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Switching things up for Easter - taking a break from the Unhindered theme.
The Cross Leads to the Resurrection
The most pivotal point for every believer and follower of Christ is the Resurrection.
Paul says that if Christ didn’t resurrect from the dead than we are the most pitiable of people.
Everything that we do in this place this morning -
singing
Ever
Praying
speaking
is all worthless, if there is no resurrection.
It’s what causes Christianity to stand out among any other world religion.
- Our religious leader (the son of THE GOD) came out of the grave.
He lives again
Which means that everything he came to do has been accomplished.
But we cannot celebrate the resurrection without first looking at the cross.
Jesus’ resurrection would mean nothing if there wasn’t first a suffering
The passover lamb had to be slaughtered
His blood needed to be applied to the door post
And so over the next few weeks, I want to look at the path of suffereing, the events that led up to the greatest celebration of all.
But remember, the disciples had nothing to celebrate if they first hadn’t experienced the great loss that they had.
I want to preach from these last few verses this morning.
What we know as the Last Supper.
These are probably some of the best known words of Christ throughout the history of his church.
And as I tell you every time that we come to this table, this institution of the communion is more than just religious.
Jesus is up to something in our lives here.
He is leaving something to his church that is powerful and enduring.
This is what I want to look at this morning.
And I want to look at it from three different perspectives this morning.
It’s Setting - the time, the people and more precisely the situation of it.
And then I want to look at it’s significance:
first to the disciples
Second to us.
The Setting of This Last Supper.
The feast of the unleavened bread was to mark and remember the exodus out of Egypt.
The people would be set free, but God would do so in such an expedient way that they needed to be ready.
They had to take their bread pans and their flour without yeast.
They wouldn’t have time to wait for the bread to rise.
This feast lasted a whole week, which was started off with the celebration of the passover.
Jerusalem was a buzz with activity.
The Normal people who were always visiting there
The added group of visitors in for the passover
The extra Roman soldiers there to squelch any thing that may lead to an uprising
and the Jewish authorities on a manhunt.
They were trying to deal with a situation that had just taken place a few days before - This man Jesus had written into town on a donkey and the people went crazy worshiping him.
This man had to die.
He was not just turning over tables in the temple, he was turning over the whole idea of temple worship itself.
And he had to be stopped
Jesus is not far away - Bethany - spending time with friends.
The disciples were probably wondering what this passover would be like.
Would they get to spend it together with Jesus, but they couldn’t go into Jerusalem with Jesus because things had gotten so dangerous for him.
But Jesus had already taken care of things and worked things out with a friend who had an upper room in Jerusalm that they could use - So Jesus sends his disciples into town to make ready.
For the....
The Passover Meal
the meal that celebrated their God
The God who was with them
The God who heard their cries from their persecution and slavery in Egypt
The God who had brought them out of that slavery
The God who had led them and clothed them and fed them and watered them and kept them safe through the wilderness journey
And the God who had brought them into the promise land
The meal would have elements in it each reminding them of what God had done.
The meal celebrated the blood of the lamb
The pass over lamb - first born dead in Egypt, but not in the land that Israel occupied.
The meal celebrated their hopes for a future
Though they had been set free so long ago and in their own land they still felt like slaves
They had been placed under the rule of the Roman Empire
They longed for God to once again come to their rescue and set them free again
So the passover meal looked to the past to what God had done and to the future, believing that God would do it again.
Or actually that God was still doing it.
There was a prescribed way of doing things and saying things and all that had to happen, but Jesus is about to say something that was unscripted and would affect those in his presence in an amazing way.
At first they would not get it - and they would look at him with wondering eyes
But as they stood at the cross on the next day, and when they saw him walk out of the tomb, they would have a much greater understanding.
Part of the liturgy of the passover was that at one particular point the host of the meal would break the unleavened bread and pronounce a blessing over it.
- Blessed are thou, O Lord Our God, King of the universe, who bringest forth bread from the earth - and we know that Jesus did that, because we read here - “after he had given thanks.”
Then he should have gone on and said, This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate.
Reminding them that the bread represented their sufferings of slavery in egypt all those years ago.
But Jesus changes it up and shocks everyone - He says, Take and eat, this is my body (and the other gospels will add - which is given for you)
Jesus understood what was about to happen
He knew that he would die - that his body would be the final sacrifice for sin, and broken just like the bread was broken.
And he is telling his disciples something wonderful - that in eating the bread, they would be partakers in the benefit of everything that he was about to do.
Just like Israel benefited from the sacrifice of the pass over lamb.
Don’t miss this - Jesus was saying, I am the broken bread
I am the new passover
I am that new way out (the exodus) that you have been looking for
For all of this to happen, I give my life.
Then he takes the cup (probably the third cup as there are four in the passover meal)
Each cup represent four promises that God made to the people during the passover
I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians
I will free you from being slaves to them
I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment
I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.
It is probably the third (I will redeem you) that Jesus says what he says here.
Again, there would be a prayer and a blessing which Jesus most likely did because it says again that he gave thanks.
That prayer would have been, Blessed are thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who givest us the fruit of the vine.
And the cup would then be passed
But again Jesus changes things up and says before passing the cup - This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
These word very familiar to us - but imagine hearing them for the first time
Imagine in this setting
very significant, because of the three phrases that Jesus chooses to use here
my blood of the covenant
(pay attention to 6-11
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