SPEAKER_01: Matthew 26, where we just left Jesus, and there's kind of this cascading series of events here that we've been looking at tonight.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, the passage in Matthew 26 begins where Jesus is overlooking the temple.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, it is just on the right side of the temple from the Mount of Olives where Jesus is looking, where he will be beaten, where he will be led uh to Herod's fortress, where he will be stripped and uh shuttled back and forth over there.
SPEAKER_01: It's on the left side of that where Caiaphas' house is, where he'll be kept overnight.
SPEAKER_01: It's on the back side of that, which he wouldn't be able to see from there, where he'll be crucified and buried.
SPEAKER_01: And in front of him at this moment is the whole valley, the Kidron Valley below him, and the Garden of Gethsemane, uh, where he had where he will be sweating great drops of blood, as it were, and then walking from there into the temple area.
SPEAKER_01: The key event of that night coming up, the night that we're going to read about now, is of course the Passover celebration.
SPEAKER_01: That would be just a massive holiday that is hard for us to fully understand the role that that played in the evening.
SPEAKER_01: But you would understand from an American perspective, if a series of key events were taking place like the week of December 25th.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're you're looking, you're advocating for something at work or there's a school assignment due or something, and December 25th is in the middle of that, you understand how that one day, even in secular America, that one day is gonna tower over the whole week.
SPEAKER_01: Everything in that week is gonna revolve around what's gonna happen that that Christmas morning.
SPEAKER_01: There'll be Christmas Eve things, there'll be Christmas families, everything's gonna be closed, like just the reality.
SPEAKER_01: Whether or not you're a Christian, you could be a Muslim in America, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the week of December 25th, that's gonna structure everything in the week, is gonna be just revolving around that, whether you like it or not.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what that's what Passover is like.
SPEAKER_01: But even in a sense, to a bigger degree, because there are pilgrims, Jews from all over the diaspora, all over the Roman Empire, are flooding into Jerusalem this week.
SPEAKER_01: It's just a massive event.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing else like it, really, in Judaism.
SPEAKER_01: That's the week that this is happening.
SPEAKER_01: So that week where Jesus clears out the temple, that's Passover week.
SPEAKER_01: The week that the Passover lambs will be slaughtered in the temple, that's when Jesus clears out the temple and says, You're turning my father's house into a den of thieves.
SPEAKER_01: That's the week he's teaching on the temple mount.
SPEAKER_01: The steps up to the southern steps of the temple, where he's teaching every day, that's this week that this is happening.
SPEAKER_01: So when he's up on the on that Wednesday here, when he's up on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Garden of Gethsemane, overlooking the temple, Caiaphas's house, the Antonio fortress, looking over all of that, that's this week.
SPEAKER_01: And so when he says in a few days he's going to be crucified, in a few days he's going to be delivered over to be killed, that's what's this is framed around.
SPEAKER_01: That's Passover, he's talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Now the big question is, where are you going for Passover?
SPEAKER_01: That's the question Americans ask.
SPEAKER_01: You know, where are you going for Christmas?
SPEAKER_01: Again, even Muslim Americans will be asked, what are you doing that week?
SPEAKER_01: Are you going to go see family, etc.?
SPEAKER_01: The whole world revolves around that, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01: And so the question is, where are we going to celebrate Passover?
SPEAKER_01: That's verse 17 of Matthew 26.
SPEAKER_01: Where are we going to go to Passover?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, what's the plan here?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus keeps the plan secret, remember, because he does not want to be betrayed until after the celebration of Passover.
SPEAKER_01: That's critical to this.
SPEAKER_01: If he's betrayed before the celebration of Passover, he does not get the chance to transform Passover into communion.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's timing this.
SPEAKER_01: He cannot be betrayed until Passover is over.
SPEAKER_01: So he's got to keep Judas in his sight and he's got to keep the celebration of the Passover secretive so that Judas doesn't know where it is.
SPEAKER_01: This is why all the rig and roll of it's not fully described in Matthew's gospel, but in Mark and Luke, where Jesus says, you're going to go in and you're going to find a guy with a water jug, which would be unusual while getting the water is usually a women's task.
SPEAKER_01: They find the guy with a water jug and tell him the Passover is going to be at your house, follow him.
SPEAKER_01: It's like this whole cloak and dagger kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's providentially arranged that they're going to celebrate Passover in this particular room.
SPEAKER_01: That's where they're headed.
SPEAKER_01: It's back over, actually very close to Caiaphas's house, really, on the other side of the Temple Mount.
SPEAKER_01: So they're arranging it.
SPEAKER_01: Judas doesn't know where it is.
SPEAKER_01: He does not know where they're going to celebrate Passover.
SPEAKER_01: He's got to stay with Jesus and the other ten disciples.
SPEAKER_01: The two of them went away to go make the arrangements by following the guy with the water jug and all that.
SPEAKER_01: And now they've ended up in that upper room.
SPEAKER_01: It is the night of Passover.
SPEAKER_01: Passover is not just a you, it's not like we do communion where pass the cup and take the bread and the wine and now you're done.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, this is an all-meal affair.
SPEAKER_01: This is a several-hour event that's going on here.
SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't be sitting like we think of sitting around the table.
SPEAKER_01: You're more reclining at a table.
SPEAKER_01: You kind of lean on the person next to you all the way around the table.
SPEAKER_01: The table is low to the ground.
SPEAKER_01: People would be serving, walking in and out, of course.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the scene here.
SPEAKER_01: And it's while that's happening, in the middle of the Passover meal that they're celebrating, so far everything is normal.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus declares, one of you is going to betray me.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, they're all do the is it, you know, is it I, Lord, is it I, Lord, Jesus says, the person I share this food with, the person who dips this thing, it's Judas that does that.
SPEAKER_01: It still doesn't dawn on people, really.
SPEAKER_01: There's no evidence when you read the four gospels that people put the pieces together.
SPEAKER_01: Which is so weird, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, who is it, Lord?
SPEAKER_01: Who is it?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, the one who I dip with, and then he and Judas dip, and then Judas leaves, and everybody's like, I don't get it.
SPEAKER_01: What just happens?
SPEAKER_01: They assume he's going to buy more food, remember?
SPEAKER_01: They think he's got something to do.
SPEAKER_01: Go get more food for the who knows what Jesus is doing.
SPEAKER_01: He's always doing things like this.
SPEAKER_01: They've got accustomed to it by this point of the ministry.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't seem to click on anyone that Judas had left to go betray Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But providentially, once Judas is gone, that's when the Lord transforms this Passover meal.
SPEAKER_01: Again, a very emblematic, obviously, it's almost two on the nose here how Passover points forward to the death of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus transforms Passover now into the celebration of communion.
SPEAKER_01: He does not do that until Judas goes.
SPEAKER_01: Judas has to leave because Passover, you know, for Israel, is going to become communion.
SPEAKER_01: Communion is for believers.
SPEAKER_01: Communion is for those who are who are in communion with one another in the church.
SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't be appropriate for that to happen with Judas at the table.
SPEAKER_01: And I preached on this before, but by the way, this is why we often do church discipline at communion services.
SPEAKER_01: It's in remembrance of how Jesus instituted the first communion service by having Judas leave the room before the breaking of the bread.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the communion would take place, the Passover would take place in somebody's house.
SPEAKER_01: It could be really in anybody's house.
SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes they would rotate, but the Passover would be led either by the person whose house it is in, or by the most senior person there, kind of the patriarch of the family.
SPEAKER_01: So even if, you know, grandpa would be leading it, even if it was in your brother's house, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of the patriarch.
SPEAKER_01: Now the person who owned the house, he could be leading it.
SPEAKER_01: In this instance here, it's at somebody's house.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know whose house it was, but it's at this house that's happening.
SPEAKER_01: Yet Jesus is clearly the one leading it.
SPEAKER_01: There's no doubt that he's the teacher, he's in charge, he's the rabbi here.
SPEAKER_01: As Passover is celebrated, it's almost scripted out.
SPEAKER_01: It's a very ritualistic, complex ceremony between the different uh courses.
SPEAKER_01: Uh everything is symbol uh is symbolic, everything points to something else.
SPEAKER_01: There's almost a script that you follow, and uh, you know, there's leeway.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to pray the prayers in the Jewish household, you don't have to pray the prayers that everybody always prays.
SPEAKER_01: Uh but you kind of follow that structure, and it is the patriarch who does it.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, the center of the Passover meal is the lamb, the Passover lamb that was slain, and this goes back to the Old Testament where the blood was put on the doorposts, Exodus chapter 12, blood smeared on the doorpost, so the angel of death passes over the houses.
SPEAKER_01: This is why it's called Passover meal.
SPEAKER_01: The houses without the blood on the doorpost, the firstborn in those houses die, the house with the blood on the doorpost, the firstborn is spared.
SPEAKER_01: So in the Passover celebration, there is the Lamb.
SPEAKER_01: That's the main course, literally, and the whole night is structured around how God delivered Israel from the Egyptians.
SPEAKER_01: Now you recognize that the purpose of these celebrations is to reenact or to remember events for a generation that wasn't there.
SPEAKER_01: Thanksgiving would be the most obvious American analogy for this.
SPEAKER_01: We celebrate Thanksgiving, and you know, even the elementary school here does the, you know, the pilgrims and Indians kind of thing they do up there, which is, I don't know if you're they're still allowed to do it, but they still do it, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: It still happens.
SPEAKER_01: The whole idea is it's it's reenacting something for a generation that wasn't there.
SPEAKER_01: We weren't there, but we have you eat the same food all the time to remember what the pilgrims ate, supposedly.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know the veracity of it, but that's the idea.
SPEAKER_01: So it is with Passover.
SPEAKER_01: The Passover lamb's at the middle of this, so that a new generation, so long, so many centuries afterwards, remembers how God spared them from the land.
SPEAKER_01: The bread is dipped in the bitter herbs.
SPEAKER_01: Why the bitter herbs?
SPEAKER_01: It's a reminder, and if you as you read uh Exodus, the bitter herbs have a very prominent role in it, and it's to remind you of the bitterness of the time in Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't like Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Even though the slaves in the wilderness wandering are like, oh, we had leeks and we had onions, and being a slave wasn't that bad.
SPEAKER_01: Think of the onions we had.
SPEAKER_01: Bitter herbs are put into the Passover meal so that it's a reminder, this tastes bitter.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know what else was bitter?
SPEAKER_01: Eating sand.
SPEAKER_01: That was bitter.
SPEAKER_01: Being a slave for 400 years, that was bitter.
SPEAKER_01: Just like these bitter herbs.
SPEAKER_01: And of course the unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_01: The unleavened bread, they were supposed to eat bread for seven days that was unleavened.
SPEAKER_01: Why unleavened bread?
SPEAKER_01: Leavened bread just rises, it takes time to rise.
SPEAKER_01: They were supposed to eat unleavened bread as a testimony to the fact that they left in haste.
SPEAKER_01: Because Pharaoh was going back and forth.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, yes, you can go, no, you can't go.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can go, no, you can't go.
SPEAKER_01: You can go.
SPEAKER_01: Now go get them.
SPEAKER_01: And so the unleavened bread was a reminder that we were running for our very lives.
SPEAKER_01: Chariots were after us, horses were after us, we were hemmed in on the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_01: We almost died.
SPEAKER_01: That's the unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_01: Leavened bread would have taken time to rise.
SPEAKER_01: We got enemies coming, but man, the cake has 15 more minutes.
SPEAKER_01: Come on.
SPEAKER_01: So again, this whole meal is structured around how they were fleeing in the Passover.
SPEAKER_01: Now that Judas is gone, Jesus takes those things and gives them new meaning.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus hijacks Passover and transforms it into communion.
SPEAKER_01: He reorients the whole event around himself.
SPEAKER_01: And it really is shocking.
SPEAKER_01: When you realize how central Passover was to the Jewish identity, it is stunning what Jesus does to it.
SPEAKER_01: People talk about trying to find evidences of Jesus' deity and you know the I am statements and everything.
SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of evidences of Jesus' deity, but this is an often overlooked one.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, a mere man can't reorient Passover around himself.
SPEAKER_01: But that's exactly what Jesus does.
SPEAKER_01: He gives three new layers of meaning to Passover, and I want to kind of give those as an outline tonight.
SPEAKER_01: The bread, the wine, and the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Those will be your three points: the bread, the wine, and the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus takes all three of these elements and retools them.
SPEAKER_01: You know, Passover was built around the lamb, the herbs, and the unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus restructures it around the bread, the wine, and the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: First the bread.
SPEAKER_01: The bread at this point of the meal would have been broken in half.
SPEAKER_01: It would have been a common loaf, not the little pieces that we, you know, we do in communion.
SPEAKER_01: Who knows how traditions develop?
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
SPEAKER_01: But the communion, the bread that they would have had at Passover would have been a loaf.
SPEAKER_01: And it's passed around and you pull pieces off of it.
SPEAKER_01: It would have been broken often in half to go two different directions around the table.
SPEAKER_01: It would be the host or the father figure who's the one who holds it up and breaks it.
SPEAKER_01: Again, obviously, Jesus is leading the meal.
SPEAKER_01: It says in verse 26, as they were eating, Jesus took the bread.
SPEAKER_01: A very formal part of the meal, the lifting up of the bread.
SPEAKER_01: There's bread all around the table.
SPEAKER_01: People are eating bread all through the meal, but the taking of the bread and holding it up above everybody and giving thanks, that's not something that happens all meal.
SPEAKER_01: That's something that happens right here at this point.
SPEAKER_01: The blessing of the bread.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus prays for the bread.
SPEAKER_01: Again, that's something that the host or the father figure would have done.
SPEAKER_01: A common Jewish prayer for the bread.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know exactly what Jesus said.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not recorded, it's likely he just used the common Jewish blessing for the bread, which was, you know, there's several, but the most common one is probably, Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings bread from the earth.
SPEAKER_01: And God brings bread from the earth.
SPEAKER_01: You're giving thanks.
SPEAKER_01: It's like a Thanksgiving meal.
SPEAKER_01: You're giving thanks that God gave you bread.
SPEAKER_01: Here's a big loaf of bread.
SPEAKER_01: The leader of the feast says, Thank you, Lord, for this bread.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, God, for making this bread grow.
SPEAKER_01: We're grateful for it.
SPEAKER_01: Break it.
SPEAKER_01: Let's eat it.
SPEAKER_01: That's what happens at this point.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus does that.
SPEAKER_01: So he lifts up the bread, thanks God for the bread, breaks the bread, says, Take it and eat it.
SPEAKER_01: And then this.
SPEAKER_01: This is my body.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see how out of place that is?
SPEAKER_01: Here's the bread.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Lord, in heaven who makes the bread from the grain that grows.
SPEAKER_01: We give you thanks for it.
SPEAKER_01: Break, you guys take and eat it.
SPEAKER_01: This is my body.
SPEAKER_01: He's reorienting the event around himself.
SPEAKER_01: Again, in the Old Testament, the unleavened bread represented their flight from Egypt because they left in haste.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus uses it to teach a few different truths.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, Jesus, by saying this is my body, he's underscoring that he has a body.
SPEAKER_01: This would be so obvious, it's not even worth stating for the people in the room there.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the one holding it, this is my body.
SPEAKER_01: It's very clear that he has a body.
SPEAKER_01: He's holding the bread in the air with his body.
SPEAKER_01: The guy has a body.
SPEAKER_01: But for the church, it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: This is the first real heresy that came up into the church that Jesus didn't have an actual body.
SPEAKER_01: The first real heresy that infiltrated the church was that, you know, a form of Gnosticism that the body is, you know, fallen and created and so not appropriate for God, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus would have walked in the sand and all of footprint, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus almost anticipates that by ingraining in the church the reality of the incarnation, that God became a man.
SPEAKER_01: That Jesus was born, that he lived.
SPEAKER_01: That's the doctrine of the incarnation.
SPEAKER_01: He was a real person.
SPEAKER_01: This is why we take bread.
SPEAKER_01: Real bread, as real as bread can be, packaged in China, shipped over the ocean.
SPEAKER_01: But you get the point.
SPEAKER_01: It's still real, regardless of where it was made or how much caloric value it has, it still actually exists.
SPEAKER_01: You're eating something.
SPEAKER_01: That's a testimony to you of the reality of the Lord's body.
SPEAKER_01: He was a real person.
SPEAKER_01: You can never deny his humanity.
SPEAKER_01: He was not a shadow, he was not an angel.
SPEAKER_01: This is setting up when he speaks of his death that he was made flesh among us.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Timothy 3:16.
SPEAKER_01: Great is the mystery of godliness, that God was revealed in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: The second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, God, a very God, came on, begotten from the Father, came to earth, robed himself in human flesh, begotten from the Father in eternity past, born to the Virgin Mary, with a real human soul, a real human nature, a real human body.
SPEAKER_01: This is so important because this very day, of course, the Jewish calendar of the day begins at sundown, this very day that Jesus is doing this, he will die.
SPEAKER_01: His body will be put in the grave before sundown the next day.
SPEAKER_01: So when he says this is his body, he's speaking of the reality of the incarnation.
SPEAKER_01: This is his identity.
SPEAKER_01: This bread that he would have been holding in his hands represents what he is coming to.
SPEAKER_01: As he has broken the bread, so his body will be broken.
SPEAKER_01: Certainly that's wrapped up into it.
SPEAKER_01: I know because he was a precious lamb, a holy Passover lamb that's not gonna have any defilement to it, and so none of his bones in that sense would be broken.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's speaking kind of big picture here, like his femur is not gonna be broken, his you know, his main bones are not gonna be broken, he's not gonna be defiled.
SPEAKER_01: It's not saying if you take an x-ray and look at all the little bones in the hand.
SPEAKER_01: I've had people asking that.
SPEAKER_01: If you look at all the little bones in a person's hands, how can you put a nail through someone's hand or someone's wrist and not break any of the tiny bone fragments?
SPEAKER_01: That's not what it's talking about.
SPEAKER_01: It's talking about if you were to look at a lamb, this you can't bring a three-legged lamb over as the Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_01: You're like, oh, which lamb should we sacrifice?
SPEAKER_01: The lame one.
SPEAKER_01: Sacrifice that one.
SPEAKER_01: No, Jesus was not defiled.
SPEAKER_01: There was nothing wrong with him.
SPEAKER_01: He was sinless.
SPEAKER_01: That's the idea here.
SPEAKER_01: And yet he was murdered.
SPEAKER_01: He really did die.
SPEAKER_01: And so, as the bread is broken, that's representing the idea that his death is going to be real.
SPEAKER_01: Just as he has a real body, it's really going to die.
SPEAKER_01: His life and his mission is wrapped up in this bread.
SPEAKER_01: He came from heaven to earth, and he will die on earth.
SPEAKER_01: He will die on earth.
SPEAKER_01: And it's one comment here about both the wine and the bread.
SPEAKER_01: Very common for those of you raised in the Catholic Church to have this idea of transubstantiation that in the celebration of communion, the bread becomes his body in a literal way.
SPEAKER_01: The wine is transformed into his blood in some kind of literal way.
SPEAKER_01: Even the Lutheran idea of consubstantiation doesn't actually transform into his body, but you know, kind of does, sort of.
SPEAKER_01: I just want you to locate your imagination in that room that night as he holds up the bread and holds up the cup.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's there with it.
SPEAKER_01: He's not saying this bread is my actual body.
SPEAKER_01: That is is we he's right there.
SPEAKER_01: The bread and the person of Jesus are in the same room at the same place at the same time.
SPEAKER_01: They're not conflated.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, speaking in Aramaic, Aramaic lacks that kind of helping verb is that Greek provides and the New Testament provides the word is.
SPEAKER_01: This is why some translations don't even say this is my body, but this represents my body, or you know, literally in Aramaic, it would sound like it'd be three words in Aramaic: bread, mine, body.
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
SPEAKER_01: You know, is might be too strong of a word.
SPEAKER_01: This bread is my body.
SPEAKER_01: That's a word that we're providing.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of too strong.
SPEAKER_01: This bread represents my body.
SPEAKER_01: That might be a little on the soft side.
SPEAKER_01: Might be a little soft there.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying that this bread, it's pointing to him.
SPEAKER_01: He's hijacking it.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, This is me.
SPEAKER_01: This bread used to point to the flight from Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Now it points to my body.
SPEAKER_01: Me, he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: His real body, wrapped up in that bread, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, his bread, the body, um, speaks of our communion.
SPEAKER_01: The bread points to his body, and the bread points to our communion.
SPEAKER_01: We are part of his body.
SPEAKER_01: As we have fellowship with one another through him, this is how the New Testament picks up on this communion metaphor.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, of course, has already said man doesn't live in bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, as he puts forward the bread and identifies his body with that bread, he's demonstrating that he sustains us.
SPEAKER_01: We are designed to have communion and fellowship with him.
SPEAKER_01: Our spiritual nourishment is walking with him.
SPEAKER_01: It is eating his words.
SPEAKER_01: We have communion with him.
SPEAKER_01: We have communion with one another as we have communion with him.
SPEAKER_01: It is his Holy Spirit who binds our church together.
SPEAKER_01: It's the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 that links us together, one to another.
SPEAKER_01: We're all in a spiritual body together, joined to each other as we serve the Lord together.
SPEAKER_01: We're walking with Jesus through his word, indwelled by his Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We have communion with each other.
SPEAKER_01: That's where Paul goes to the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: He talks about the union we have in spiritual gifts, one body.
SPEAKER_01: We're united together in one body.
SPEAKER_01: We have love for each other.
SPEAKER_01: Our head is Christ.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 14, the 13, the immature passes away.
SPEAKER_01: We grow into the full image of Christ, who is our head.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 14, now, we gather together for worship as one body with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That's our communion.
SPEAKER_01: Meals, of course, are a source of fellowship and communion.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is identifying himself as the center point of the church's identity.
SPEAKER_01: The center point of the church's worship.
SPEAKER_01: You want to get to know them, you invite them over to their house, or you go over to their house, and people still I hear that the Americans, even today, still invite people over to their house for dinner.
SPEAKER_01: And I I hope you do that, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: I say it jokingly, but I hope you do that.
SPEAKER_01: I hope your homes are open for people in the church.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you're inviting people from the church over into your house for lunch on Sunday afternoons, for dinner midweek, for just things in your house.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's a certain amount of fellowship that happens in that kind of environment.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's Christians should not be those that don't have people in their house.
SPEAKER_01: That's a bit of a warning sign that something's not quite quite right there.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll let you figure out what's not quite right in your own house on that one.
SPEAKER_01: The idea that Jesus is our communion here, it's centered around food, it's centered around eating.
SPEAKER_01: I used to work at a restaurant, and as a busser at a restaurant, we would play games.
SPEAKER_01: We would like we would try to predict what different people were eating at their at the restaurant, how what their relationship was to each other, like, oh, those two people there on a first date.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, he's gonna propose.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, those people barely like each other.
SPEAKER_01: It must be a business meeting.
SPEAKER_01: And I learned pretty early on, this is before I was a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: I was a high schooler.
SPEAKER_01: Before I was a Christian, I learned if you had a group of people at a table together that didn't look like they had anything in common, but they looked like they liked each other, they were Christians.
SPEAKER_01: Like, what do those six people have in common?
SPEAKER_01: They're believers.
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
SPEAKER_01: This is so evident.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus makes that happen because he is our communion.
SPEAKER_01: He is what we have in common.
SPEAKER_01: He binds us together.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, in the evening, this is true in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: The unleavened bread in the Old Testament was the source of the Jewish, it represented the Jewish identity.
SPEAKER_01: It represented their holiness and their identity.
SPEAKER_01: That really gets to the third point here.
SPEAKER_01: That the bread represents our own holiness in the church.
SPEAKER_01: Our own holiness.
SPEAKER_01: For the Jewish world, the unleavened bread represented the speed in which they left.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody eats bread that is leavened.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody eats bread that is soft and fluffy and delicious and wonderful and warm.
SPEAKER_01: Jews have this different identity based upon their flight out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: They unleavened bread because it was part of their ethnic identity.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus becomes our identity, so to speak, not ethnic identity.
SPEAKER_01: It transcends nations and transcends language groups and national boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: You have more in common with a Christian who speaks a different language from a different nation than you do with a non-Christian from your language and from your nation.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you understand that.
SPEAKER_01: It's the body of the Lord that gives us that common identity and it speaks to our sanctification.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is not just our focal point of our identity, he transforms our life.
SPEAKER_01: And so communion speaks of the sanctified church.
SPEAKER_01: We take on the flavor of the word.
SPEAKER_01: As we participate with the Lord, we take on his flavor.
SPEAKER_01: You know how some foods have a smell that, you know, I had a roommate that used to make his own kimchi, this Korean dish, and I could smell from outside of the house when he was making kimchi.
SPEAKER_01: I could smell for like two days after he ate kimchi.
SPEAKER_01: Believers should be like that with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: We take on the Lord's identity.
SPEAKER_01: We eat, so to speak, the communion.
SPEAKER_01: Our lives are sanctified, and we take on the aroma of life that leads to life.
SPEAKER_01: This is picked up in the New Testament, of course, 1 Corinthians 5.
SPEAKER_01: Clean out the old leaven so that you may form a new lump.
SPEAKER_01: Just as you, in fact, are unleavened.
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of sanctification, you're cleaning out your sin, you're taking off your sin.
SPEAKER_01: You're leading a sanctified life.
SPEAKER_01: Because Christ, our Passover, has also been sacrificed.
SPEAKER_01: Notice Paul's language.
SPEAKER_01: You lead a sanctified life because Jesus, our Passover, he's referencing the communion meal.
SPEAKER_01: He's been sacrificed.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven, malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
SPEAKER_01: So Paul is using this communion.
SPEAKER_01: As Jesus took over Passover, Paul is taking communion to speak of the sanctification of the church.
SPEAKER_01: You don't celebrate the old Passover meal as a Christian any more than you would keep gossiping, any more than you would keep living in malice and wickedness.
SPEAKER_01: No, you have been transformed.
SPEAKER_01: And so you speak with sincerity and with truth.
SPEAKER_01: It speaks of our holiness, the holiness of the church body.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 10, 21.
SPEAKER_01: This is why you cannot partake in the Lord's table and the table of demons.
SPEAKER_01: Paul goes on to that conclusion.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot, a person with the Holy Spirit cannot say Jesus isn't Lord, can't deny the Lordship of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That again is why Judas was dismissed.
SPEAKER_01: This was an event that could not possibly be celebrated by those who were living for the devil.
SPEAKER_01: It becomes a watermark of holiness in our life.
SPEAKER_01: So first, the bread, which speaks to the body of the Lord, the communion we have and our own holiness.
SPEAKER_01: Second, the wine.
SPEAKER_01: The wine, verse 27.
SPEAKER_01: Then he took a cup.
SPEAKER_01: And when he'd given thanks, this would be the cup of thanks, or the cup of blessing, as it's called at the Passover meals.
SPEAKER_01: This comes at the end of the meal.
SPEAKER_01: It's towards the very end of the meal.
SPEAKER_01: The cup is lifted up.
SPEAKER_01: Again, the leader of the feast would be the one to do this.
SPEAKER_01: He would give thanks for the cup.
SPEAKER_01: Again, a very common Jewish blessing for this would be Blessed art thou, the Lord our God, King of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine.
SPEAKER_01: Very generic blessing for the cup.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying Jesus said those exact words, but probably something like it.
SPEAKER_01: Probably a typical Jewish blessing.
SPEAKER_01: He took it up and blessed it just like would have been the custom.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, God, for giving us the fruit of the vine.
SPEAKER_01: Then he passes the goblet around and says, drink of it, all of you.
SPEAKER_01: So it becomes a compelling.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody drinks of the wine.
SPEAKER_01: This would be a normal, everybody at these kind of feasts would have their own wine glasses.
SPEAKER_01: And yet the cup of thanks would be passed around.
SPEAKER_01: After it's been blessed.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, God, for the wine that you've given us.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, drink of it all of you.
SPEAKER_01: And then again, that's normal.
SPEAKER_01: That's at every Passover meal.
SPEAKER_01: And then after that, as it's being passed around, he says, This is my blood.
SPEAKER_01: This is the blood of the new covenant, or of the covenant, it says, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you're catching on now, but it would be impossible to overstate how unusual that would be.
SPEAKER_01: Where he takes the cup, you're expecting this, gives you thanks, and then declares that it is his blood.
SPEAKER_01: It obviously doesn't mean literally his blood.
SPEAKER_01: He's right there.
SPEAKER_01: He's not bleeding.
SPEAKER_01: It means, again, there's no that helping verb isn't in Aramaic.
SPEAKER_01: It just means this cup, my blood.
SPEAKER_01: It's now pointing to him.
SPEAKER_01: The wine used to speak, the wine of that cup used to speak of the covenantal participation of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: This comes from Exodus, where the blood of the covenant was sprinkled on the crowd of people.
SPEAKER_01: After the wilderness wanderings, after the law was given to them, they sacrificed, they celebrated the Passover, and the blood was splattered on the people, Exodus says.
SPEAKER_01: To remind them that they were participants in the covenant.
SPEAKER_01: That's what, at the Passover meal, that's what the cup speaks of.
SPEAKER_01: You're a participant in the Mosaic covenant.
SPEAKER_01: You have the identity of the law of the law, how God led you out of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the whole thing was a celebration of.
SPEAKER_01: The blood splattering spoke to that.
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to splatter blood on people around the table.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, you share the cup of thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus takes that cup and says, It's him.
SPEAKER_01: The blood is connected to the lamb, of course.
SPEAKER_01: The blood of Passover is the lamb's blood.
SPEAKER_01: That's where the blood comes from.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus here is identifying himself as the Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_01: By him saying, This is my blood, he's saying, I am that lamb.
SPEAKER_01: What does the cup mean?
SPEAKER_01: What does the wine mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, it's clearly pointing to his death.
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's pointing to his death.
SPEAKER_01: He's identifying himself with the lamb.
SPEAKER_01: The blood comes from the lamb.
SPEAKER_01: Even the wine symbolically references the blood of the lamb.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is taking over that identification.
SPEAKER_01: This goes back to the beginning of his ministry, where John the Baptist declared, Behold the Lamb of God.
SPEAKER_01: This is not ambiguous.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is identifying with the Lamb of God.
SPEAKER_01: The Lamb of God is put to death for sinners.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus understands the violent death he's about to experience.
SPEAKER_01: This very day he will die.
SPEAKER_01: When you think of the sprinkling of the blood that takes place, this is a very violent death.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus knows it's coming.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to be stripped, he's going to be flogged, he's going to have thorns thrust into his head.
SPEAKER_01: That's all about to happen to him this day.
SPEAKER_01: And so when he says, This is my blood, we can sometimes romanticize it.
SPEAKER_01: We can sometimes say that which is emblematic of the forgiveness of sins to the cross, which it is.
SPEAKER_01: But for Jesus that night, it's more immediate than that.
SPEAKER_01: It's that day where he will be beaten, whipped, ultimately crucified, and murdered.
SPEAKER_01: John 10, verse 11, Jesus knew this was coming.
SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm the good sheep.
SPEAKER_01: The good sheep lays down his life for the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus knew where this was going.
SPEAKER_01: His death is not a surprise to him.
SPEAKER_01: 1 John 3, verse 16, by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus, in saying, This is my blood, is speaking of his death.
SPEAKER_01: His death, of course, references atonement.
SPEAKER_01: His death speaks of our atonement.
SPEAKER_01: Not only is he going to die, but he will die unatoning death.
SPEAKER_01: This is what he says in verse 28.
SPEAKER_01: This blood is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, this speaks of the specificity of atonement.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus knows all that God knows.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus in his deity has the divine knowledge of the Father, the Father who is elected those whom he will save before the foundation of time.
SPEAKER_01: That knowledge is shared with the Son, of course.
SPEAKER_01: The Son knows for whom he's dying.
SPEAKER_01: That knowledge is shared with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit knows whom he's saving.
SPEAKER_01: The Father, Son, and Spirit are not acting at diverse purposes here.
SPEAKER_01: It's not like the Father has elected some, the Son dies for a different group, the Holy Spirit saves a different group.
SPEAKER_01: The Father, Son, and Spirit are in this together.
SPEAKER_01: They have the same mind, the same will, the same knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus can say very plainly, this cup is the death that I'm pouring out.
SPEAKER_01: It will make atonement for many people.
SPEAKER_01: He knows for whom he will die.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, it speaks of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 31, verse 34.
SPEAKER_01: No longer will each one teach his neighbor, each his brother, saying, Know Yahweh, for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest, declares Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: I will forgive their iniquity, I will remember their sins no more.
SPEAKER_01: So when Jesus is taking the blood of the covenant and saying, This is a new covenant, this is the covenant of my covenant, and my blood makes this covenant.
SPEAKER_01: He's not talking about the Passover lamb from Egypt anymore.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, Now my blood is spilled for a different covenant.
SPEAKER_01: In that new covenant, people will have their sins forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: And the new covenant, that's the central point.
SPEAKER_01: Your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus takes that and says, your sins will be forgiven through my blood.
SPEAKER_01: That's the reality of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_01: It's not potential, but it's actual.
SPEAKER_01: A real, actual forgiveness that comes from the blood of Jesus Christ poured out for many.
SPEAKER_01: Revelation 5, verse 9, worthy are you to take the book and to open it.
SPEAKER_01: For you were slain, and you purchased for God with your blood people from every tribe, and every people and every nation.
SPEAKER_01: The blood of Jesus Christ is linked to the book of the Lamb of God, the names written by the Lamb of God before the foundation of time.
SPEAKER_01: This is the scroll, the title deed to the earth that only the Lord's allowed to open.
SPEAKER_01: You remember in Revelation 5, they are weeping.
SPEAKER_01: They can't find anybody who's worthy enough to look into the secrets of God, who's worthy enough to take ownership of the world.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is because of this new covenant, it's his blood that pays for the redemption of his people from every tribe, every tongue, every people, and every nation.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians 2, verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Now in Christ Jesus, you who were formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The atonement is what joins us together into one body, around one table.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 10, verse 19 has a forward-looking effect of this.
SPEAKER_01: We have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's his blood that brings us all the way to heaven.
SPEAKER_01: His blood provides a better sacrifice than the blood of the Passover Lamb, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: The blood of the Passover Lamb, that was reenacted every year.
SPEAKER_01: And couldn't forgive anybody of their sins.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the generation that was rescued by the Passover Lamb's blood, you know what happened to them?
SPEAKER_01: They all died.
SPEAKER_01: Most of them died a death of judgment from God, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: Swallowed up by the ground, eaten by snakes.
SPEAKER_01: The new covenant blood of Jesus speaks a better word than that blood.
SPEAKER_01: It actually forgives people of their sins.
SPEAKER_01: It's a better blood because it's a better sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: It's a better sacrifice because he's a better person.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, he can make a better covenant, which leads us ultimately to the new covenant.
SPEAKER_01: This is what Jesus means.
SPEAKER_01: This is so clear in Luke's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: I won't have you turn there because of time's sake.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll look at that in our next communion passage.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus goes more in depth on this one in Luke's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: But even in Matthew's gospel, you get the window to it here.
SPEAKER_01: This is the blood of the new covenant poured out from many for the forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_01: He's speaking of this new covenant he's inaugurating, a new covenant he's ushering in.
SPEAKER_01: In the old covenant, when Moses came down the mountain with the law, he read it to Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Then animals were sacrificed.
SPEAKER_01: This is Exodus 24.
SPEAKER_01: That's when he took the blood and sprinkled it on the people.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus 24, verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: When God confirmed the Mosaic covenant, he sprinkled the people with blood.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' blood is better than that.
SPEAKER_01: The blood in Exodus 24 was shown, put on the people to show the sacrificial nature of the law.
SPEAKER_01: The book of Leviticus, there's sacrifices for everything.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the final sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a covenant that revolves around the perpetual sacrifice of the Mass.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is not crucified in heaven every time there's a participation in the Mass, a celebration of the Mass.
SPEAKER_01: No, communion points back to the death of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It was appointed for Jesus to die once.
SPEAKER_01: It was the final sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: That's Hebrews 7.26.
SPEAKER_01: The celebration of communion puts away Passover forever because Jesus suffered once for all time.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 8, verses 6 through 7 explains why.
SPEAKER_01: His death was made with better promises.
SPEAKER_01: Think about that.
SPEAKER_01: Better promises?
SPEAKER_01: Better than what?
SPEAKER_01: The promises that were made to Israel in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: The promises of the Mosaic law.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' death has better promises than that.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the promise of the Old Testament through Moses to Israel was that God will rescue your life and free you from Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: He'll make you a covenantal people with his identity, he'll protect you in the land.
SPEAKER_01: It's a conditional covenant.
SPEAKER_01: If you honor him and you serve him, he'll bless you and protect you.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, they inherit the judgment of God with their failure to keep the covenant.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 5, verse 9, how much more than that does Jesus justify you from his blood?
SPEAKER_01: Unconditionally, he sheds his blood to purchase your salvation and your redemption.
SPEAKER_01: Now, point of observation.
SPEAKER_01: As I mentioned earlier, he's not saying that this cup really is transformed into his own blood.
SPEAKER_01: He says this after they were drinking the wine, of course.
SPEAKER_01: No, it's it's a reference to how this blood points to him.
SPEAKER_01: The symbolism is rife, it is high, it is deep, it's profound.
SPEAKER_01: And it points to the reality of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the reality of the new covenant doesn't occur in that room that night.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to occur the next day during the daylight as he's crucified.
SPEAKER_01: The sun will hide his face, the world will go dark as he makes atonement for our sin.
SPEAKER_01: And finally, the third part of this, I'll go quickly to this one because time's getting away from me.
SPEAKER_01: The kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: You saw how he transformed the promise of bread, you saw how he transformed the promise of the wine.
SPEAKER_01: Now he transforms the promise of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: The Jews were looking forward to the Messiah ushering in a Davidic reign in Israel, overthrowing the Roman Empire, of course, establishing Jewish leadership and dominion over the land.
SPEAKER_01: This is prophesied in the Old Testament where the kingdoms will be shaken and all the gold and the silver will come to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: Mine, says the Lord, all the nations report to me.
SPEAKER_01: The Jews were looking forward to that point.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus comes and he establishes a promise of a kingdom that is future.
SPEAKER_01: He says in verse 29, I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: So this is a very odd promise for them.
SPEAKER_01: They're waiting for the kingdom right here, right now.
SPEAKER_01: This is why they don't believe that he really died.
SPEAKER_01: They're so, you know, thrown for a tailspin when he dies.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
SPEAKER_01: The disciples on the road to Emmaus, they start off talking to Jesus, saying, We thought he was the one.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
SPEAKER_01: Like, it was he had so much promise, that guy.
SPEAKER_01: We thought it would have been him.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' like, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01: They said, How do you have you not heard?
SPEAKER_01: How would you not have heard?
SPEAKER_01: This guy was so close to being the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: They just didn't understand.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus here says, I will not drink of this again.
SPEAKER_01: Until I'm with my Father and you were reunited in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: That lets you know, I think pretty obviously, the church age is not the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: This is not the kingdom we're in right now.
SPEAKER_01: This is the church age.
SPEAKER_01: We're looking forward to the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: We celebrate communion, but the Lord is not in that sense celebrating it with us.
SPEAKER_01: He's not at the table with us.
SPEAKER_01: His body is ascended into heaven.
SPEAKER_01: We will celebrate it with him in heaven again.
SPEAKER_01: We'll reunite with him there.
SPEAKER_01: He will return to earth with us.
SPEAKER_01: The dead in Christ will be raised.
SPEAKER_01: Those who are alive and remain when the Lord comes will meet the Lord in the air.
SPEAKER_01: The dead in Christ will be raised.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus will return to earth and establish his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: There we will eat and drink in the house of Zion together.
SPEAKER_01: But in the meantime, we look forward to that day.
SPEAKER_01: This is why Paul says the communion has this forward-looking dynamic to it as well.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 11, 26.
SPEAKER_01: As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_01: So notice the first two components of communion, the bread and the wine, they're the rear view mirrors.
SPEAKER_01: You're looking backwards at that.
SPEAKER_01: You're taking the bread, you're looking backwards to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You're taking the wine, you're looking backwards to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But this element of communion, you're looking forward.
SPEAKER_01: You're saying, you know, where's Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: He's going to come to earth again in the future.
SPEAKER_01: So every time you take communion, you are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_01: You're saying the reality of his death backwards with a future dynamic until he returns again.
SPEAKER_01: And then they would have ended the night by singing a hymn.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 30, when they had sung a hymn, they went to the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_01: Not just any hymn.
SPEAKER_01: These wonderful hymns we've been singing tonight, I'm sure Jesus would have sung them had they been written at that time.
SPEAKER_01: But no, there weren't hymns about the cross yet.
SPEAKER_01: The songs they would have sung that night, Psalm 115 to Psalm 118.
SPEAKER_01: They're not chosen at random.
SPEAKER_01: These are the songs you sing, the psalms you sing after the Passover meal, Psalm 115 to 118.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus would have sung those, maybe one of them, maybe all of them, we don't know.
SPEAKER_01: It's got the indefinite article here.
SPEAKER_01: They sang Ahim.
SPEAKER_01: And they went down to the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_01: The Mount of Olives is down at the base there, in the shadow of the valley, that the Temple Mount would be just towering over it.
SPEAKER_01: The place that Jesus would be crucified, towering over it on the far side.
SPEAKER_01: It's so low there.
SPEAKER_01: So low where Jesus went, the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_01: The mountain will go up, but you know, he goes in the Garden of Gethsemane, which is down at the very bottom of it.
SPEAKER_01: That's where the soldiers come up to arrest him.
SPEAKER_01: Judas has gotten away and gets the soldiers, and they come to gather him and betray him and arrest him.
SPEAKER_01: Well, this is the transformation of communion.
SPEAKER_01: I hope this whole thing captures why we celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_01: Or as the church called it in the book of Acts, the breaking of bread.
SPEAKER_01: There's a sense in which communion is celebrated just with the fellowship of the church.
SPEAKER_01: As you get together, you know, church potlucks kind of thing, church gathering in the soccer field or at a park.
SPEAKER_01: That's a sense that's communion and the breaking of bread.
SPEAKER_01: But there's a more formal sense in which this celebration that we do here is a reenactment of that Last Supper.
SPEAKER_01: Not in all the formulaic details of it, but in the memory that Jesus had a real body and had a real death, that his blood provides real atonement for the elect, for real people, that the kingdom is future and coming for us.
SPEAKER_01: Notice what's missing from this?
SPEAKER_01: If you read about the Passover meal and you see these three elements, there's a huge element missing.
SPEAKER_01: What's the focal point in the Passover meal?
SPEAKER_01: The Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_01: When you go to Exodus 12, that's the highlight of the show.
SPEAKER_01: That's the star of the show.
SPEAKER_01: Totally not mentioned in this.
SPEAKER_01: That would be strange.
SPEAKER_01: It'd be like describing the symbolism of everything around the Thanksgiving meal but forgetting the turkey.
SPEAKER_01: Where's the Passover lamb?
SPEAKER_01: And we understand it's almost too obvious to even require being said.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the Passover Lamb.
SPEAKER_01: He's the center point of this.
SPEAKER_01: So as we celebrate communion together, remember we're celebrating the death of our Passover Lamb.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we're grateful that you gave your life as a ransom for many.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve others.
SPEAKER_01: Even though at this Last Supper, certainly there were the women running around, John Mark there, people were serving there.
SPEAKER_01: And yet you were serving the main course.
SPEAKER_01: You yourself laid your life down as a sacrifice for the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: So we're grateful for the death you died and the life it offers to us.
SPEAKER_01: We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_01: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_01: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_01: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.