they would drink their own cups.
Doug McMasters: But now Jesus has them drink from a single cup.
Doug McMasters: All of you drink from this one.
Doug McMasters: What is he doing?
Doug McMasters: He's breaking the pattern to introduce something new, and he's putting himself front and center of it all.
Doug McMasters: He is putting his life and his death into the very place of that Passover lamb that was given as a sacrifice so that people might be passed over from the destructing judgment of God.
Doug McMasters: He's putting himself right there.
Doug McMasters: And the details of the story of the Passover, the bitterness of the bondage, the sacrifice of the lamb, the deliverance from Egypt is all but a backdrop to Jesus showing how he himself is the new Passover lamb.
Doug McMasters: And that his blood would be the new wine of the new Exodus.
Doug McMasters: This is going to bring them beyond the Red Sea and separation from Pharaoh.
Doug McMasters: This is going to bring them past the gulf of separation of a holy God into a new creation.
Doug McMasters: Jesus uses this Passover to speak of his death and his resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, the new covenant, the kingdom of his Father.
Doug McMasters: This is the Lord's Supper.
Doug McMasters: This is what we celebrate together each month here.
Doug McMasters: Those surprising elements kind of fold themselves into this moment when Jesus, and here's my second point, talks about not only surprising elements in the institution of the Lord's Supper, but the significance found in the elements of the Lord's Supper.
Doug McMasters: And the first thing we see is the significance of service.
Doug McMasters: The significance of service.
Doug McMasters: When you read this account and you see the context around it, Jesus gives all of this that we've just been talking about within the context of Jesus speaking about his betrayal, Jesus speaking about his abandonment, Jesus speaking about being struck down, Jesus being isolated, and yet his willingness to continue to go forward on the behalf of those whose loyalties are about to fail miserably.
Doug McMasters: In his words at the supper, there, he speaks of his determination to continue forward to go to the cross, to take up that supreme example of the servant role to which he had been calling his disciples to live.
Doug McMasters: And he said in Matthew 20, verse 28 the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life.
Doug McMasters: A ransom for many.
Doug McMasters: He is still determined to do this no matter if he gets betrayed, no matter if he is denied, no matter if he is left alone, even if their loyalties dissolve away, his will not.
Doug McMasters: His will not.
Doug McMasters: And so Jesus saw his impending death as that ultimate display of his servant mentality, which had marked the whole of his ministry up until this moment.
Doug McMasters: Jesus set before his disciples a vision of greatness as measured by the scale of service.
Doug McMasters: He puts himself forward as the supreme example.
Doug McMasters: And in this chapter and in the next chapter, we see Jesus in his relentless love going unflinchingly to the cross, loving his enemies to the end.
Doug McMasters: You see, to Jesus, death was not the tragic end of his ministry.
Doug McMasters: His death was the high point of his ministry.
Doug McMasters: This was the high point of his life and the stamp of the invillable, indelible image of servanthood that he had taken on the behalf of people who are his enemies.
Doug McMasters: Consider this for a moment.
Doug McMasters: Jesus takes bread, gives thanks over it, and breaks it and says, My body, takes a cup and said, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: He's pronouncing a blessing and a thanksgiving over elements that display the shredding of his life.
Doug McMasters: And the disciples are called to drink the cup to participate in the benefits of the Lord's death.
Doug McMasters: But Jesus drinks the cup in committal of himself to be the means of their life.
Doug McMasters: Jesus' resolve in that respect will be sorely tried in Gethsemane, and we'll look at that soon.
Doug McMasters: If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.
Doug McMasters: But he gains a fresh confidence in the Lord's will.
Doug McMasters: Nevertheless, if this cannot pass, I will drink it.
Doug McMasters: Your will be done.
Doug McMasters: In verse 26, as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, gave us to his disciples, and said, Take, eat it, this is my body.
Doug McMasters: Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, and he said, Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: Well, the contents of that cup weren't poured out that night.
Doug McMasters: They were drunk.
Doug McMasters: He is making an allusion to what's about to happen.
Doug McMasters: And even on the cross, it wasn't as if the cross was sort of a bloody death.
Doug McMasters: I mean, it had blood as part of it, but it wasn't sort of the draining of all of his blood, shows the violence of his death.
Doug McMasters: But he uses this term poured out to bring us from the Old Testament into the moment of the pouring out of the sacrifices.
Doug McMasters: And he's saying that his blood, his death, is a sacrificial one, a sacrificial death.
Doug McMasters: He's pulling up the imagery of sacrifice here.
Doug McMasters: So Jesus tells us what he thought about his death, and he's telling us what we ought to think about his death.
Doug McMasters: And he points out this moment here so that we might be able to focus in on what is the most important thing about Jesus.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't call his disciples or us back to the tenderness of his love, or of the greatness of his wisdom, or of the might of his miracles, as amazing and gracious as they were.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't call us back to the flawless beauty of his character, how noble and right it was in the face of a sullen society.
Doug McMasters: No, he calls us here to put the imprint of his death in our minds.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because it was a sacrifice.
Doug McMasters: Because it was poured out.
Doug McMasters: It was given for a reason.
Doug McMasters: And so he tells us that that death ought to be remembered.
Doug McMasters: Not remembered it like we might remember the tragic end of a noble hero.
Doug McMasters: Oh, he died in the middle of battle.
Doug McMasters: What an honorable soul he was.
Doug McMasters: What perseverance to the end he had.
Doug McMasters: No, it's not that.
Doug McMasters: Not as the crowning proof of love, even.
Doug McMasters: Look how much God loves us.
Doug McMasters: He died.
Doug McMasters: Not as a supreme act, even of patient forgiveness, but rather a death for us, by which the blood of the sacrifice secures the remission, the forgiveness of our sins.
Doug McMasters: At the cross, we discover the full version of the world's implacable hatred of God and of Christ, abusingly mocking him as he lay on those beams, dying and agonizing death.
Doug McMasters: As they cry out with abusive words to the Lord.
Doug McMasters: He saved others, but he cannot save himself.
Doug McMasters: He's the king of Israel.
Doug McMasters: Let him bring himself down if he is.
Doug McMasters: He trusted in God.
Doug McMasters: Let God rescue him.
Doug McMasters: Oh, God didn't rescue him.
Doug McMasters: He must be cursed of God.
Doug McMasters: He said, I am the Son of God.
Doug McMasters: Let God do the delivering.
Doug McMasters: Savior, King of Israel, Son of God, everything that he spoke of about himself is taken, trampled on, and thrown back into his face with insult.
Doug McMasters: And they thought by killing him they were ridding the world of him.
Doug McMasters: But little did they understand that in the destruction that Jesus was facing there in his death, he was fulfilling God's plan to achieve salvation.
Doug McMasters: They thought they were inflicting the ultimate humiliation and defeat on Jesus.
Doug McMasters: But God was taking what they thought was a triumph of theirs and turning it into a triumph of his as he put death to death.
Doug McMasters: He said, I've come to save others.
Doug McMasters: And because he came to save others, he was not going to save himself.
Doug McMasters: It was a sacrifice.
Doug McMasters: W.
Doug McMasters: Gandhi wrote this, and I'll read more of it later.
Doug McMasters: He hell, in hell, laid low.
Doug McMasters: Made sin, he sin overthrew, bowed to the grave, destroyed it so.
Doug McMasters: And death by death slew.
Doug McMasters: What wonderful words those are.
Doug McMasters: Not only was this significant emblem, symbol, pointing to a savior who was giving himself in service, giving himself in sacrifice, but also giving himself as a substitute.
Doug McMasters: As a substitute.
Doug McMasters: In fulfillment of that prophecy that all of the New Testament writers indicate pointed to Jesus Christ, Isaiah 53, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.
Doug McMasters: His life was an offering for sin.
Doug McMasters: He poured out himself to death.
Doug McMasters: See, Jesus died in our place as a substitute, taking our guilt and bearing it upon himself and bearing the punishment of our sins.
Doug McMasters: And so that is the meaning of this meal as he takes the bread and breaks it and said, My body for you, as he takes the cup and gives that and tells them, This is the blood of the covenant, which is given for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: But he also speaks of the satisfaction that that sacrifice is going to bring.
Doug McMasters: A satisfaction of God's holy demands, a satisfaction to the sinner saved by grace.
Doug McMasters: Four cups of wine, the usual offering in the Passover meal.
Doug McMasters: The cup that Jesus took up, many think was the third of those four, called the cup of blessing.
Doug McMasters: Jesus here is taking that cup and in the blessing handing it over to others and saying, drink, drink of this cup, drink of this cup of the blessing.
Doug McMasters: Participate in the blessing that this cup represents as it comes from me to you.
Doug McMasters: As they were eating, as they were drinking, they were not only showing the way Christ would bring about the forgiveness of sins, but also about the way that we receive the forgiveness of our sins.
Doug McMasters: The bread and the wine represent his body and his shed blood, proclaiming his death.
Doug McMasters: But the way in which we receive our salvation, our forgiveness is also wrapped up in the demonstration of this meal.
Doug McMasters: The way we receive this bread and wine is by eating and drinking.
Doug McMasters: And the way we receive the merit and virtue of the Lord Jesus Christ and his sacrifice is by taking and receiving.
Doug McMasters: You see, we have forgiveness based upon the merit and the virtue of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: What is called upon for us is to receive and take and eat.
Doug McMasters: By faith, we have a faith that's like eating.
Doug McMasters: By trust, we have a trust that's like drinking.
Doug McMasters: By reception of Christ spiritually into our hearts, it stands every month to us as an emblem as we take those elements and we eat them and take them into our bodies.
Doug McMasters: We believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and we are saved.
Doug McMasters: It is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy that he saves us.
Doug McMasters: How is that mercy received?
Doug McMasters: For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: That's how.
Doug McMasters: And at the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we'll get to this later in chapter 27 and verse 51, the curtain in the temple was torn from the top to the bottom, shred into two, and opened up that barrier between people and God that existed from the day of Adam's sin, that barrier that existed of the people of Israel as they stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and heard and felt and feared the presence of God as he spoke in the midst of smoke and fire, that separation that the thick curtain represented in which no one could enter but one and only after a sacrifice, repeated time and again.
Doug McMasters: Now we have that curtain ripped in two.
Doug McMasters: As if God is saying not only to the Jewish people but to all the world, you can come in now.
Doug McMasters: You can come in now.
Doug McMasters: The way is open for you now.
Doug McMasters: Come in.
Doug McMasters: Jesus here is speaking about a service, a sacrifice of himself, a substitutionary death, a satisfying death, in which the holy demands of God are answered.
Doug McMasters: And all you need to do is walk in to his presence through Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And the last point is saving, saving.
Doug McMasters: There's surprising elements here.
Doug McMasters: We've talked about those.
Doug McMasters: There are significant elements here, and we want to end with this one.
Doug McMasters: In verse 27 and 28, he took that cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: It's a remarkable statement right there.
Doug McMasters: The blood, my blood of the covenant, which is given for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: There's not a lot of discussion about blood and covenant in the Old Testament, but there is one significant place where it is mentioned in Exodus chapter 24 and verse 8, which I mentioned a moment ago, where Moses sprinkles the people with the blood, half of the blood of the sacrifice.
Doug McMasters: The other half had already been put on the altar, but the other half had been kept back.
Doug McMasters: And as the book of the covenant is read out, and the promises of obedience and its stipulations are provided, it and after the affirmation of accepting those conditions, then the blood is sprayed on the people with these words, the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has made with you in accordance with all these words.
Doug McMasters: The blood shared between the altar and the people is a binding marker of promises of God and the peoples, of God to fulfill his promises to act in a way of liberation, but also for the people to align themselves with the holiness of God and a solemn commitment of obedience.
Doug McMasters: But here, there's something else.
Doug McMasters: There's something else here.
Doug McMasters: This is my blood of the covenant, just like the blood of the covenant in Exodus 24.
Doug McMasters: And as he passes it around to these disciples who are doing something completely awkward and unfamiliar and probably not yet understood by them, he's telling them these words that his blood establishes a covenant.
Doug McMasters: That his blood establishes that God will promise to act to loosen people from their sins by way of forgiveness.
Doug McMasters: Jesus is linking the old covenant with this new covenant, that his death is brought to an end, to a fulfillment, the millions of blood sacrifices that have been used to seal and maintain the old covenant, and that there would be no more need of that for his once-for-all death.
Doug McMasters: The time is coming, says the Lord, when I'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.
Doug McMasters: I will be their God and they will be my people.
Doug McMasters: No longer will a man teach his neighbor or man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
Doug McMasters: For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.
Doug McMasters: Those words had to be ringing in the ears of the disciples when they heard Jesus say, This is my blood of the covenant, which is given for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: What covenant?
Doug McMasters: What forgiveness?
Doug McMasters: The new covenant with these promises.
Doug McMasters: That's it.
Doug McMasters: The old covenant was a gracious covenant, indeed, but the people did not keep it.
Doug McMasters: In the new covenant, God's people would be empowered because the law wouldn't stand outside of them.
Doug McMasters: The word of God would reside within them.
Doug McMasters: It would also reside not on a stony heart that's unaffected, but on a new heart that's made soft and pliable to the will of God.
Doug McMasters: This new covenant sealed in his blood is a charter, a better charter, under conditions of which not a nation but the whole world can enjoy eternal salvation.
Doug McMasters: Wrap your mind around these things.
Doug McMasters: How wonderful it is that between us and an infinite God, there is this established, immovable promise of him to act in a way of forgiving those who come to him.
Doug McMasters: We're not left to grope in philosophical darkness about how to find fulfillment for life and eternity.
Doug McMasters: We're not left at the mercy of our I wonders and my probys, and uh, I'm trying my bests.
Doug McMasters: We're not left and reduced to consult the ambiguous notions of nature and of circumstance to try to find the will of the unknown God.
Doug McMasters: No, we're not even left with the varying voices of our hearts.
Doug McMasters: What do we have?
Doug McMasters: We have God coming into our world of darkness and shedding his light and saying, Here is something faithful and true.
Doug McMasters: Here he comes with articulate, plain, faithful, binding words that says, I will act on your behalf to forgive your sins.
Doug McMasters: He's limited himself to the utterance of these faithful words.
Doug McMasters: He has made his promise, my covenant to forgive you.
Doug McMasters: To make that even sweeter, think about it a little more deeply.
Doug McMasters: The old agreement said, if you will obey my voice and do my commandments, then conditions, do and live, be righteous and blessed.
SPEAKER_01: The new one, take and have, believe, and live, receive, and be forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: The one was law.
Doug McMasters: This one's a gift.
Doug McMasters: One spoke of retribution, this one speaks of forgiveness.
Doug McMasters: One carried a voice outward, hard, rigid, graven with a pin of iron on the rocks of stone.
Doug McMasters: But now we have a law written as impulses, as powers of love to mold and shape the heart.
Doug McMasters: Bestowing upon us a willingness to be obedient.
Doug McMasters: And the sole condition is that we come with empty hands to receive, to receive, to humbly and believingly accept the gift of divine forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: The word is near you, even in your mouth.
Doug McMasters: If you confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: It's as simple, yet so profound as that.
Doug McMasters: And here Jesus is saying.
Doug McMasters: That his death is the token of God's forgiveness.
Doug McMasters: It is the means by which God remedies our greatest problem.
Doug McMasters: That his death is a pledge of unending and inexhaustible mercy of God to all who believe on him.
Doug McMasters: He that spared not his own son, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?
Doug McMasters: So here's the Lord's Supper.
Doug McMasters: And let me conclude with just these words.
Doug McMasters: When sins are forgiven, they go away.
Doug McMasters: They're removed.
Doug McMasters: Do you understand how fundamental that is?
Doug McMasters: The basic problem of the human race is that God is holy, and we're not.
Doug McMasters: We sin.
Doug McMasters: We violate the rule of a holy God.
Doug McMasters: We shake our fist by transgressions or we walk away from them in indifference.
Doug McMasters: But no matter how you look at it, we are sinning against the Creator.
Doug McMasters: What do we do with that guilt?
Doug McMasters: Well, what we normally do with that guilt is we try to deny it.
Doug McMasters: Oh, there's no such thing as God.
Doug McMasters: Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Doug McMasters: We try to rationalize it, we try to hide it.
Doug McMasters: We might even admit a little bit of it, just so everybody thinks that we're kind of being honest.
Doug McMasters: But the reality is there's a whole lot more we haven't talked about.
Doug McMasters: But none of those things can get rid of guilt.
Doug McMasters: Every single one of us are looking at red hands like Lady Macbeth and going, Out, out, out, damn spot.
Doug McMasters: I can't get rid of this.
Doug McMasters: It won't go away.
Doug McMasters: Our hands are red with guilt.
Doug McMasters: There's only one remedy: God's declaration of forgiveness.
Doug McMasters: And there's only one place that that forgiveness comes when Jesus said, This is my blood of the covenant, which is given on the behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.
Doug McMasters: So every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we celebrate the birth of God's new people, the institution of this new covenant, in which the Savior announces through the pouring out of his blood on the cross that he's about to do, that we have a new life.
Doug McMasters: The Passover spoke the night before God's mighty act to deliver.
Doug McMasters: The Lord's Supper is instituted the night before God's mighty act of deliverance.
Doug McMasters: It's about to happen.
Doug McMasters: Disciples, do you hear it?
Doug McMasters: Do you receive it?
Doug McMasters: Do we hear it?
Doug McMasters: Do we receive it?
Doug McMasters: Back to S.W.
Doug McMasters: Gandhi in a song that he wrote.
Doug McMasters: Listen to how he portrays the movement of salvation.
Doug McMasters: I hear the accuser roar of ills that I have done.
Doug McMasters: I know them well, and thousand more.
Doug McMasters: Jehovah finds none.
Doug McMasters: Sin, Satan, death press near to harass and to appall.
Doug McMasters: But let my risen Savior appear, and backward they go and fall.
Doug McMasters: Before, behind, around, they set their fierce array to fight and force me from my ground along Emmanuel's way.
Doug McMasters: I meet them face to face through Jesus, conquest blessed, march in the triumph of his grace, right onward to my rest.
Doug McMasters: There in his book I bear a more than conqueror's name, a soldier, son, and fellow heir who fought and overcome.
Doug McMasters: His be the victor's name, who fought our fight alone, triumphant saints, no honor claim.
Doug McMasters: The conquest was his own.
Doug McMasters: By weakness and defeat he won the mead and crown, trod all our foes beneath his feet, by being trodden down.
Doug McMasters: He hell in hell laid low, made sin he overthrew, bowed to the grave, destroyed it so, and death by dying slew.
Doug McMasters: Bless, bless the conquering slain, the conqueror slain, slain in his victory, who lived, who died, who lives again for thee, my soul for thee.
Doug McMasters: My friend, have you entered into that song?
Doug McMasters: Are you able to exclaim the wonders of your conquering Savior?
Doug McMasters: Who's brought to death all that would cause yours?
Doug McMasters: Who has put to silence Satan and sin and your selfish impulses?
Doug McMasters: Who's called you into the place of repose and rest based in the promise of God through the mighty act of God in Jesus Christ to deliver us?
Doug McMasters: Have you accepted and are finding fulfilled in your life the wonderful pictures that the Lord's Supper speaks of, with your heart sprinkled with the blood so freely shed for you?
Doug McMasters: I pray you do.
Doug McMasters: Pray that you understand that you can be in a living relationship with a holy God who has pledged himself to you because he has given up his own son for your life.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray together.
Doug McMasters: Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for our glorious Savior.
Doug McMasters: We thank you that He has brought into this evening, into this world, a whole new and living way that he commemorates on the cusp of that grand act to commemorate a living symbol that speaks of that life, that talks about the centrality of his person, the completion found in his death, the forgiveness received through the shedding of his blood.
Doug McMasters: And as we weren't able to fully look at, all tagged with the promise of a future day of joy and blessing and communion, when we will drink it new with him in the Father's kingdom, that death would not be the death of Christ, that the death of Christ would not be the death of his disciples, that life would happen, that the kingdom would be fulfilled, that the promises are going to be brought into fruition, that all things that have been written in the scriptures will be brought into completion in him.
Doug McMasters: The day of wonder, the awakening of the new creation would happen.
Doug McMasters: We thank you for a Savior who has granted us a participation in that, not by any works of righteousness which we have done, but according to the mercy of God, granted to all who call upon Christ.
Doug McMasters: Thank you for Jesus.
Doug McMasters: Amen.