This is My Body

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 26th chapter.

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Now, on the first day of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying,

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Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover? He said, Go into the city to a certain man and say to him,

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The teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.

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And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve, and as they were eating, he said,

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Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me. And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another,

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Is it I, Lord? He answered, He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me.

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The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

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It would have been better for that man if he had not been born. Judas, who would betray him, answered,

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Is it I, Rabbi? He said to him, You have said so. Now as they were eating,

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Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said,

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Take eat, this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying,

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Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

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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

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Father's kingdom. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. This is the gospel of the

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Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Oh Lord, have mercy indeed.

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What a great prayer. And the reality is that we all need to pray this prayer. Not once, like some kind of a

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COVID shot, oh wait, they make you get many of those, don't they? But not once like a flu shot or the chicken pox or something like that, but daily, daily, we pray, oh

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Lord, have mercy. Have you noticed, again, that the world is on fire? It's crazy out there.

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And as I think about what's going on in the world, don't think for a second, as we kind of consider some of the lowlights of what's happening in the world, that somehow you are not complicit in all of this.

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We all are. You'll note that sin has made us crazy, has made us stupid.

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You look at the world right now, France is on fire, literally, all the riots occurring there.

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The war in Ukraine has drug on now into its second year. And quite frankly,

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I've gotten to the point where I just don't care who wins, because I don't think that war is one of these things where people legitimately win.

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For each soldier lost on the battlefield, they have lost the war, whether they be for Ukraine or whether they be for Russia.

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Then in our own country, don't even get me started here, it's just a hot mess.

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From the shooting that took place last week in Tennessee, to the crazy trauma that's going on as a result of all things, the

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Cannes artwork for Bud Light. By the way, I just want to make this clear,

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Bud Light is not really a beer, so I don't understand what the controversy is. But all of that being said, these are just symptoms of all of this.

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When you look at your own life, we sin against God greatly. Have you ever noticed that when you read the account of Judas, it hits way, way, way too close to home?

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Because each and every one of us, when we sin against God, we are legitimately betraying

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Christ. And as I've pointed out on multiple occasions in the book of Acts, the

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Apostle Peter makes it clear that we are all guilty of the blood of Christ. This Passion Sunday, we heard the crowd cry out that Christ's blood be on them and on their children.

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And oh wow, what a statement that is, and that's something that we absolutely need.

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But tonight, Holy Thursday, Maundy Thursday, we are taken back in time to the very, very first Passover.

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And in that very first Passover, we read about this in the book of Exodus chapter 12. It says,

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Yahweh said to Moses and to Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months.

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It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household.

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And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat.

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You shall make your count for the lamb. I love it that even small households, they get to share together the beginnings of this idea of loving one another.

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What a thought here. He says, your lamb shall be without blemish. I wonder why. Because it's the apostle

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Paul who makes it very clear in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 that Christ, our Passover lamb, has been slain.

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That Passover lamb is a type and shadow of Jesus himself. Have you noticed that when we look at all of the different estuaries and rivers and streams that flow throughout the

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Old Testament, that they all flow into Jesus? It's always about him and what he is doing to save us.

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And he says that you can take that lamb from either the sheep or the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

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And here's the thing. This sacrificial lamb, you'll note they didn't head off to Hugo's and buy it in the grocery store or at Walmart.

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This required some hands -on killing. And I would note that we in our day and age are very unfamiliar with how this goes down, unless of course you're living on a farm.

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And then if you're living on a farm, you know, you're raising pigs, you're raising cows and things like this, and all of a sudden

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Bessie disappears, and Bessie is now dead, and Bessie comes back in pieces and is put in the freezer, right?

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And kids who grow up on farms know a thing or two about animals sacrificing their lives so that we can live.

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And so there, the assembly of Israel, and you've got to note that the kids were probably standing watch, because you'll note they had to keep this lamb for ten days.

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Keep it for ten days, get to know it, give it a name, right? And then at the end of ten days, well, things went really bad for those lambs, right?

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And they were all killed at twilight. And if you know how to reckon time according to the scripture, twilight is a very specific time.

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It's three in the afternoon. The same time that Christ gave up his life, gave up his spirit, and he died.

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Then they shall take some of the blood, put it on the two doorposts of the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

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They shall eat the flesh that night, roast it on fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs that they shall eat it.

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And you'll note that if you've ever been to a Seder and you're familiar with how the Jews to this day, they celebrate the

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Passover, it's kind of a fascinating thing. They have a liturgy that goes with this. And during the Passover meals, the family comes together.

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Families and families will come together. And someone, the head man in the household, he's the one who plays the role of dad in the account.

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And at different points in the meal, when they take the bread and they dip it in the bitter herbs, one of the children at the table will ask the question, what does this mean?

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That sounds like a catechism lesson, right? Luther says, Vasa Stas. Where did he get it from? He got it from this, right?

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And so you'll note that each and every one of these elements has a meaning. Unleavened bread.

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In the initial understanding of this, the unleavened bread really stands for the fact that they had to eat this meal in haste.

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One thing I can tell you is that it takes a little bit of time to make leavened bread. If you're going to put yeast in it, it's got to have some time to rise and to rest and things like this.

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They didn't have time for that. But later we learn in the book, in the New Testament, that leaven has a different significance.

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One that we, with a greater understanding, because we have both the Old and the New Testament, we recognize that leaven, yeast, is often associated with sin, right?

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And the putting out of sin. So you're to eat the unleavened bread with bitter herbs, they shall eat it.

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And do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roast it, its head with its legs and its inner parts, and you shall let none of it remain until the morning.

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Anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. And in this manner you shall eat it.

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With your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand, you shall eat it in haste.

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It is Yahweh's Passover. And then God explains what this Passover is really all about.

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For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast.

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And on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am

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Yahweh. And so God here, a good way to think about it, is these firstborn who die of men and in beast, these are the first fruits of God's wrath.

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It's God acting in judgment against the false gods of Egypt, those who worship these false gods.

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God is executing harsh, harsh, wrathful judgment. And how can one escape when

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God is coming through your town in order to, well, execute

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His wrath against those who have sinned? And here's the thing, when we hear words like this, it creates some anxiety in us because we all know that we have all fallen greatly short of the glory of God.

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Each and every one of us have sinned against God horrifically. I would note this, that when we talk about sins that people do not know about, they always refer to it as having skeletons in your closet, right?

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And it's best that those skeletons stay in those closets, but here's the thing. God knows all the bones of all the skeletons in your closet, and He has not chosen to act in judgment.

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And it was that sacrificial lamb, its blood on the doorposts of those houses, that as God was passing through,

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Christ was passing through. He is the angel of the Lord, after all. As He was passing through to execute judgment,

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He saw the blood of the lamb, He passed over. He saw no blood on the doorpost,

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He entered, and the firstborn did die. I have an archeology book in my library, and in that archeology book, they have photographs of the pits in which the bodies of these firstborn were thrown into after Yahweh went through that town, went through Egypt and killed all those firstborn.

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They didn't have time to bury them, they had no proper way to do it, they were overwhelmed with bodies. And that's, like I said, the first fruits of the wrath of God.

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The blood then shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, God says,

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I will pass over you, no plague will befall you to destroy you when

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I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be for you a memorial day, you shall keep it as a feast to Yahweh throughout your generations as a statute, forever you shall keep it as a feast.

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Well fast forward 1 ,500 years, there's Jesus, the rightful heir to the throne of David, and He is celebrating

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His final Passover on earth, and already, already He has been betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.

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What a cheap price for the God who gave us life. And you'll note there, at this

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Passover feast, is the one who has betrayed Him, Judas.

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And He, talk about having no conscience, do you think

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Jesus cares about Him? Yes, He does. Scripture is very clear on this, it is not God's will that any should perish.

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Not you, not Judas, not nobody, not no one know how. It is not His will that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance, come to a knowledge of the truth, and have faith in Him for the forgiveness of our sins.

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Christ's death on the cross is the death of the Son of God for the sins of the whole world

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God has laid on Jesus, the iniquity of us all. And so here now,

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Jesus has gathered with His disciples, and they are going through the little

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Jewish liturgy that goes with the Passover, and it doesn't give us the details, it just gives us how

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Jesus takes these things and adds new meaning to it all together. So it says, On the first day of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying,

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Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover? He said, And you go into the city to a certain man, and you say to him,

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The teacher says, My time is at hand, I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.

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And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening,

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Jesus reclined at table with the twelve, and as they were eating, He said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray

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Me. And they were very sorrowful, and began to say to Him one after another,

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Is it I, Lord? Note here, Judas knows full well what he's already done and what he intends to do.

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And Christ is giving him a legitimate opportunity to confess his sin and to be forgiven.

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I mean, do you think you can hide anything from Jesus? I think I said it a week ago, when Jesus was growing up,

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He would have been terrible to play hide -and -seek with, right? One of those games that never would have worked in your favor,

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Because He knows where everybody is. He knows where you are. He knows where I am.

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He knows our secret thoughts. He knows the sins that we are most ashamed of.

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And He desires that we repent and believe. And so,

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Jesus here is doing this, not so much to basically say, I know that one of you has betrayed me.

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I'm king of kings and Lord of lords. I know everything. He's doing this for Judas' own sake.

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And you'll note, each of the disciples, they answer, Is it I, Lord? But when

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Judas asks the question, he asks, Is it I, Rabbi?

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That's an interesting, interesting response. So, Jesus identifies him.

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And Judas asks, Is it I, Rabbi? He said to him, You've said so.

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Terrible. Absolutely terrible. And so now,

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Christ is taking over the Passover liturgy. He's changing things left and right, because the

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Passover always was pointing to Him. That was the point. So as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it,

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He broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat. This is my body.

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And one has to wonder, because if you're familiar with the Seder liturgy, when He had broken the bread, the question is supposed to come up,

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What does this mean? And so Jesus, in answer to the question, What does this mean?

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Says, Take, eat. This is my body. And He took a cup and when He had given thanks,

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He gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

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I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my

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Father's kingdom. And thus begins, at this point, the last bit of the normal life of Jesus and the

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Passion will shortly follow. And you'll note, Judas does go out and he does betray

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Christ. He leads the crowd and the soldiers to arrest Jesus, betrays

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Him with a kiss, as we heard on Passion Sunday, and later, regretted what he did.

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He had legitimate contrition. But you'll note that Peter also betrayed

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Christ. Not once, not twice, but three times.

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And you'll note that there's a little mini -drama, a sub -drama in the midst of Christ's Passion, and that has to do with the difference between the two, between Judas and between Peter.

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And you'll note, when we understand properly what repentance is, repentance always contains two parts, not one.

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Many people mistakenly think that repentance is legitimately just feeling bad for your sin.

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That is not repentance. In fact, I would note that Scripture kind of describes that as worldly repentance, or worldly sorrow.

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You'll note there are plenty of people who've felt terrible that they were caught.

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They felt awful that somebody found out just what a lousy person they are. By the way, we're all that.

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We are all lousy in that sense. But you'll note that Judas, when he finally comes to his senses, he realizes that he has betrayed innocent blood.

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But where does he go to get an absolution? The people he conspired with to murder

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Jesus. In fact, if you were to theologically put it this way, Judas went to the law in order to get the

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Gospel. The law will never give you the Gospel. The law will only condemn you.

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And so he stood condemned. So that second part of repentance is faith, confidence in Christ for the forgiveness of not some of your sins, but all of them.

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Have you ever wondered, how does one get rid of a guilty conscience? Because each and every one of us ought to have one.

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Because when we look at God's law, we recognize we are totally messed up. There is nothing sound in each of us.

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We heard it in the address from Monday, Thursday. When we look inside of our hearts, we look at our consciences and what comes back legitimately should terrify us, and it does.

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But where then do we go to get rid of this guilty conscience? Do we turn to the law?

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Try harder, do better. This time I promise Jesus I'm going to really get my act together.

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This time I really am going to pull it off. No. That's never going to do anything, and that's not true repentance.

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True repentance is contrition over sin and confidence in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

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So the difference between Judas and Peter is that Judas goes to the law to get his absolution.

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Peter goes to Christ. And only Christ is the one who can give us an absolution.

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I do find it fascinating with the institution of the Lord's Supper that the official reading for this is taken from Exodus 24.

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Monday, Thursday, the reading is from Exodus 24. And here you have the elders of Israel having had blood thrown onto them, thrown onto the book, onto the altar, onto the people.

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There was blood everywhere. Every time I say that sentence, I cannot help but go back in my mind to the

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Country Bear Jamboree in Disneyland. There was this weird bear who would come out and he would sing this song, blood on the sidewalk, blood on the ground, and there was blood everywhere.

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Well, that's what we're reading in our Old Testament text. What is going on here?

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It says, Moses took the book of the covenant. He read it in the hearing of the people. They said, all that Yahweh has spoken we will do.

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We will be obedient. No, they won't. And then Moses took the blood, he threw it on the people, and he said, behold, the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has made with you in accordance with all of these words.

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Blood on them, blood on the book, blood on the tab, blood everywhere. And we hear in our

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Epistle text from Hebrews, without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. That's how we are made holy.

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But not by the blood of animals, of sacrificial lambs and goats and oxen and sheep and things like this.

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No, we are made holy. We are sanctified. We are forgiven and, well, have our sins forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ.

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And immediately after that, after they had all this blood thrown on them and they were made holy by it, then they were able to see

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God. But you're going to note here, they don't ever describe in this text what God looks like. So they go up to the top of Mount Sinai.

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There they are, 70 elders of Israel. They went up and they saw the God of Israel. And they don't describe

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Him. His face looked like this. No, no, no, no, no, no. His feet, under His feet were a pavement as if it were a sapphire stone for the very heaven of clearness.

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And God did not lay His hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. You'll note

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Moses has to say that. They are there in the presence of God, and God didn't go, Yeah, I kill you.

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Nope. Instead, what does God do? He doesn't lay hands on them. And they beheld

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God, and they ate, and they drank in His presence. And so here now, at the fulfillment of the

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Passover, Christ says these amazing words. He says,

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Take, eat, this is My body. He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying,

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Drink of it, all of you, for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

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For what? For the forgiveness of their sins. And this is what

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I need. And this is what you need. Don't look at the world out there going crazy.

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Look at your own crazy heart. Look at your own blackness and your own sin.

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You need Christ's body. You need His blood. And isn't it amazing here that the type and shadow gives way to the reality?

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The reality is found in Christ. And that sacrificial lamb at the original Exodus, that was all pointing to the one that would come,

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Jesus Christ. And you'll note, what did they do with their lambs? They put the blood on their doors, and they consumed and ate them.

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And we, tonight, will eat the body and blood of Christ, drink

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His blood as well, all for the forgiveness of our sins, knowing this, that because God now sees on the door of our bodies, on our lips, on our tongue,

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He sees the blood of the true sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,

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Jesus who bore your sin and His body on the cross for you and for me. God sees that blood on us, on our lips and our tongue.

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And He passes over us. And we do not experience His wrath.

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No plague befalls us when God acts in wrath, all because of the great mercy of Christ.

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You see, it is not His will that any should perish, not you or I. And so, take, eat, this is my body.

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Christ now takes the sacrificial Passover lamb and points it to Himself, and He says, this is my body.

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You consume me. I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when

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I drink it anew in my Father's kingdom. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the

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Mount of Olives. And now, by the time you wake up tomorrow morning, some of you wake up at the crack of dawn.

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You know, I think about my wife. She has her alarm going off really early in the wee hours of the morning.

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I do my best to try to ignore it, right? But by the time breakfast comes around tomorrow, note this, that if we were keeping track of what

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Christ suffered, tonight we remember His betrayal, we remember

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His establishing of the Lord's Supper, His final Passover. But as you get home tonight, and you get ready to get into bed, note that Jesus had a long night.

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As you get ready to go into bed, maybe it's a good idea to think that maybe this was the hour in which He was betrayed and arrested.

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If you're up in the middle of the night getting a snack from the refrigerator, don't let your wife know.

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But if you're doing that, right, then take a moment and pause and reflect on the fact that this was probably the hour that Christ was on trial, that kangaroo court in the middle of the night.

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And when you wake up in the morning, if it's past 6 o 'clock, then note that Christ has already met with Pilate, and He's about ready to be paraded in front of everybody, and they are going to choose between Him and Barabbas.

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And once 9 in the morning comes tomorrow, listen, pause.

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Maybe you can still hear it. You can hear the hammer blows as they take the spikes and nail it into Christ's hands and feet.

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It is truly not His will that any should perish, yet we all deserve to.

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But He bore in His body your sins. God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

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And He has established now a token of His kindness and His love.

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Tonight, as we consume Christ's body and blood, again be comforted and be assured that your sins are forgiven because of Christ's vicarious death for you on that cross.

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And tomorrow when 3 comes, note that He's already dead.

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By the time we get together tomorrow night for Good Friday, Jesus will have already assumed room temperature, and His body is being prepared for burial.

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All things that we consider in real time, it's a great thing for us to do this. But note then, because we are forgiven, as it says in our

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Old Testament text, there's a day coming when we too will eat in the very presence of God.

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And because we are forgiven, God will never lay hands on us. And we will behold

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God with our own eyes, and we will eat and drink in His presence in the great marriage feast of the

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Lamb and His kingdom which has no end. Indeed, it gives great meaning then to the words, this is my body, this is my blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins.

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In the name of Jesus, Amen. We thank you for your support.

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