In Remembrance In Anticipation — Anton Bosch

Alright, Luke chapter 22, we spoke last week about the preparation and an aspect of that in terms of Judas and this morning we're going to speak about the preparation and the Lord's Supper. I don't know that we'll get through today, we'll see how it goes, we may need to conclude next week.

The Last Supper in Luke 22

So let's read from Luke chapter 22 from 14 through 23. So Luke chapter 22, reading from 14 through 23. When the hour had come, he sat down and the twelve apostles with him. Then he said to them, With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

For I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Then he took the cup and gave thanks and said, Take this and divide it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Likewise, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you.

But behold, the hand of my betrayer is with me on the table. And truly the Son of Man goes as it has been determined. But woe to that man by whom he is betrayed. Then they began to question among themselves which of them it was who would do this thing.

Interesting how that Judas crops up over and over in this passage, just all the different references to him. So let's begin in verse 14 then. So we've now, for the last months, as we've gone through these last chapters in Luke, gone through Passion Week, Jesus has been preaching in the temple every day.

He's been going into the Mount of Olives to pray and to sleep. And he would come down in the mornings and he would teach in the temple during the day. This is now the last day of his earthly life, if you will, before the crucifixion.

He'll be crucified the next day. And so verse 7 repeats what we saw in verse 1 in that it says that when the day of unleavened bread, then the day of unleavened bread when the Passover must be killed, sorry, then came, then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover must be killed.

Passover, Deliverance, and the Blood

Now remember, for those who may not have been with us last week, that these are two separate feasts but they are connected. So when they came out of Egypt, and we're going to make reference again to the night they came out of Egypt, you remember that they were to kill a lamb, a lamb for each family.

If they couldn't finish eating the whole lamb, they were to club together with their neighbors and they were to share the lamb. They would to kill or shed the blood. The law prescribed that the animal was to be bled to death, it wasn't to be stunned or to be killed in any other way.

And so the blood then was to be taken and put on the doorposts and on the lintel, not on the threshold, but on the two posts and on the lintel. And that night the angel of death would pass through, and if the blood was on the doorposts, then the eldest in those family would be spared.

If there was no blood, then the oldest would die. If the father was the oldest of his family, he would die, and then of course the oldest of his sons would die as well. Of course, none of the, well, most of the Egyptians didn't do this.

There may have been an odd one, the Bible doesn't talk about that, but one assumes that they may have been, because there were some of the Egyptians who were favorably disposed towards the Jews, and remember who came out with the Jews.

So there may have been some, but generally the Egyptians didn't have the blood, and so the oldest, not only in the human families, but also in the animal families, died. The Israelites put the blood on the doorposts.

Now remember, this was not a matter of whether you were an Israelite or an Egyptian. This was a matter of the blood, and so the blood was equally effective for an Egyptian as it was for an Israelite. An Israelite would not be spared if he didn't apply the blood.

There's a very important principle concerning the gospel. It doesn't matter who we are, it doesn't matter what our religion or our ethnicity is. If we have the blood of Jesus Christ applied to our lives, the sins are washed away and we are saved.

If we don't have the blood applied, it doesn't matter how religious we are, it doesn't matter how good we think we are, without the blood of Christ there is no remission of sins. And so that would happen, and so of course it was called the Passover, because the angel of death would pass over those that had the blood applied.

So they would have the lamb, they were to finish that whole lamb, they were to eat in a particular way, they had to have their shoes on their feet, they needed to have their waists girded, in other words their belts on, and they needed to eat with their staff or their cane, their walking stick in their hand, because they were going to move out that night.

So they were eating in a particular way. This is important, we'll come back to this idea in a few moments. And then they also ate unleavened bread that night for the first time. Because they were in haste, there was no time to put leaven in the dough and to let the dough rise and then to bake the bread, so the bread was eaten unleavened.

And they were journeying from there on, and so they didn't eat leavened bread for seven days, and so this is the feast of unleavened bread. So there's the feast of the Passover, which involves the killing of the lamb, and there is the feast of the unleavened bread, which is eating unleavened bread for the same night in which the Passover is celebrated, and then for seven days from there on.

The Jews today make a big ceremony of making sure that there is no leaven in the house, and even part of the Passover Seder, what they call the Seder, what we would call the ritual, or the order of service, as the family gathers together, they have a little book that they go by, and so there are certain prayers, there are certain things that happen during that process.

Part of that process is a symbolic searching of the house with a candle and a spoon to make sure that there is no leaven anywhere in the house. The very religious Jews are so fastidious about this that they even have separate cupboard in the kitchen which contains cutlery and crockery and stuff that is only used for that period so that there is no chance of it having been contaminated with any kind of leaven.

Now I'm not going to get into the hypocrisy of that, because obviously the leaven speaks of sin, and you can make sure that there is no physical leaven in the house, but if there is leaven in your heart, well it's a waste of, it's all a waste of time.

All right, so that's why these two things are always connected, they're always spoken of as the same thing in a sense, but they're not the same thing. They happen at the same time, but they are two separate feasts.

Preparing the Passover in Jerusalem

And so he, Jesus, sent Peter and John saying, go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat. Now it's interesting that he chooses the two closest disciples, the two that were most trusted, the two that he would take with him on other special occasions.

That night he would take Peter and John with him into the Garden of Gethsemane. And he sends them on this important mission, to prepare the Passover. Now the preparing of the Passover involved a few steps.

The first thing is that they needed a place to celebrate the Passover. I guess you could do it outside, but generally they would want to do it inside. So they need to find a room. Rooms were available at this time, because remember this was the time when Israelites or Jews would come from all over the world, the known world at that time, to celebrate the Passover.

This was the highest, the most important of their feasts. And so they would come from all over the world to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. And the population of Jerusalem would grow phenomenally.

Various historians give various numbers for how many people would be in Jerusalem at that time, but it would be a massive number of people. Edersheim, I think, speaks about over a million. Most historians feel that that number is highly inflated.

But anyway, so people would come. One of the things that had been inscribed in the law, not part of the Old Testament, but part of their traditions, was that you were not allowed to charge a stranger, what I mean by a stranger is a Jew from outside, a Jew who had traveled to Jerusalem, you were not allowed to charge them for the room.

So if they needed a place to stay, and obviously many people needed a place to stay, you were to give them that space free. The only thing that you could charge was the skin of the lamb that had been slain.

That was the customary price that you would give. Obviously skins were important those days because it was used for all sorts of purposes. Then the next thing would be to find a lamb. And of course the lamb had to be approved by the priests in that it was without spot or blemish, that it was perfect.

And so we had this whole trade going on, you remember, in the outer court, where they were buying and selling, or they were selling lambs and sacrifices. The lamb could be a sheep, they preferred sheep, but it could also be a goat.

So you would have to find an acceptable, certified lamb, you'd have to obviously buy that. And then they would need a few other things. They would need the unleavened bread, they would need bitter herbs, which is part of the meal, so the lamb is eaten with bitter herbs, to remind them of the bitterness of their servitude in Egypt as they served the slaves.

And they would need some wine. So they would need all of these things, and so the disciples are sent to go and get all of these things ready so that they could celebrate the Passover in the prescribed way.

During the Babylonian captivity, they had established many of these traditions and had written them down, and they remain unchanged for the Jews today. They are not necessarily biblical in the sense that they are based on the Old Testament ideas, but many of the details of the Seder particularly, you will see that there are four cups, none of that is prescribed in the law.

So those are traditions, and it seems that Jesus keeps those traditions, not because the traditions are important, but simply to not give offense. We see Paul doing the same thing. So verse 9, and so they said to him, where do you want us to prepare?

So good question, where are we going to do this? And he said to them, behold, when you enter the city, Jerusalem of course, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water, follow him into the house which he enters.

So part of this is, it seems that there is some secrecy going on. Remember that Judas had contracted to betray Jesus at a time when there would not be a crowd. And obviously, the Last Supper would be an important place, would be a good place for them to come and get him, because everybody else is in their homes, everybody else is celebrating the Passover, and it's just Jesus and the Twelve, and so that would be an appropriate time.

And is Jesus afraid of being betrayed? No, obviously this is about timing. And again, it shows us that God is in control. So Jesus could not be betrayed at the Last Supper, why? Because the very thing that we're going to celebrate this morning, the Lord's table, communion, Eucharist, whatever you want to call it, would not be instituted if Jesus was betrayed before the supper.

So he had to be betrayed after the supper. And so they don't want, he doesn't want Judas to know, and so it all happens in secret, and so Jesus says to the two, he says, go and find a place, you'll find this man, and he's carrying a pitcher of water.

This, of course, was a sign. Men didn't carry pitchers of water those days. This was an extraordinary event. Generally, women would carry water and they would carry it in pitchers. Sometimes men would carry water, but when they carried water, they would carry it in a skin, not in a pitcher.

In other words, a skin where they would take, they would skin the animal, they would keep the skin intact, in other words, they will literally peel it off the carcass, tie up the neck and the legs, or the other way around, rather, and they would then be able to fill that and carry water, and they'd carry wine.

Remember, Jesus speaks about not putting new wine in old wine skins. So, for a man to be carrying a pitcher was a, this is not for the children, this is not a picture, this is a jug with water, a vase or a vase, whatever you want to call it, and so they would generally, the women would carry it on their shoulders or on their heads, and so when you find this man, and obviously he's prepared by God, God has everything in control, everything is being set up for these last hours of Jesus' earthly life, and then you shall say to the master of the house, the teacher says to you, now, the man who's carrying the pitcher, if you read carefully, is not the master of the house, he is a servant.

So you find a man with a pitcher, you follow him into the house, and then you say to the master of the house, the owner of the house, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

And again, we see God's miraculous provision, because people had been arriving by now for a week, some of them for two weeks, three weeks, because remember, people were traveling from long distances and mostly by foot, and so they would come at different times, we can see as Jesus is preaching in the temple, there's this huge crowd that is following him, so by now, all the room is gone, every spare room has been given out to visitors, there are no rooms, this is the last minute, and yet there is a room, and of course God again had miraculously provided.

God's timing is always perfect, we must remember that. One of the things that I think we all struggle with, and I personally struggle with, is we say yes, we know that God will provide, but we want to know the answer before the time, and God says no, I will provide at the right time, and many times, the right time is at the last minute.

Did they need a room three days before the time? No, they needed a room for those couple of hours, we don't know what time of the day this is, maybe around about noon, because they now have to go through this whole process, and not only do they have to acquire, I left that out, but not only do they have to get the lamb, but now the lamb has to be slain, so they have to go to the temple, and thousands and thousands of lambs are being slain, being slaughtered or sacrificed on this day, and so each man would take, the head of the home would take his lamb, the priests would be there, they would catch the blood in silver and in golden dishes, and they would pour that out at the foot of the altar, and so the man would slay his own, cut the throat of his own lamb, and then he would take the lamb away, so they would have to do that as well, and then obviously they need to skin the lamb, and they need to cut it up, and they need to get it ready for roasting, it has to be roasted.

So they need a few hours for this. When did they need the room? In those last few hours, and God provides at the right time. And so he will show you a large finished upper room, there make ready. So on the second floor, there would be this large room, and it's furnished, and again Jesus knows that it's there, he knows that the man has been prepared to offer the room to them, everything is set.

And so they went and found it just as he said to them, and they prepared the Passover. So they did all of the stuff that needed to be done. I think that sometimes we have this impression that spiritual ministry is the only stuff that is important, that only preaching is important, that all the other stuff that is attended to on that, in terms of manual stuff that needs to be done, cleaning and fixing and getting the place ready, are not important things.

The Importance of Faithful Service

And yet you can see here that Jesus himself is going to preside, if we can use those words, over the Passover. Of course, that's the most important thing. Jesus is the most important one around that table.

And yet there are these important preparations that need to be made. And if these are not made, then how are you going to have the supper? If someone didn't prepare the communion, the emblems that we have on the table, then how would we have communion this morning?

Somebody has to do those things. And they are just as important as the spiritual aspects. It's easy to say, well, you know, Jesus speaking to the disciples and washing their feet and those things that he does around the Lord's Supper, and as he introduces communion and converts and really changes Passover into communion, that there is nothing more important than that.

Well, there is nothing more important than that. But it's still important to have the room. It's still important to have the food that they needed on the table. These things are necessary. And notice that Jesus does not entrust these things to anyone, but he entrusts them to the two most faithful of his disciples.

And we can easily say, well, you know, this is no big deal. Jesus could have just chosen someone outside of the 12. Why the 12? He's got many others who are faithful and loyal. He can choose of the 500.

Remember, there was a next level of disciples, about 500. He could have chosen one of the 500 or two or three of the 500. No, he chooses the most loyal of the inner circle to do these mundane things because they are important.

Folks, unfortunately, in the church, we have this concept that deacon's work is not important. Only the preacher's work is important. Everybody wants to be a preacher. Nobody wants to be a deacon. Nobody wants to fix and clean and do these kinds of things.

And yet they are absolutely essential to this whole picture. And we've just spent six verses looking at the preparation. No deep spiritual teaching here, just the preparation for the Passover. And so these are important things.

Fervent Desire for Christ’s Presence

Verse 14, when the hour had come, that would be in the evening, he sat down and the 12 apostles with him. Interesting that it uses the hour, the precise time when this was to happen. And he sits down with the 12.

Now, the word apostles does not appear in all of the manuscripts. So we can't build a whole teaching on that. But it's interesting, even if you leave the apostles out, it's still with the 12. In other words, Judas is there among them.

And we spoke about that last week. Verse 15, then he said to them, with fervent desire, I've desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. This is a very important statement that Jesus makes.

And I want to spend a bit of time on this verse. You'll see on the screen that the word fervent is in italics, which means it was not in the original. The original simply said, with desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

Now, to add the word fervent is an important addition in order to explain the Greek word desire here. Now, I don't want you to be offended, but the word desire here is generally translated in the New Testament as lust.

Lust. So, Jesus is literally saying, with lust, I have lusted to eat this Passover with you. You say, well, what's the point? And why should we use such a profane word for this sacred moment? Because it tells us about the intensity with which Jesus longed to be with his disciples this one last time.

You see, here's the problem. When it comes to meeting with the saints, I don't know that there are many Christians who lust. In other words, you have the same drive that we have for earthly things. We lust after material things.

We lust after carnal pleasures. We lust after money, after power. And these are things that drive people. And we're all driven by some of those things to some extent or the other. And it's a drive that you've got to satisfy.

And of course, that's the essence of temptation. We don't have to, but we feel we have to. But I don't see many Christians being driven with the same drive, with the same passion, with the same need to be in the Lord's house.

And remember, this is not just about the Passover. This is a moment that Jesus wants to finally just be with the twelve. The last opportunity before it's all going to explode. And he just wants to be with those that he loves.

He just wants to celebrate the Passover. And, folk, I believe that there needs to be, as much as we are driven by earthly lusts for all sorts of things, we need to be driven by heavenly lust, heavenly desire, passion to be in the house of God, to be with the church of God, to come around the Lord's table this morning.

It's not something that we should say, oh, well, you know, we do it every month. Many churches do it every week. We do it so many times. It's no big deal. If I miss this week, I can do it all this time.

I can do it the next time. And I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but I wonder how many this morning woke up and said, yes, today we're going to come around the Lord's table. My bet is that not many.

And yet Jesus says with desire, with fervent desire, I wanted to do this. I wanted to be with my people. I wanted to look back at the deliverance from Egypt, and I want to look forward to the cross, and I want to look beyond the cross to the second coming.

All of these are part of that big deal. And so again, let me challenge us. What is it that we desire above all else? Do we desire to be in God's house, to be with God's people, to be in fellowship, to come around the Lord's table?

Or are there other things that are driving us and more important to us than those things? And so he said with fervent desire, with lust, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I supper. Notice he doesn't say to eat the Passover, but to eat the Passover with you, with you.

The Kingdom Hope in Communion

Verse 16, for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. I'm going to come back to this verse because verse 18 speaks about drinking the wine. So in the same context, so we'll put that in on the back burner and come back to it.

Verse 17, then he took the cup and gave thanks and said, take this and divide it among yourselves. Now, I said earlier on that in the Passover Seder, there are four cups, and I'm not going to get into the details of those four cups.

This cup is the third of the four, and this cup is not the cup of what let's call it the cup of communion. Because you'll see a few verses later on, he takes the cup again, not the same cup, a different cup.

So again, if we don't read carefully, we'll say, well, and in fact, I've heard Christians say, well, we need to have the cup before we have the bread, and they'll quote this verse. Jesus took the cup, and then a few verses later, he took the bread.

Well, that's a stupid argument, because if that's your argument, then you have to take the cup, you have to take the bread, and then you have to take the cup again, because that's literally what this passage does.

He takes the cup, he then does the bread, and then he does the wine or the cup again. So this cup is not the actual communion. This is the third one in that ritual. Take this and divide it among yourselves, because I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

So remember verse 16, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Verse 18, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. What does Jesus mean by that?

When will he do this again in the new Jerusalem? When he comes again, when will the kingdom of God have come? Remember, that's part of what we pray. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So the kingdom will come when Jesus establishes his physical kingdom here on earth. In fact, not the new Jerusalem, the millennium. And so that's when the kingdom comes. So I want us to just pause for a moment and look at what's going on here.

What was the purpose of the Passover? Now remember, Jesus is celebrating a traditional Hebraic Passover. But he is in the process flipping it into communion. So there are certain aspects of what Jesus is doing, the bread and the wine, which now continues as communion.

A lot of the symbolism continues, but in a different way. And so there are two things going on here. There's the Passover, and there's the communion, and the two things are interposed on one another. All right.

Remembering Deliverance and Anticipating Christ’s Return

So there are different things going on in terms of time. The purpose of the Passover was to remind them of the day they came out of Egypt, to remind them that the angel of death passed over, the oldest was spared, that night God delivered them from Egypt, and he took them on their journey to the promised land.

That was part of the purpose. And so for us, communion has an element of looking back. The difference is we don't look back at the Passover or at the exodus out of Egypt, we look back at our Passover.

Now if you were here on Thursday night, you remember that we spoke about the fact that we were crucified with Christ 2 ,000 years ago. Now, listen to the tape, I can't get sidetracked, otherwise we'll never get through.

So when we come to the table, we don't just remember that Jesus died, because yes, that's part of what we remember, and he's going to talk about that, we're not going to get there that far this morning.

But part of what we remember is his body that is broken and his blood that is shed, and we can never minimize that. But part of what we also remember is that the angel of death passed over us, because the blood of Christ was applied.

We have passed from death to life. We've passed from judgment into blessing. And so part of what we remember is we look back at the day that Jesus died, the same way as they look back at Egypt, we look back at the day that we were born again, and our lives were changed, and we were brought out of Egypt.

Remember, Egypt is a picture of the world, when we came to Christ, we came out of the world, and we came into our relationship with him. And so we remember the past. But we also remember the future, because Jesus said, I will not do this until I do so new.

So he's looking forward at the cross, and of course, we'll not get into that in detail now, but he's looking beyond the cross. He's looking at thousands of years in the future, when he will celebrate the Lord's supper with the church.

And we believe that that happens at the marriage supper of the lamb, and people have different timings on that, but that's part of the last day, it's part of the end of time. And so part of what we remember is what happened, but it's also reminding us of what is in the future.

The Jews have a special place setting, and this is not scripture, and so I'm just giving this to you as a matter of interest. This is not, we can build no doctrine on this. But they have a special place setting at their table, a chair and cutlery and all of that, for Elijah.

And of course, that seat is empty right through the meal, but next time they'll have it again. Why do they have that? Because the Bible says that before the Messiah comes, Elijah must come. Remember, we dealt with this at the beginning of the first few chapters in the Gospel of Luke.

And so part of what they're doing is they're looking forward and they're saying, Elijah must come. So maybe this is the time Elijah is going to come, and then the Messiah is going to be soon on his heels.

Now remember, they had this all wrong because Elijah did come in the form of John the Baptist and Jesus was on his heels. But now we're looking forward, so they're looking forward. Part of the Seder also is that they will say, next year in Jerusalem.

So Jews are celebrating Passover, or they celebrate Passover all over the world, and they're going to be doing it in the next couple of months. Can't remember the exact date. Sort of more or less around the time that we have Easter, but remember the dates are different.

And they'll say, well, we're doing it here in LA, but next year in Jerusalem. Now, that statement about Jerusalem is not just about the fact that they are looking forward to emigrating to Jerusalem, but they're looking forward to the day that Jesus, the Messiah will be in Jerusalem, and they'll be able to do that.

So there's this constant looking forward. The reason I emphasize this is because there is a danger that as Christians, we're simply when we come to the Lord's table, we're just looking back. No, there is.

Yes, we must look back. He says, do this in remembrance of me. We remember Jesus. We remember what he did. We remember what he did for us personally. And that is important. It's easy for communion to become an impersonal thing.

So we remember that Jesus died and he rose again and those kinds of things. No, he died for me. That lamb that was slain, it was for those in the family that they may be spared because that blood needed to be applied to the doorpost.

He died for me. He brought me out of bondage, out of slavery of sin and of the world and of the flesh and brought me into the glorious liberty of Christ. So it's a personal thing. And there's a real danger that it becomes impersonal and it becomes, you know, it's a church thing.

It's about us all. Yes, it is about us all, but it's about me and about what he did for me. And so when we come to the table, we need to, it needs to be personal. It's not just to remember, remind us that Jesus died 2000 years ago.

It's that he died for me and that he set me free and he brought me out of Egypt. And so that is the basis of our gratitude. It's not just, oh, you know, it's great that Jesus died for the sins of the world.

No, it was for me. So I remember, do this in remembrance of me, but I also look forward. And I'm saying maybe next month, maybe next year, we'll be doing it in heaven, in the presence when he himself will break the bread and pass around the cup.

So we're looking forward. Now you say, well, you know, we're building this all on Luke. No, we're not. In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 26, which we're going to read in a few moments when we come to the Lord's table.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you declare or proclaim the Lord's death period. No, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So again, there's that element of looking forward.

We're doing this, but it's temporary. It's a place marker until Jesus comes. When Jesus comes, obviously, I believe that we're going to have a communion, as I said, at the marriage feast of the Lamb. And we will remember and we will understand for the first time fully the price that he paid for us.

We will understand fully what he endured for us. We will, for the first time, come to grips with the magnitude of this glorious salvation. And so we're looking forward to that great day. Now, the purpose, of course, is to remind us to not get discouraged.

You remember the problem in the wilderness was that they became discouraged because they were never getting there. And yet every year they would have the Passover, and the Passover would remind them that God is taking them into the promised land.

But they forgot. You see, we can go through the ritual. In fact, the reality is that for many, many years, I think about 38 years, they didn't celebrate Passover in the wilderness. And that's part of the problem.

It's part of why they lost track of the goal of where they were going. And so we need to not just be looking back. We need to be looking forward. We need to come around the Lord's table and be encouraged as we live our lives and as life has become very challenging in many, many ways with pestilence and with wars and with inflation and with all of the things that we are struggling with, with people having mental issues and people having emotional problems, all of these things coming around us.