This is My Body

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If you would open your Bibles with me, and we're going to go to Mark, the 14th chapter.
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Every year, there are a few events that I really look forward to.
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There's the annual Christmas Eve service, wherein we celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ in Bethlehem.
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I enjoy looking forward to that.
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I also enjoy other parts of the year, but probably what would have to be the most enjoyable season is right where we are now.
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The time where we are celebrating Resurrection Sunday, looking forward to that day, and looking forward to coming together early in the morning, worshiping together, and then sharing a time of food and fellowship.
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But probably the most worshipful of all, of all of this week, has to be what we do on Thursday night, when we observe the Pesach, or the traditional Passover meal.
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We are one of the few churches that I know of that actually celebrates the Seder, complete with the traditional washings, the specially prepared foods, and the scriptural readings.
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I've always enjoyed seeing people's faces who've never been a part of that, who come to the church for their first time and get to experience it.
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It's almost always, I see in their face, a sense of awe over it.
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And I mention this event in my introduction this morning because today we're going to be looking at this meal as a major event in the last week of Jesus' life.
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You remember, throughout this series that we've been in now for a few weeks, we have looked at Holy Week, the week that changed the world.
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Because when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey and He received that coronation as King, that began a series of events, that was on Sunday, it began a series of events that would lead up to His death, burial, and resurrection, the resurrection happening the Sunday after.
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And what we've tried to do in this short series is we've tried to put together in our minds sort of an outline of how everything went down.
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We looked in week one, in the triumphal entry.
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Last week, we looked at Jesus going into the temple and ridding it of the people that were using it as a market.
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He went in and used and cleansed the temple.
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And what we saw in that, if you remember, we saw Jesus in two roles.
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We saw Jesus as King when He rode in on the donkey, it was coronation as King.
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And we saw Jesus as judge when He went into the temple and He fashioned that whip of cords and He drove the money changers out of the temple.
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Well, today, we get to see Jesus in another role.
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We get to see Jesus as minister.
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As He administrates the new covenant and He administrates the new covenant symbol, which He is going to explain to us, comes right out of that Passover meal and is, in fact, part and parcel of it.
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So this morning, we're going to start in Mark chapter 14 and verse 12.
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And we're going to read verses 12 through 25.
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So I invite you to stand starting in verse 12.
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It says, And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, Where will you have us 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 carrying a jar of water will meet you.
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Follow him.
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And wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, The teacher says, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready.
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There prepare for us.
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And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them.
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And they prepared the Passover.
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And when it was evening, he came with the twelve.
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And as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.
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They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, Is it I? He said to them, It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.
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For the son of man goes it is as it is written of him.
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But woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed.
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It would be better.
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It would have been better for that man if he had not been born as they were eating.
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He took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to them and said, Take this is my body.
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And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and they all drank of it.
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And he said to them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
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Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we come to you in Jesus name.
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We thank you and we praise you for your word.
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We ask now, Lord, that you would help us to understand it better.
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Help us to understand that sacred ceremony called Passover.
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Help us to understand how Christ turned that sacred ceremony into an even more important ceremony, that which we call Holy Communion.
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Father, as we seek to understand this, help us to understand, too, what it represents, the salvation which we receive in Christ and his glorious gospel.
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I pray, Lord, that you would keep me from error as I seek to give instruction this morning and that ultimately the Holy Spirit would be the teacher.
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And Lord, that you would open the hearts of the people to the truth.
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And Lord, you would just cleanse us and make us ready for your word.
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In Jesus name, Amen.
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One of the things that I think people often forget because it's not in the Bible is that Jesus went many, many years without ministering to the people.
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He went many, many years living as a first century Jew.
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And one of the things I think surprises people and I try to remind people is when we gather around the table, we only think about Jesus celebrating the Passover once because that's what we look at in the text.
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And we read about Jesus celebrating this last Passover meal with his disciples.
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But you have to think this is the 33rd time Jesus has done this.
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He's 33 years old.
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He would have been a part of every Passover.
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He would have celebrated this meal every single year of his life up until this last year prior to his crucifixion.
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It was the oldest of the Jewish feasts going all the way back to the evening before the deliverance from Egypt.
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In fact, this feast was set in a place to be a perpetual reminder to the Jewish people of God's deliverance for them out of the land of Egypt.
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Leviticus 23 in verse five tells us in the first month of the 14th day of the fourth month, I'm sorry, in the first month on the 14th day of the month, that twilight is the Lord's Passover.
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Every year they are to celebrate this important day.
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And then following the Passover meal, there was a week long feast called the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
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That feast would last another seven days, it says in Leviticus 23, verse six.
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And on the 15th day of the month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.
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So really, it was an eight day ceremony beginning with Passover and concluding with the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
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And Jesus and his disciples were not the only ones in Israel who were who were participating in this feast.
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Pilgrims would flock from all over to come to Jerusalem to celebrate this important meal.
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It was at Passover time when you see Jesus as a boy.
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If you remember that.
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Do you remember when Jesus was a boy and he went into the temple at 12 years old and he was found there teaching the teachers because his family had left him behind? You ever wonder why that happened? Well, the reason why they left him behind was because it was a huge caravan that had gone to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.
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People flocked from all areas and oftentimes the men would be at the front of the caravan and at the rear of the caravan to provide protection and the women would be in the middle.
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What likely happened was that Joseph was somewhere either at the front or the back and he thought Mary was with Jesus and Mary thought Joseph was with Jesus.
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And then when they got where they were going, they realized neither one of them were with Jesus.
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But that's the point is there's so many people who come to Jerusalem at the time of Passover to celebrate this important meal.
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And because many of them were pilgrims, they were coming in, they were doing their sacrifices and there would have been as many as a half million people moving through the area in such a short span of time, all having to have their lambs slaughtered by the priest.
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They would bring their lambs to the priest for slaughtering.
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And the amount of blood, historians tell us, the amount of blood would have been enormous because so many people bringing their lambs to be slaughtered and it was allowed to flow off of the steep of the eastern slope of the Temple Mount down into the Kidron Valley.
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And it was said that there was so much blood that would come from these sacrifices that the surrounding brook would be bright crimson for days after the event, that it flowed with so much blood as a result of those sacrifices.
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And it should be noted, too, if you think about the reality of that, so much blood that caused the kindred brook to flow red, but yet not one drop of that blood could truly bring about the forgiveness of sins.
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All of those sacrifices, so many gallons of blood spilled.
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Yet the Bible tells us in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 4, for it is impossible for the blood of goats and bulls to take away sin.
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All of that blood simply represented the one person of Jesus Christ, that one sacrifice that was coming.
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So this is where we are.
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We're at a time when literally hundreds of thousands are coming into Jerusalem.
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They're coming for this sacrificial time.
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They're bringing in their lambs for sacrifice.
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And here is Jesus among them seeking to participate this last time in this Passover feast.
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So we begin in Mark chapter 14, verse 12, and we read the story.
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It says, on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, where will you have us 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 carrying a jar of water will meet you, follow him.
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And wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready there, prepare for us.
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And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them.
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Now, a few things are important from this part, just on a historical level, understanding what's happening.
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The first thing is that Jesus' apostles would have been very accustomed to this.
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Again, this isn't their first rodeo.
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This isn't the first time this has happened.
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This is something that they had done before.
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And notice they say they ask him, where will you have us prepare? Because it's obvious this is something that we're going to do.
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We've done it before.
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Not will you have us do it? It was where will you have us do it? It's obvious we're going to participate in this.
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So Jesus chose two of his disciples.
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Why did he choose two? Why is that even important? Well, the Bible tells us Luke records for us that these were Peter and John.
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The reason why there were two was because only two people could bring the lamb to the to the priest.
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Couldn't have a band of 12 guys plus Jesus all bringing the lamb up to the priest.
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It would have been too many people.
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You can only send two in to do the job.
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So those two men went, took the lamb to the priest, did what they were supposed to do.
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And then they found the man with the water jar.
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Why? Why is that important? Well, it would have been easy to spot because men weren't in the custom of carrying water.
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Women were the ones who carried the water jar.
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So if you saw a man carrying a water jar, it's obvious this is the guy Jesus is talking about.
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Likely, he was the servant of the house, a wealthy man's house.
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And that's where Jesus had planned to have the Passover.
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By the way, does anybody happen to know a little trivia for you? Anybody happen to know whose house this was? Most likely, it was most likely the house of Mark.
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You remember Mark, the actual book that we're reading? John Mark.
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John Mark's mother is most likely that's where the house is.
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This would have been the same place where they had the prayer.
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After Jesus's resurrection and ascension into heaven, where they went in to have the prayer in Jerusalem there and the tongues of fire fell on the day of Pentecost.
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Likely the same room, historians tell us.
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So and interestingly enough, it's kind of if you read through the Gospel of Mark, there's a there's a short story.
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Turn with me very quickly.
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Look at verse 51.
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In the same chapter, chapter 14, we go down to verse 51.
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Remember, this is after Jesus was prayed in Gethsemane.
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This is after the betrayal and arrest of Jesus.
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Jesus is being taken away.
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And it says, and this is only found in the Gospel of Mark.
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It says in verse 51, and a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body, and they seized him.
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But he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.
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Now, most people don't.
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Most people read right past that don't even get who is this person and what's going on? Well, many commentators have speculated that what this was, this was John Mark, that he had followed Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane, that he was watching what was happening, but he had gone in his night outfit because this was at night.
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And when the men who took Jesus saw John Mark, they grabbed a hold of him in his night outfit.
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And what did he do? What a lot of children do.
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He slipped out of it and run, run for the hills.
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And he ran back home naked.
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That's kind of just an interesting little picture of what's happening here.
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Jesus has already set this up.
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Apparently, he's already got these people who are going to allow him to use this very nice place to have his last Passover meal.
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He's already got everything on tap.
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He's already got the man who's going to let him do it.
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He's already got everything set up.
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He's ready to go.
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He's having this last Passover.
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Now, as a way to give an outline of the evening that these men are preparing, I want to give you an outline of what a Seder meal consists of.
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Some of you come every year to our Seder meal.
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But most of you know, the way that we do our Seder meal, we have a Messianic Seder.
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We have a little different than the original Jewish traditional Passover meal.
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The traditional meal goes as follows.
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You begin with the drinking of the first cup of wine.
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This was from a common cup.
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Everyone would drink from the same cup of wine.
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Any more people have a little bit of problem with that.
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Some churches do it where they pass the cup around.
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And some folks don't like doing that anymore.
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But that was part of the tradition.
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Everyone at the table would drink from the common cup.
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Then came the ritual cleansing, which symbolized the need for spiritual and moral cleansing.
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They would go through that cleansing.
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And it was probably at that point that Jesus washed the disciples feet.
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You remember, Jesus stooped down and started washing their feet, which was a picture of his being not only the king who was coronated just a few days earlier, but also the servant.
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He had come to be a servant.
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Then came the eating of the bitter herbs.
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The bitter herbs represented the bondage of Egypt.
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The bitterness of the herbs reminded them of their harsh conditions in Egypt.
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Along with them, unleavened bread was eaten with haroset, which was a mixture of apples, dates, figs, raisins and vinegar.
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This represented the mortar, which was made into bricks.
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After this came the drinking of the second cup of wine.
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And at this point, the head of the house, which would have been Jesus in this case, would explain the meaning of Passover.
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And traditionally, the youngest person there, which may have been John Mark, asks the prearranged questions.
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Why is this night different than all other nights? Why on this night do we eat unleavened bread? Every other night we eat leavened bread.
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But why on this night do we eat unleavened bread? Why do we engage in all these festivities? Why do we do this? The youngest person asked those questions.
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And the head of the home recounts the story of the Passover.
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And then they would sing the Hallel.
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The Hallel was Psalm 113 through Psalm 118.
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It was the singing of the Psalms.
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And at this point, the lamb would be brought and distributed along with the pieces of unleavened bread to eat.
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Then the third cup would come.
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The cup of wine known as the cup of the blessing.
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And it was likely at that point that Jesus used that cup to institute the Lord's supper.
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So we see that the Seder meal is full of significance from beginning to end.
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It's a historical narrative set into a meal.
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So that's what Jesus is engaging in.
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And then in verse 17, it says, And when it was evening, he came with the twelve.
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And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.
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Now, consider that.
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This special occasion, this special meal.
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Jesus is celebrating this.
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He's already sent the two in.
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They've gone in to prepare.
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Everything is, this is, it's a feast.
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They're celebrating.
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They're remembering the deliverance of God from Egypt.
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They're remembering their history as Jewish people.
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They're remembering all these things.
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And yet Jesus breaks into the center of the meal.
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And he says, But yet one of you will betray me.
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He'd been telling them about his impending death, yet they hadn't yet to understand it.
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Every time he talked about his death, they never really got it.
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If you read in the text, they always sort of, they fought against it.
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No, no, we'll go to death with you.
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Never thinking that that would ever really have to come to pass.
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Or we'll fight for you.
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And Peter was willing to fight.
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He sure took that ear off that soldier.
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But yet at the same time, that wasn't the type of fighting Jesus wanted them to do.
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He wanted them to fight the spiritual battle of faith.
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And when he comes to them and he says, One of you will betray me.
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This would have come as a shock to the system of all the men reclining at the table.
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Eleven of them would have been amazed that anyone could betray Jesus.
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And yet one of them, Judas Iscariot, would have been amazed that his sin had found him out.
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It's quite likely that the scene that had happened just a night or two before flooded his mental pictures.
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Because it was likely on Tuesday evening.
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Remember, Jesus coming to Jerusalem on Sunday.
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He cleansed the temple on Monday.
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Well, it's likely on Tuesday evening in Matthew 26, where it says, Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, What will you give me if I deliver him over to you? And they paid him 30 pieces of silver.
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And from that moment, he sought an opportunity to betray him.
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So he knew it was him.
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He knew that he'd already been paid to do this.
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He knew when Jesus said, One of you will betray me.
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He knew it was already done.
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Yet in verse 19, they began to be sorrowful and say to him, One after another, is it? I.
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By the way, sometimes English does not render the Greek as well as it should.
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When you hear the phrase, is it? I.
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It sounds almost as if they're asking, is it? I.
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But actually, in the original language, it's it's not I, is it? It's more of a statement of it couldn't be me, could it? And yet in Matthew's gospel, Matthew 26, 25, it tells us that even Judas, knowing his own heart, knowing he'd already done it, knowing he had betrayed Matthew 26, 25, Judas, who would betray him, answered, Is it I, rabbi? Knowing his heart yet appearing to attempt attempting to appear guiltless before the rest.
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So back in Mark's gospel in verse 20, it says, He said to them, it is one of the twelve, one who is dipping into the dish with me.
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Jesus makes it very clear.
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One of you twelve who is dipping into this dish with me, you are going to betray me.
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And in John's gospel, the 13th chapter, he actually points out Judas in particular.
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But yet the others don't recognize it.
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One of the interesting parts, Jesus actually points it out.
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He says, I'm going to dip this.
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I'm going to give it to the one who's going to betray me.
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When he does it, Judas gets up and leaves and everybody's, hey, where is he going? They are so blinded by Judas's apparent goodness that they could not see him as the betrayer.
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You know, Judas was the money handler.
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The Bible tells us he was the money handler and that he actually stole from the treasury.
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But you know what? You don't give money to people that you don't trust.
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So by telling us Judas is the money handler, it tells us something about how the other men saw him.
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They saw him as a trustworthy one.
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They saw him as a good man.
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And when Jesus hands him the morsel of bread and he thought, well, he must just be going to get more supplies.
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He certainly couldn't be the one.
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Verse 21, for the son of man goes as it is written of him.
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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.
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Here we see two very important truths side by side.
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The first thing that we see in that text, verse 21, is that everything was ordained by God.
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Because he says it's going as it is written of him.
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He goes as it is written of him.
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So right now, everything's ordained by God.
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But yet at the same time, and beloved, you need to hear this because as a reformed church, as a church that believes what we believe about the sovereignty of God, just because something is ordained by God does not mean that we are not responsible for our own actions.
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Because listen to it again, for the son of man goes as it is written of him.
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But woe to the man by whom the son of man is betrayed.
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The word woe there is a word of judgment.
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It is a word of intense judgment.
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Remember, Jesus said, woe to you, Corazon, woe to you, Bethsaida.
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You know, he pronounced this word of judgment on these cities that have rejected him.
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Here he says, woe to Judas.
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God's ordination of this event did not excuse Judas any more than God's ordination of Joseph being the head of Egypt, excused his brothers from selling him into slavery.
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We are still responsible for our sins, though our sins are in the plan of God to bring about his purpose.
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That is so important for us to understand, because I've heard people say it and people.
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This is where reformed theology, if you are not a good student of the Bible, where sometimes people can go a wrong direction because they'll say, well, if God ordained it, it must be good, even if it's sin.
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You see, that's where you have gone off the reservation.
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You have gone off the right direction.
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Because though God ordains his ends as well as the means of reaching those ends, it does not excuse us from our sin.
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We are still responsible.
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We are still the ones who ultimately have decided.
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I tell people when God ordains a sin for when God ordains something that happens and it's sinful, the person wanted to do it.
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God didn't have to twist Judas's arm to get him to betray Jesus.
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God didn't have to turn Judas evil to get him to betray Jesus.
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Judas was already evil.
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All God had to do was turn him loose.
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All he had to do was remove that hand of restraint.
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And Judas did what he wanted to do from the beginning.
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He wanted power.
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He wanted money.
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He wanted authority.
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He wanted presence.
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Well, he got it all, but at what a price.
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And that statement of punishment is incomprehensible.
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It would have been better for that man if he had never been born.
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People ask me all the time.
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I've heard people say, well, do you think Judas repented before he died? I don't.
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I don't believe that he did.
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I obviously because I see the picture of Judas and Peter.
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Peter is the repentant one.
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Judas is the unrepentant one.
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Both of them had remorse, but only one had repentance.
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And there's difference between repentance and remorse.
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Repentance is a turning towards God.
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It is a changing of your mind about your sin.
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It is a coming back to God for forgiveness.
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And remorse is simply to say, well, I did wrong.
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I wish I hadn't.
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But you know what? Nothing's going to change.
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So we see in the text, Judas has received this proclamation of his judgment.
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Had been better had he not been born.
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Verse 22.
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This is the most precious part, because this is where Jesus gives this addition to this wonderful meal, this wonderfully important meal, which represented all the history of the Jewish people.
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He adds something to it in verse 22.
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And as they were eating, he took bread and after blessing it, broke it.
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And we say this every Sunday.
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After blessing it, he broke it and gave it to them.
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He said, take this is my body.
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And he took the cup.
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And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and they all drank of it.
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And he said to them, this is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
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Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of this vine until the day when I drink it in the kingdom of God.
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Now, it's important to understand that Jesus is changing the regular course of the Seder meal.
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He is transferring, transforming this Old Testament feast into a New Testament ordinance.
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You see, that's something to consider because all of the feasts of the Old Testament, those all feasts were important for telling the history of the people.
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But Jesus is now turning this into something that would go on perpetually as an ordinance in the church.
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We are not commanded as the church to celebrate the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Booths or any of those other celebratory things that go on in the midst of the Jewish people.
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But we are commanded to do this one ceremony.
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We are commanded to have this one remembrance service.
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Because in remembering the work of Christ, we remember all of those other things that are all culminated in His work.
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Because Jesus is the fulfillment of the Feast of Booths.
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Jesus is the fulfillment of the Feast of Weeks.
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Jesus is the fulfillment of the Passover.
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He is the fulfillment of the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
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He is the fulfillment of it all.
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So He takes all of those Old Testament feasts, all of those old things which were represented in His coming and gives us this one final thing.
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And He says, do this in remembrance of me.
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And in remembering Him, we remember all which led up to His coming.
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Now, I want to conclude today by offering you a theological note that I think is very important.
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Because when we read this story of Jesus celebrating the Passover and we read the word where He said He took the bread and He gave it to Him and said, This is my body.
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Beloved, in two thousand years, there has never been a more divisive statement among Christians than the phrase, This is my body.
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Hoc est corpus meum.
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This is my body.
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That's Latin.
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It's actually where the term hocus pocus comes from.
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You ever heard the term hocus pocus? What's hocus pocus? It's magic, right? It's a word term, you know, Bugs Bunny.
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Hocus pocus.
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You heard the song? We know what hocus pocus is.
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Hoc est corpus meum.
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This is my body.
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It was believed in the Roman Catholic Church during the medieval times and even to the time of the Reformation and even to today.
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It was believed that when the priest held up the body or rather the bread, he would say, This is my body.
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And he pronounced upon it that blessing, hoc est corpus meum, that it became literally the body of Christ.
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Thus, the people who heard it thought they were seeing something that was divine and somewhat magical.
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Thus, the term hocus pocus becomes accompanying that which is magical.
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Beloved, hear me now.
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When Jesus held up that body, held up that bread and said, This is my body.
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I don't think there was any confusion among his disciples as to what he meant.
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I don't think any of those men took out of that statement any type of a crass literalism as if to say this is literally Jesus's DNA.
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I don't think any of those men would have even considered that that is what he meant.
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But yet in 2000 years of church history, we still see folks who are inundated with the doctrine of transubstantiation, that that bread literally becomes the body of Christ and that cup literally becomes his blood.
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Beloved, do you know why that doctrine has held the place that it has held in the lives of so many people? That false teaching, because it is believed by those who teach transubstantiation, that when the bread becomes Jesus's body and the cup his blood, that his sacrifice is presented again on behalf of their sins.
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They believe that that's why they don't call it a communion table, they call it an altar, because they believe the sacrifice is happening again.
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Beloved, such a thing is not only false, such a thing is rank heresy, because Christ's sacrifice need not be repeated.
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It is, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, a once for all time sacrifice that needs not repetition.
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It needs not to be repeated.
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All it needs is to be remembered.
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If we can remember the once for all sacrifice, and that's why we participate every Sunday, we participate not to crucify Christ afresh, but to remember that one drop of his blood was all it took to cleanse us from every sin.
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Beloved, I encourage you.
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You know, last Wednesday night I talked about Roman Catholicism, because hey, they just established a new Pope, so we address some of the differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
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But let me tell you the one most dangerous doctrine that I have seen come out of Rome, and continues to be a major part of Roman Catholicism, is the doctrine that Jesus has to be re-sacrificed on that table.
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Beloved, that is false.
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The Bible is so clear.
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And I encourage you today, if you are looking for another sacrifice of Christ, you are looking too far.
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Christ's sacrifice once was once for all.
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If you have trusted in that sacrifice, and you have called upon him as Lord, then you have the confidence of eternal life.
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If you're waiting on another sacrifice, stop waiting and turn to Christ.
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It need not be repeated.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you again for this awesome opportunity to have looked at your word and to look over this historical narrative, and to glean new insights into it, and remembrances of things which we already knew, and hear things which we didn't.
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I pray, oh Lord, that you would engage us today.
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And that there are those who are here, who have never heard your gospel.
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Lord God, have never heard that Christ's sacrifice was a once for all sacrifice, and we receive the blessing of that sacrifice by faith.
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Lord, I pray that you would touch hearts and open them, and use this as a time to save your people.
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And Father God, encourage your faithful, and bring others into your kingdom.
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This is always our prayer.
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In Jesus' precious name, Amen.
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Beloved, stand with us now as we sing.
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And if you have a need for prayer, please come.