The Lord's Supper
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm a pastor in training here with Mill City Church. We are taking a three-week break from Ephesians. We've been in Ephesians for a few months now, and we want to take a three-week break and prepare ourselves for Easter. And the reason we want to do this is I feel like Easter gets a backseat to Christmas.
Christmas in the American economy is a cash cow. But in the Christian calendar, traditionally, Easter is it. It is the biggest thing on our calendar. It's the biggest moment of redemption in our church, so it should be celebrated and prepared for. And I feel like every time around this year, Easter just sneaks up on us. And so we're going to take three weeks to really prepare for this.
Today we're going to be walking through the Lord's Supper, which was the Thursday before Jesus was betrayed. And we're going to walk through the Lord's Supper, the event of the Last Supper, and how we practice the Lord's Supper out of that. Next week we're going to follow the death of Christ, and we will close on Easter with the resurrection and a baptism party. So we're going to be in Luke 22, his account of the Last Supper on page 514 in your blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, you can take that home with you. That is our gift to you.
In college, I went to Presbyterian College, and one of the biggest parts of Presbyterian College, of PC, is graduation. Like, it's a really big deal. So Chet and Matt, a few other pastors here, went to PC with me. And it is just, graduation is a really big deal for a few different reasons. Like, it was, on the day that you graduate, you line up in a building called Neville. And when you get Neville, the doors open, and you come out, and there's a beautiful green lawn with historic buildings on both sides.
And what really makes graduation at PC awesome is the bagpipes. PC is a Scottish Presbyterian College, so we do bagpipes. And bagpipes elevate anything. It's kind of like the slow-mo of music. I mean, slow-mo makes me, I could eat a hamburger, and if it's in slow-mo, it looks awesome. And that's what bagpipes do.
I could be changing my son's diaper, and if I've got bagpipes in the background, it elevates the occasion. All right? And bagpipes elevate already a big occasion of graduation. It just made it awesome. And it's a joyous time. I mean, if you're lucky enough, you get to hear amazing speeches at graduation.
The year before I graduated, Mr. PC was our very own Matt Freeman. He was the most outstanding senior of Presbyterian College, and he got to give a speech, and I heard it was great. And it's just an exciting time. It's just a joyous time. For me personally, it was great, because my wife and I, we were getting ready to get married a couple weeks after graduation.
And it was a new chapter, and it was really exciting. But also, there's mixed emotions, because graduation is kind of bittersweet. It's a time where you've spent the last three or four years getting to know people that you're really close with, and you've already been through one graduation before, and you kind of realize after you graduate from high school, like you're going to lose contact with people. There are people that you see at graduation that you might never see again. And the years will go by, and you realize that you're going to go in separate ways, and you're starting a new chapter.
It was also a little bit sad, because I graduated in 2011, which was really the bottom of the U.S. economy. And all of us had four-year degrees from expensive liberal arts colleges. Well, we didn't have a lot of jobs. I worked at a coffee shop as soon as I got out. So it was just kind of a sad time, because of what we were getting ready to step into.
And there's all kinds of mixed emotions and moments like that. And sometimes you don't even see them coming. Moments like this, they carry mixed emotions, because they're packed with meaning and significance. And there's a weightiness in those moments that sometimes you just don't see coming. And the same way, the Lord's Supper is just like this. It is a weighty moment at the Last Supper.
And the more that we understand the significance of what's going on there, the more that we understand what's going on behind the scenes, we'll better be able to appreciate what's happening at the event of the Last Supper. So we're going to be in Luke 22, verses 14 through 20. And we're going to sit in these verses. And there's three things that we'll see in the Last Supper. We'll first see that the Last Supper is of past remembrance. It is pointing back to something.
And then we'll see that it's pointing forward to something. That it is a future taste of something to come. And then lastly, we see that it is for the present communion of the church. So that when we practice the Lord's Supper regularly in the church, we'll do the same thing. It'll be a past remembrance. It'll give us a future taste of what is to come.
But it'll be for our present communion as a church. All right, so we're in Luke 22, verses 14. It starts out, And when the hour came, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it until it's fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took a cup.
And when he had given thanks, he said, Take this and divide it amongst yourselves. For I tell you, that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took the bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it. And he gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. I'll pray and we'll dive in. God, thank you so much that you've given us this beautiful sign and this weighty ceremony that you did 2,000 years ago. God, I pray that you would help us see the beauty of the Last Supper as we practice the Lord's Supper. God, I pray you would speak to us, that you would help us be present, that you would block out any distractions so that we can hear your word in Jesus' name. Amen.
All right, so he starts out in verse 14. He says, And when the hour came, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him. 15. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. So you can't fully understand what's happening at the Last Supper without understanding the significance of Passover.
Passover is the back story to the Last Supper. When I was a kid, the first Terminator movie that I watched was Terminator 2. And I remember watching it, and it starts out with John Connor, who's a kid, and the Terminator, which is Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arnie is protecting him from another bad, futuristic Terminator who's been sent back. And they're piling around, and they're dodging this guy, and their plan is to go break out his mother from a mental institution. So they get there, and they're getting ready to break her out, and she sees Arnold Schwarzenegger, and she's terrified, and starts running the other way.
And I remember thinking, what is she doing? Like, he's met there to save her, to protect her, to protect her. She should be happy. It did not dawn on me that in the first movie, and if you've seen the original Terminator, he's trying to kill her the entire movie. Like, that's the whole point of the first Terminator, is he has come back to kill Sarah Connor. Like, if you haven't seen the first Terminator, if you don't know the back story, you kind of get a little bit lost.
You don't know what's going on behind the scenes. I can tell that not many of you are Terminator fans, because none of you had any response to that. How about this? How about this? If you're a superhero nerd, like, if you got really, really geeked up about Black Panther, and said, I am so excited, I can't wait until Infinity Wars get here, I've already got my tickets locked and loaded Thursday at 7 o'clock, if that's you, this is the origin story. You're welcome.
This is the origin story. This is the backdrop to the Lord's Supper. So, for order us to understand what's going on here, we have to know the story of Passover. So, a quick refresher on Passover. Passover is the tenth plague out of the ten plagues that happen in the story of Exodus. So, the story of Exodus is that the people of God, the Israelites, are enslaved to the Egyptians, and that God, after hundreds of years, he raises up Moses to free his people from the Egyptians, from slavery.
And one by one, Moses comes before Pharaoh, and he says, let my people go. And he says no. And then plagues start happening. One by one, starting to break the power of Pharaoh. And then when we get to the tenth plague, Moses comes to Pharaoh and says, if you do not let my people go, the firstborn son in every household in Egypt will die. And Pharaoh says no.
So, Moses goes to the Israelites, and he says, this is what you must do. You must take a lamb, and you must slaughter it. And you must take the blood. And Exodus 12, 13 says, the blood shall be a sign for you. On the houses where you are, when I see the blood, I will pass over you. So, you must take the blood, and smear it on your doorposts.
And when the Lord comes through to take the firstborn son out of every household in Egypt, he will pass over your household. So, that's what the people of God do. They put, they took the blood of the lamb, they put it on the doorposts, and the Lord comes through, and he takes the firstborn son out of every household in Egypt, and he spares the Israelites. And this moment is the biggest moment in the history of Israel. I mean, that's why in Exodus 12, as Moses is explaining this, he's saying, you're going to remember this time. This is going to be in the first month of your calendars.
This is kind of like a little bit of the festival they do that celebrates the ushering in of a new year. I mean, this is at the forefront of your calendars because it's the biggest moment in your history. That God claimed you as a covenant people. He redeemed you from slavery. He redeemed you and brought you into the promised land. That is why in Exodus 12, 14, it says, this day shall be a memorial day.
And that memorial word is key. We'll come back to that. And you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever. You shall keep it as a feast. And from this moment, even into today, every year around this time, there is a feast that happens. It's called the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
It is the celebration of Passover. And every time around this, every year around this time of year, Jews get together and they celebrate Passover and what is traditionally called a Seder meal. Now, I didn't know what a Seder meal was because I grew up in Lexington. And it was 10 years ago. I mean, it's changed a little bit, but there's just not a lot of Jewish people in Lexington. It's just the reality.
I'd never met a Jewish person until I got to college. And when I got to college and I studied abroad, I actually had to leave PC to meet a Jewish person. When I studied abroad in our study abroad program, I finally met these people from L.A. and New York and there was Jewish students. And around this time, they got together and they did a Passover meal. They did a Seder meal where they would eat specific foods and they would say specific prayers and have readings and tell stories. And they do this every single year.
One of the traditional liturgies that's read during the Seder meal is called the Halakma Anya, which is Aramaic for the bread of affliction. And this is what this reading says. It says, This is the bread of affliction, the poor bread, which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are in want share the hope of Passover. As we celebrate here, we join with our people everywhere.
This year we celebrate here, next year in the land of Israel. Now we are still in bonds. Next year we may all be free. Now we can tell from the back end of that that this is probably written around 6th century B.C. because it's got exile language. They want to go back to the land. And that means that for the years, the centuries that would follow, the Jewish people would read liturgies like this.
They would say prayers together, preparing themselves for Passover. All of that history, all of it is packed into right here in Luke 22. When Jesus says, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. All of that history is in mind. I mean, the disciples, when they hear that, would be ready, would be prepared to read readings like this, to say prayers together, to prepare for the Passover. But Jesus starts to make this Passover look differently.
And one of the first things he does in making it look differently is he chooses to celebrate it on the wrong day. He chooses to celebrate it on a Thursday. And historians and theologians look back and say it would not have happened on a Thursday, it would have happened later. So he's already chosen to celebrate the Passover early. And then he really starts to change the details. He eventually even makes it about himself.
And all these little moves have got to have the disciples clued in a little bit to what's going on. Like what, wondering what Jesus is actually doing here. I mean, if you at Thanksgiving had the details switched up on you, and Thanksgiving is probably the closest thing we have to Passover. It's the meal that we celebrate when our ancestors came over and we were formed as a people. It's kind of a little bit similar. And every year we eat food and we watch football and it's awesome.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. But if most of us have a general understanding of how it goes and if someone starts messing with the details of it, like all of a sudden if you've got like a table that everyone sits at and everyone sits in the same spot every year and all of a sudden your mother comes and says, actually, you know, your brother's going to be in the back this year. You're going to start to wonder, what has he done? Right? Maybe, maybe you have the same family members that come every year and then all of a sudden your cousins and your aunt and uncle don't show up. And you talk to your dad and you're like, what's going on?
And it's like, they're not invited. And it's like, oh, did I miss something? Did something happen? Maybe you've shown up to Thanksgiving before and you saw the saddest looking turkey in the world and you said, honey, what is this? Well, actually, this is a tofurkey because your sister is now a vegan and you immediately curse her existence for ruining Thanksgiving. If someone starts to mess with the details, you're going to start to wonder why and the disciples at this point are starting to wonder why.
I mean, Jesus comes all the way and says he co-ops the holiday and makes it about himself. I mean, you try doing that. Co-op Christmas and see how that goes. This year at Christmas, you will give gifts, electronic devices, and money. You can lay them on my feet and we will celebrate me. Like that, that doesn't go well.
So Jesus, he starts to mess with the details here and the disciples really start to wonder what is he doing? What Jesus is doing here is he's taking their memorial meal, the way that they celebrate their redemption and he's using it as the basis for his memorial meal which will be the Lord's Supper and how he will be remembered. And he chooses Thursday to celebrate it because on Friday he will become the Passover lamb. Jesus co-ops Passover because from this point on he's saying from now on my blood is going to cover you. Like the eternal power of death, it will pass over. I will be the one that redeems you.
It will be his blood that sets the captives, sets the slaves to this world free. And just as the Jews look back to this moment in history, Jesus is fulfilling the moment of Passover. He's fulfilling Exodus and we get to look back to the cross. We get to look back to the cross as our history of salvation. So it is one for us as we practice the Lord's Supper.
It is a Passover remembrance for us too. So when we approach the table, we get to look back at the cross. And this is how this plays out. Maybe you come in on a Sunday and you are feeling the guilt of sin in an unhealthy way that's not leading to repentance and you are starting to question your identity in Christ.