The Last Supper

Good morning, beloved. Today's scripture reading will come from Mark chapter 14, verses 12 through 31. And on the first day of unleavened bread, when the Passover lamb was being sacrificed, his disciples said to him, where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?

And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water.

Follow him.

And wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, the teacher says, where is my guest room in which I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he himself will show you a large upper room furnished and ready, prepared for us there.

And the disciples went out and came to the city and found it just as he had told them. And they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening, he came with the 12. And as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, truly I say to you that one of you will betray me, the one who is eating with me.

And they began to be grieved and to say to him one by one, surely not I. And he said to them, it is one of the 12, the one who dips with me in the bowl. For the Son of Man is to go just as it is written of him.

But woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. And while they were eating, he took some bread. And after blessing it, he broke it and gave it to them and said, take it.

This is my body. And we had taken a cup and given thanks. He gave it to them. And they all drank from it. And he said to them, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

After singing hymns, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, you will fall away because it is written, I will strike down the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you.

To Galilee.

But Peter said to him, even though all may fall away, yet I will not. And Jesus said to him, truly I say to you, today, this very night, before a rooster crows twice, you yourself will deny me three times.

But Peter kept saying insistently, if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And they all were saying the same thing also. Let's pray. Gracious heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for your kindness, Lord.

Lord, we thank you that you have not left us groping in darkness in our own wills, Lord, but you have given us scripture, you have given us your word to guide us. Lord, we pray that you would open our eyes and open our hearts and help us to receive and to understand and apply the things that are preached today.

Lord, we ask that you would bless Josh and his delivery of the word, that it would be clear and well understood. Lord, we thank you for this and all things in Jesus' name, amen.

The Passover, the Exodus, and the End of the Old Covenant

In antiquity, there was a family that was in the plains and a great famine came on the land and a bunch of brothers who hated their brother, they had squabbles and they threw their brother in a pit and he was sold into slavery by the mercy of his oldest brother into Egypt.

And he went through a house where he served his master faithfully, but there was a false charge made against him. And so he went into prison and in prison, he interpreted dreams until he came into the court of the most powerful man on the earth, the Pharaoh.

And a famine came across the land as prophesied by the Lord God. And in this famine, it was very severe and his old family came to Egypt to get grain and to buy grain. And eventually through the providence of God, the family of that man moved to Egypt and they set up camp there.

They were just one family. But over the years, a new Pharaoh came in and this Pharaoh did not know the family that had served him so well and took this people, this family into slavery and oppressed them and made them dig and build all of the structures of that empire while whipping them with cords and oppressing, oppressing, oppressing.

And for 400 years, this oppression went on until God anointed a man who was saved out of the river to speak for him to his people and to say that he was going to deliver this people out of the hand of Pharaoh.

But the people didn't believe the prophet and so the Lord showed wondrous signs, wondrous signs. There were 10 of them. And the final sign was that God demanded a sacrifice of his people to forestall death to the firstborn.

And so the people of God killed a lamb, had dinner together, spread the blood of the lamb on their doorpost and the angel of death came in the night and killed all of the firstborn of anyone who did not have the blood on their doorpost.

And Pharaoh told the people, his slaves, he said, get out. We don't want you here anymore. And so the people left and I'm sure that there were songs and praises until they saw that Pharaoh charged up behind with his chariots and his armies and God split the Red Sea.

You couldn't see from one end to the other and the people walked through the water and they were saved. And this is the high point, the climax of the Old Testament. It happens early that the covenant people of God, even though they were faithless, even though they forgot their Lord, even though they grumbled for the sweet meats of Egypt, even though they wanted to return back to the people who had oppressed them for centuries, God provided a way, he gave them a new land, he gave them promises and ultimately he gave them the law that revealed his character in a way that they had never seen before.

And the blood of bulls and goats was sprinkled on them in recognition of this covenant. And this was to be a people that was in covenant with God and he was to be their God and they were to be his people.

And God would take up residence among them and live among them forever. But the people looked for other gods and they were an adulterous generation. And so many prophets were sent to warn the people over and over again, the prophets were sent and the people did not listen.

Until finally, the greatest prophet was sent, who is the very son of God and he went to prophesy to this adulterous generation and the response was to find someone from his inner circle to betray him for maximum pain and then to kill him.

And this is the end of that covenant. It did not happen, it's not an academic point out of an academic book, it is a relationship. It was a unilateral promise of God to be with the people and to deliver them.

And so the Last Supper is aptly named in two ways, but it carries two meanings, one of which I had never heard in my life until probably the last five or six years. The first meaning of the Last Supper is that it is the last supper that Jesus has with his disciples.

It is the end. All of his teachings, they are pretty much wrapped up at this point. There's not much left to go that we get recorded. He is going to be tried in a kangaroo trial, he's going to be murdered by the elites of his day, but he's going to rise again and he says that all of this is gonna happen and he tells everyone that it's going to happen.

But the Last Supper is also the last Passover meal. It's the end. Why celebrate the shadow when you have the substance? And truly we do, we do look back and we are amazed at the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob who delivered his people miraculously with 10 signs.

But we stop and we often take for granted when we think of the natural wonder of the Red Sea parting, of the horror of waking up in the morning and realizing that the firstborn in every family in Egypt was dead.

The terror that that would have caused. And we look over and we think, man, what really happened at the crucifixion and resurrection? How is it that a people can kill the Son of God and he forgives them?

How is it that he can rise from the dead and yet today, even today, people long for and stretch out for an old covenant. They stretch out for a covenant of law, they stretch out for thinking that they can be like Adam and fulfill the covenant of works, which he couldn't either.

We neglect the covenant of grace. And so the Last Supper is aptly named, it is the end of the old covenant and we saw a couple of weeks ago how the old covenant was gonna come to a violent and spectacular end.

If the Red Sea parting was gonna be how a people was saved, the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem in AD 70 was going to be the bizarro opposite of the Red Sea. It was gonna be where the old covenant is destroyed forever, never to return.

That's what happens when you break covenant. Death, destruction, disillusion, brothers turned against brothers, sons turned against fathers. We see it in our mimicry of covenants with marriage when a divorce happens, wreckage, death, disillusion.

When friends betray friends, it causes wreckage and death and distrust. And we forget the song we sang this morning is that the charter of our salvation is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. And our petty fighting is really pathetic in light of what God has done.

So the end of the old, and it seems trivial, this is a momentous thing, this is a sacrament, this is one of the things that the church has continued since this time is that we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we celebrate communion together.

We celebrate Eucharist, if I wanna tap dance around that. Together, it is the joy of the vine, but also the cup of sorrow. It is the body of Christ that we celebrate and we take together, knowing that it binds us, that it unifies us, but it also points us in the direction of remembering what our God has done.

It's an amazing thing. But we have some difficulty before we get here because Mark does not make it easy for us. In verse 12, he gives us a time marker. And this time marker gave me a sense of when he fits this week, it's very difficult.

He says on the first day of unleavened bread when the Passover lamb was being sacrificed, this is when all this happens. But church history and the Gospel of John places this on Thursday, where Mark would place this seemingly on Friday.

The Passover lamb would be sacrificed on Friday afternoon and then the Passover meal would be celebrated in the evening of that Friday, which would actually be 15 Nisan, which would be the beginning of a seven-day feast of unleavened bread.

The Passover is the 14th. 6 p .m. would start the next day and that's when the Passover meal would happen. We have difficulty. John 18 .28 says they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the praetorium and it was early and they themselves did not enter into the praetorium so that they would not be defiled but might eat the Passover.

So John places the trial of Christ early in the morning on Friday, which means that in John's chronology, this had to have happened on Thursday evening where they ate together. What do we do here? It's difficult but I think there is an answer and this is what, look, I'm not close-handed about this but this is where I've had to land.

I think that the Passover, there were some rules about it that we've lost in translation. One of them is that you had to eat the Passover meal in Jerusalem and you had to be indoors and you had to have wine.

And so when you had a city of 50 ,000 people that now has 500 to 600 ,000 people in there, it would be very difficult to get inside the city because he couldn't do it at Bethany, he had to be inside the city and there would have to be wine.

And so where I've landed and where many smarter men than me have landed is that this would be kind of like saying we're having Christmas dinner and you rightfully are, you're celebrating Christmas dinner but some people celebrate that on the 24th, right?

Or even in our family where you're trying to get all these disparate people together, sometimes you celebrate on the 23rd and sometimes the 28th, okay? It's like the week and a half of Christmas. It's amazing, we've celebrated the 12 days of Christmas without even trying to.

But in this case, the practicality of it, it could have been, and I firmly believe that this did happen on Thursday night and there's several reasons for that. Theologically, it seems impossible almost that these leaders would carry out a trial on the Passover day, right?

That they would avoid the Passover meal, it was the holiest time for the people of Israel and so to have a trial going on during when the Passover meal would be happening, not likely. But then there's the other theological argument is that we're gonna see at this Passover meeting, there is no lamb mentioned at the Passover meal at the Last Supper and that is because I think very intentionally, this is not the Passover lamb, it has not been slain yet but also because the imagery in this whole thing is that Jesus is the Passover lamb, that he's going to be slain on Friday afternoon when the Passover lamb would be slain and it just makes so much sense.

It's not because I wanna tie it in a bow, it's because the Lord has prophesied all of these things happening and so I think it happened on Thursday and Jesus knew everything that was about to happen, everything.

And so once again, Mark likes to write with this kind of sandwich deal, right? And what's in the middle of this is the institution of the high of the new covenant at the Lord's Supper but what's before it is a prophecy of how we're gonna get there and then what's after it is a prophecy of two men who are going to betray Jesus with very different ends, very different ends.

And so in the middle, which is always the most important part is the supper itself but in the beginning, Jesus prophesies that all of this stuff is about to happen and he sends, according to Luke, he sends John and Peter into town to make arrangements for this upper room that he has already seen and put into place.

We know that he had not made prior arrangements because of how unlikely it would be that a man carrying a pitcher of water would be able to recognize these two disciples. In fact, it's very strange that a man would be carrying a pitcher of water anyway because that was woman's work, okay?

So this man happens to be carrying a pitcher of water and he sees John and Peter and they inquire about the room that is Jesus's room. That's what he says. This is my room that I have taken. And so as he goes into this room, all of this is prepared, meaning that the furniture would be there, all of the things to set the table would be there and Jesus has arranged it.

He arranges everything that happens but this is a very specific thing that's important for us to know and it's very much like the triumphal entry. Remember where there was a colt tied to a post? It's very similar that Jesus entered as a king but now he is going to have his last meal before his execution.

And it rings hard when you hear it that way, right? That this is an extremely important thing and this is going to be the wrapping up of the Passover and the initiation of a new thing, a better thing than the Passover meal.

Judas, the Betrayal, and the Danger of the Table

So let's pick it up in verse 17. Sorry, I want to backtrack. I want to talk about the meal itself, okay? But first we have the betrayal. When it was evening, he came of the 12 and as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, truly I say to you that one of you will betray me, the one who is eating with me.

They began to be grieved and to say to him, one by one, surely not I. And he said to them, it is one of the 12, the one who dips with me in the bowl for the son of man is to go just as it is written of him.

But woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. This is not a slight betrayal. This is a man who has walked with Christ for three years.

This is a man who is sitting at the table. It would be unthinkable, unthinkable in Jewish culture for a man to eat dinner with someone that he's about to betray. It could not get more uncouth than that.

It could not get more societally wrong than that. It is a huge taboo. And beyond that, it's not just that they're eating at the same table, but they're dipping in the same bowl. This group of men together are intimate.

They are best friends. They trust each other. This man keeps all the money, as we learned last week, that he has the treasury box. In some ways, he might be the most trusted of the 12 because he has the money.

And you don't put people of low character and low integrity in charge of the money unless you're Jesus, and this is all foreordained and appointed. So they dip in a common bowl. We don't do that much, do we?

There's rules about dipping in the common bowl, are there not? Some people blatantly disregard them, famously, but you don't double dip the chip, right? One dip and you're out, but we're all sharing the same bowl which shows that we are a family.

It would be very strange if I went over to your house and started dipping carrots in the ranch, took a big old bite off it, and then dipped the next side of it in there. People would be looking at me side-eyed, but not at this table.

There is intimacy here, and it's very important to understand that sometimes we miss because Judas gets academized. He gets washed through academics, and we start to think of him as a proposition, but I think in many ways that Judas is the most interesting character in the New Testament because this man who is known to be a betrayer, this man who is known to be greedy, he's known to be a liar who is stealing from the box, is invited into the inner circle, the closest proximity, and he takes the supper, and as soon as he takes the supper, Satan enters into him, and so when Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11, we often brush over it, and we think, wow, some people sleep, and some people are sick, and we're like, ah, yeah, you know, I may hate my brother, but I'll probably be okay, and we come take it.

That is insane, people. Satan is at work in communion. Do you understand that? And there is a cosmic war because what we've done in our naturalistic, and may I barb at our own people, what we've done in our Baptistic theology is that many times what we have done is we have turned the table into mere memorial where what it is is some grape juice and some crackers, and we go, hey, this is a Christian thing to do.

Let's take some grape juice and crackers four times a year, and it's all gonna be okay, but instead what is going on is that Christ has commanded us to take this meal as a sign of the covenant that he has made with his people, and he puts tremendous blessing and tremendous curse at this table.

The blessing of the table is that as often as we eat and drink it, we proclaim his death and his resurrection, but when we take it in an unworthy manner, we identify with Judas, not with Jesus, and Satan is close, and as someone has said, watch out.

Satan is out to get you. He's right behind you, or his demons are, and so Judas is blind to his tremendous danger. Judas is like the chief priests and the scribes who are following Jesus around trying to kill him, so Jesus is sitting at the table, and Judas has murder in his heart this very night, and yet he takes the meal, and he dips in the bowl, and all of the disciples are grieved when Jesus says, one of the 12 is going to betray me, and the disciples can't hardly believe it.

They are grieved in their heart. It makes them sad, and they all say, surely not I. Understand that the disciples who say surely not I are exhibiting soft-hearted behavior. See, they understand frailty.

They're not like Peter at the end of this who says, I would never. No, they are all saying, surely not I. Please not me, please not me, but they hate the depravity, and Jesus says, and he quotes out of Zechariah later when he talks to Peter that this is going to disperse the sheep, but Judas' action is going to show the sovereignty of God, and God uses even his enemies.

It must be a hopeless thing to be an enemy of God. He created everything. He holds it all together with his power, and he is ordaining even what the wicked do to promote his own plan. See, Judas falls right into the plan of God before the beginning of time, that there would be one who would betray, and it is not going to be one of the other 11.

They are gonna be faithful unto death, even though they have to learn to get there, and they have to grow to get there. See, understand that we miss this with our whitewashing of Judas. Nobody names their kid Judas anymore.

It was a very common name back then. It's kind of in the annals of history with Adolf and stuff like that. Nobody names him Judas, but Judas has been cleaned by us, and we don't understand the gravity of his betrayal, because betraying God is the absolute worst of humanity, and you really only have two options.

You're gonna be loyal to God, or you're going to betray him, because to be on the side of Satan, as Ephesians 2 would tell you, that the natural bent of man is to follow the prince of the power of the air.

That means that by birth, the natural state of man is to follow Satan and to betray God who created. That is the position that we sit in, and even still, we say, surely not I, but God, I was a good person.

You're not a good person if you betray God. You're not a good person if you look at creation that cries out of his glory and his majesty, and you say, no, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. That's not the way it works out, and so the difficult teaching here that we have to see with Judas is that the son of man is going to go just as it is written.

Did Judas have a choice?

Oh, man.

We get to the crux of this doctrine we believe that's very difficult, right? In one sense, Judas did exactly what he wanted to do, and why did he do that? Because he hated God and he wanted money. Many men have fallen hating God and wanting money, hating God and wanting the temporal things that they can have right now, but in another sense, Judas was a son of perdition who was ordained to follow in these steps.

Understand this, friends. You contribute nothing to your salvation. There is only one way to be right with God, and the way to be right with God is for him to make you a new creature. We know from John 3, you must be born again.

Nicodemus was confused because there's no way to be born again, and Nicodemus was right. That's what we often miss with that. Nicodemus was right because there is no way to be born again. That is something that's impossible with man, but it is not impossible with God.

And so in order to please God, in order to not be a betrayer of God, he has to change your heart. He has to regenerate you. And once he does, we still do stupid stuff, but we do it much more like Peter does, as we'll see at the end of today's reading, where we do idiotic things, we are sinful, and yet we still repent.

Judas does not repent. He sins unto death, and death finds him because Satan is the Lord of death. Satan is the prince of darkness, and Satan loves death, and Satan's culture of death is all around us as we speak.

That's why we walk next week is because the principalities and the powers of Satan love to kill babies. That's how heinous they are. That's how disgusting the power of darkness is. So betraying God is the worst of humanity, but it has been ordained that Judas would do this and that it would glorify God because he would see that God shows us something about his table, and that is this, that there is much blessing here, but there are people who take it in an unworthy manner, and Satan finds them, and he brings curse on them.

Woe to Judas, it would be better if you had never been born. He is appointed as a vessel of wrath to the glory of God. Understand that Judas is also a stand-in for the people who are out to kill Jesus in this section.

It would be the very people who claim to zealously obey God's law who would kill his son. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. You're so adamant about following the law that you miss the son of God and you murder him.

They are also consumed with greed and self-righteousness, and they are totally blind. It's a terrifying thing to be blind because you usually don't even know you are. Pray that you're not. And so as the betrayer is talked about, and we get from other gospels that Satan is going to enter into him and he does what he's going to do, that he leaves.

We have a new meal for a new covenant. Verse 22, while they were eating, he took some bread, and after blessing, he broke it and gave it to them. And he said, take it, this is my body. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.

And he said to them, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

And after singing a hymn, they went out to the bount of olives. Understand that this talk of blood and body would be abhorrent to the Jews. And we see this in John 6, that many of Jesus' disciples leave when he talks about how you must drink his blood and eat his body in order to be in the kingdom of God.

But this covenant, if he is going to institute a new covenant, it requires his blood. And for people who say that Jesus never claimed to be God, this is one of those texts that shows us how crazy that point of view is.

Because for Jesus to say that his blood is the blood of this covenant, is saying something that is really profound. It's saying that he is going to be the sacrifice, but not only the sacrifice, he's going to be the ratification of this covenant.

Because to break a covenant is death. There's no way out but death. We mirror this in marriage, do we not? Till death do us part. There is no way out but death. And with covenants with God, there is no way out but death.

When God says that he has divorced adulterous Israel, he has come to destroy the temple and destroy their whole way of life. And that's what he did. But when he institutes a new covenant by his blood and by his body, it is showing us that anyone who takes of this blood and takes of his body is bringing these covenant blessings and curses on themselves.

You are like the people at Sinai who cry out in 24 -8, we will follow this covenant. And so what did Moses do? He took the blood and he sprinkled it on the people and said, behold, the blood of the covenant, which Yahweh has cut with you in accordance with all these words.

They made a blood oath. Do you understand that when you come up here and you take from the table, every week you're making a blood oath. You're saying, I identify with the covenant of blood and your body by taking it.

God help me, I identify with you when I take these things. Do you see how foolish it is indeed to treat this table like it's a sacrificial right, some kind of weird religious observance when we expressly hold hatred and sin in our heart and we come and take this and think we're gonna be okay anyway.

It's just like what the people at Sinai did. And they with a true heart thought that they were gonna obey the covenant with Moses. How long did they last? No time at all. How long do we last? Forever, but it's not because of us, it's because this covenant is enacted on a greater promise and is the fulfillment of the covenant of grace.

And the covenant of grace was what saved every human being who has ever been saved. The grace of God regenerated a people from the beginning with Adam until the last man who dies before consummation of the kingdom of God.

We are saved by grace, not by works. It is not our doing so that no one can boast. The gospel never changed. The gospel became manifest with this supper. This is when it happened. Do you see it? The institution of new covenant.

And the Jews would say, who do you think you are? And Jesus would say, I'm the son of man. I'm the king breaker that Daniel prophesied of. I am the stone that crushes the empires of man and builds the empire that will cover the whole sky to where you can see no other empire.

See, the bread shows that Jesus is the substance of the covenant and that we must be in his body. Many will try to take the covenant. Many will try to come and take the communion without being a part of his holy body.

And the body of Jesus is the church. The author of Hebrews warns us that we should not forsake the assembling of the church because the church is where we are together in Christ under his headship as the body, the hands and feet, the eyes and ears, the members of the body who do not despise other parts of the body who do things they do not.

We'll see that soon. But in the body, we come together and we profess the death of Christ together. This is not a thing you do in your living room with your spouse. This is a thing you do with the body of Christ.

And the reason why is because Jesus broke, he sacrificed his body and he gave his body as the substance of the covenant. What is the new covenant? Who is in the new covenant? And the answer to that is elementary but also extremely poignant.

And that is the church. The church are the recipients of the new covenant. The elect from every nation who have mystic sweet communion with those who went before us because the church is everlasting, because Christ has died to make it that way.

See, the church in the fallen world is broken, it will be dispersed, but we get the promise of the table that it will be gloriously whole again one day. And all of the backbiting and the problems that we have in the local expression that we see all the time is going to be made new.

And through even that stuff, Christ is being glorified day by day as a bunch of people like us, a bunch of sinful people get together and we come under one roof and we glorify God. And for a time every week, we all have one purpose, do we not?

It's a beautiful thing. It's a picture every week when we come to this table, it's a picture of eschatology. And the eschatology is that God's people will be gathered together from the four winds under heaven and earth and we will worship the Savior together.

But also his body of the covenant nourishes us because he is the bread of life and his words are life. And where do you get the words of God through his scripture? You get it preached and administered weekly in the church.

It's an amazing meal that we have every week. It's not a common thing. And we talk of the body, what of the blood? The blood that is poured out for many. This is a new thing. Do you understand? That's not how it happened with Moses.

Who was it poured out for with Moses? The people at Sinai, right? But there are cosmic promises of the new covenant. It's not only the scope of how many, it's who. Who is the blood of Christ poured out for?

The elect from every nation. This is a picture of the fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham. Who was Abraham's covenant for? For his sons, but more than that, it had a fulfillment, did it not? That his seed, that his seed would rule.

And that he would be blessed, everyone who blessed him would be blessed by God and everyone who cursed him. And we see it at the table, do we not? That those who bless Christ are blessed and the one who curses Christ by betraying him, woe to that man.

It would be better to never exist than to betray your God. This is an allusion to the tremendous growth of the kingdom of God through the new covenant. It was growing like a mustard seed from Adam where it was family to family and then we see at the Red Sea, there's a million and then we see later that there's remnants falling out and then we see with the new covenant that there are 11 men who did not betray Christ at this table and there are over a billion Christians in the world today.

Should that make you hopeful? I think it does because the blood of Christ is powerful and the blood calls to people and there is an attraction to the gospel. There is great offense to be sure, but there is magnetism in the gospel that everything that you lack and everything that you know that you have betrayed your Lord and you look at creation, you're like there is something I can't get and the answer is bow the knee to Christ.

Bow the knee to Christ and have the riches of his kingdom. So the Gentiles come in, it's the mystery of the New Testament. They don't understand, but it's coming. It's also an allusion here, the blood is the unity of taking this together.

There was never unity before. There was a huge wall of hostility between the Jew and the Greek. That's what much of the New Testament is about, is it not? They can't figure it out and yet Jesus has destroyed that wall of hostility.

That doesn't mean we don't have nations anymore. It means that we have one church. That's what it means. We are separate and distinct people here, but we're not separate and distinct in who we worship and we're not separate and distinct in what the word of life is.