What is Maundy Thursday?

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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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On today's program, we're going to be counting down the top 10 best sermons from Pastor Joel Osteen.
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April Fool's, I'm just kidding.
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That is not what we're doing on today's program.
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But it is April 1st, April Fool's Day.
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So I thought I would begin today with a little bit of a joke.
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All right, let's get on with what we're actually going to talk about.
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We are in the middle of Holy Week.
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We have been talking every day this week about a different aspect of the week and what Holy Week is and why it's important.
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We mentioned on previous programs that Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, ends with Resurrection Sunday and all of the things in the middle.
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We look at all the events that took place from where Jesus began the week, being lauded as the son of David and the one who was coming to save the people.
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To, by Friday, being some of those same people shouting, crucify him, crucify him.
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And then, of course, he was crucified on Friday and then Resurrection Sunday he was raised.
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But there is another day that Christians have historically celebrated in this week that is not often remembered and that is today, Thursday, the Thursday before Easter Sunday.
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And we're going to talk today about why this day has typically been referred to as Maundy Thursday.
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Now, when I was a kid, I heard the term Maundy Thursday and I thought the people were saying Monday Thursday, as in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
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And I must admit that when I was a child, I was fairly confused.
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Well, why are we calling it Monday Thursday? But we weren't calling it Monday Thursday, we were calling it Maundy.
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And Maundy is spelled M-A-U-N-D-Y, Maundy Thursday.
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And the reason why this name is given to this day is because the word Maundy is taken from the Latin Mandatum, which means command.
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And it was on Thursday that Jesus gave a new mandate or a new command to his disciples.
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If you have your Bible, open up your Bible to John chapter 13.
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And if you go to John 13, you will see, beginning down in the 30th verse, John 13, verse 31, it says, When he had gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
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If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.
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Little children, yet a little while I am with you.
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You will see me.
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And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I am going you cannot come.
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A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
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You also are to love one another.
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By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
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First of all, I just want to say those words are strikingly beautiful from the mouth of our Savior, but it also, there's a certain theological significance to this that I think is often overlooked.
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I want you to think back to the life of Jesus and what the Gospels give us in regard to the life of Jesus.
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When Jesus is asked about the commandments, he often points to two specific commandments rather than the ten commandments, which are often considered by many people to encapsulate the moral law of God.
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Jesus never pointed at the ten, rather he pointed at two commandments.
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Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
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Now loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, that passage is fairly well known.
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That's taken from Deuteronomy chapter six.
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But the passage, love your neighbor as yourself, is actually from a very obscure passage in the Pentateuch.
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It's not one of the more well-known passages, and yet Jesus uses that as the greatest commandment.
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He says the first great commandment is to love God, and the second great commandment is to love your neighbor.
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And we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
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What's interesting about that, people who want to argue that the ten commandments encapsulates the moral law, they say that those two commandments are just a distillation of the ten commandments.
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The first four commandments are about loving God, and the last six commandments are about loving your neighbor.
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And I don't necessarily disagree with that.
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The point being made is Jesus even said that.
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He said on this, meaning on these two great commandments, hang all the law and the prophets.
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You know, all the law and the prophets.
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So it's not just the ten commandments, but everything in the law can be distilled down to either loving God or loving your neighbor.
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It's just like I heard years ago, and I still think it's a good example.
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How do you have joy? Joy should be used as an acronym, J-O-Y, Jesus, others, yourself.
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And if you put Jesus first, and you put others before yourself, then you will have joy.
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I always thought that was great, but even in that little ditty is an example of the two great commandments.
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Love the Lord your God.
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Jesus is, of course, our Lord.
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And so we are to love him first, and we are to put him first.
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And then we are to love others.
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And the scripture commands us to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor as ourself.
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And so this is not a new commandment.
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The whole point of all this, I want to get back to what Jesus said in John 13, 34.
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In John 13, 34, he said, a new commandment I give to you.
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This again, Maundy Thursday, a new mandate.
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Jesus is, in a sense, a new lawgiver.
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You know, we've had Moses.
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Moses was a lawgiver.
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But now we have Christ, who is a better, he brings a better covenant.
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The new covenant is a better covenant, and he brings a better law.
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And he doesn't say just to love our neighbor as ourself, which is true.
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We should love our neighbor as ourself.
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But he says this.
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He says that you love one another just as I have loved you.
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You are also to love one another.
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Now this is on the heels of Jesus having just done something that is absolutely mind-blowing when we think about it.
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Because earlier in chapter 13, Jesus had walked into the upper room with his disciples.
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He took off his outer garment, and he covered himself with a towel, and he sat down at their feet, and he washed their feet.
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And it was such a striking picture of service.
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It was such a striking picture of love.
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And you'll remember that Peter says, you're not going to wash my feet.
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You're my Lord.
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I'm not going to let you wash my feet.
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And of course, Jesus said, if I do not wash you, you have no share with me.
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You have no place with me.
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And of course, Simon, you know, well, then don't just wash my feet.
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Well, wash my hands and my head.
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But the picture here is a picture of service.
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Jesus' love was love in action.
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And he says to his disciples, love one another just as I have loved you.
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See one could say, well, Jesus isn't really giving a new commandment here.
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We already have the commandment to love our neighbor as ourself.
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Yes, that's true.
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But this is actually better.
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Jesus doesn't just say, love your neighbor as you love yourself.
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He says, love one another as I have loved you.
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No one loves better than Jesus.
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And no one is a better example of love than Jesus.
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And therefore, the Christian has in Christ the best example of love in the Savior himself.
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And therefore, our entire Christian ethos is based on a simple premise to love others and to love one another as Christ has loved us.
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He is the mandate.
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And that is the mandate.
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Him.
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To love one another as he has loved us.
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That's what he showed on Maundy Thursday.
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And that's what we're reminded of in Maundy Thursday.
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We are reminded of the love that Jesus showed and our responsibility to love one another as he has loved us.
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And notice, don't ever forget what comes right after that.
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Verse 35, and by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.
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Such an important truth.
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It doesn't say, by this all men will know that you're my disciples if you have a fish emblem on the back of your car.
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Or by this all men will know that you're my disciples if you're a member of the First Baptist Church or the Second Methodist Church.
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He says, by this all men will know you're my disciples if you have love for one another.
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Recently I quoted Pastor Blake White.
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I want to remind everybody of this because it's such an encouragement to me.
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What's the law of Christ? We see the phrase law of Christ in the New Testament.
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It is self-sacrificing, rights-renouncing, burden-bearing love.
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That's what Christ commands.
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That's the law.
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That's the commandment of the New Covenant, that we have a self-sacrificial.
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Who was the greatest self-sacrifice? It was Christ himself.
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He sacrificed himself.
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Who was the greatest rights-renouncer? It was Christ.
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He who was in the very form of God, did not account equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing and taking on the form of a servant and came to the earth and died, according to Philippians 2, taking death, even death on a cross.
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So not only was he self-sacrificing, he was rights-renouncing and he was burden-bearing.
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The Bible says we cast our cares upon him because he cares for us.
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This is our Savior.
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This is our Lord.
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And by this, all people will know that we are His if we share love with one another that He has shared with us.
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So this is our mandate.
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Christians, this is our mandate, to love one another as Christ has loved us.
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This is the meaning of Maundy Thursday and I hope that this has been an encouragement to you today.
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Thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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May God be with you.