“The First Supper”
Mark 14:12-25
Dr.
We are called “evangelicals.”
The word is from the Greek word “euangelion” meaning “good news” or “gospel.”
We are people of good news.
This past Thursday, our children’s pastor, Than Baylor, reminded all of us on staff of this simple outline of human history:
Creation
Fall
Redemption
Glory
It begins with God’s creation of us and all else that exists apart from himself, who has always existed.
The first humans, Adam and Eve, lived in a paradise of plenty and in fellowship with God himself.
The biblical record however clearly points out that this relationship was short-lived because in the self-centeredness of pride Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God.
The result was a fall from the privileged position in which they had been living into one of condemnation, loss of relationship with God and distorted relationships with each other.
In Romans 5 God makes it equally clear that because of the solidarity of the human race, we all sinned in Adam and “fell” as did Adam and suffer the same consequences.
The
Bible says in Romans 3:10-12 “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is
no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
All have turned
away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not
even one."
It
also says in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 “God will punish those who do not know God
and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with
everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord.
Or as Paul reminded the Romans (
That is bad news but it gets worse.
Eternal
separation from God is our future and there is nothing WE can do
about it.
Galatians
Or as we are told in Ephesians 2:1 “As for you, you were dead in your
transgressions and sins.”
What started out as so beautiful quickly
became very ugly.
I realize that in an affluent culture, in
relatively stable homes, and in healthy bodies, it is very easy, especially for
the young, to assume that all is well.
We certainly applaud the
optimism with which youth faces the future.
But at the same
time we know that optimism is unfounded outside of a relationship with God.
Because without God, sooner or later, everything dies!
Can man live without God? Yes, but not very well and not very long!
I have often thought and said that if God
doesn’t exist (as the atheist believes) or even if he’s unknowable (as the
agnostic believes), then life is pointless at best or a cruel joke at worst.
Samuel Beckett wrote a 35 second stage-play entitled “Breath” that depicted
his understanding of life.
There
were no actors on stage, only rubbish.
The play
consisted of a recording of a brief cry, followed by an amplified recording of
somebody slowly inhaling and exhaling accompanied by an increase and decrease
in the light on stage.
There is
then a second cry, and the plays ends.
That’s the
philosophy of nihilism; the belief that existence is senseless and useless.
That seems to me to be only
logical alternative to belief in a personal God who somehow reaches into our
world to rescue us from ourselves.
But a personal God does exist and reach into
our world he does!
That’s the third scene in human history –
redemption.
This is God’s gracious
intervention in our lives.
This is God moving in to stop us
from reaping the consequences of our choices and to give us life again.
Or as Jesus put
it in John 17:3 “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
It is this redeeming act of God that forms the basis for the glory, the eternal life with God that is ours in Christ in the future.
That’s the fourth scene in human history – Glory.
This is forever with God and his people on the new earth that God creates after Jesus comes again.
But it is mostly the third scene; the redemption of humanity, the saving of us, that the Bible is all about.
Most of what we call the Old
Testament is pointing forward to a time in history when, in a decisive and
momentous act, God would restore us
humans to the place of relationship with Him that he created us to enjoy.
And most of the New Testament is
a description of that momentous act and how it applies to us.
The NT books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
are called the Gospels.
They are four accounts of the
life of Jesus, which spell out the gospel, the good news, the evangel.
It is noteworthy that the final week of
Jesus’ life takes up a disproportionate amount of those accounts.
Everything in the OT and
everything in Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life are leading up to this week and
most specifically to three days – the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus.
When we come to chapter 14 of the Gospel of
Mark we have entered those last three days.
Because he is God, Jesus knew well the full
significance of what was about to happen.
And in that knowledge he
instituted a rite, a formal act, which the Bible calls The Lord’s Supper.
And in that rite, he pulls
together all the history of humanity that preceded this time and connects it to
what he is about to do.
In him and what he will do is the culmination of human history.
Everything before
leads up to him and everything since flows out of him.
The Lord’s Supper then becomes the Gospel;
it is the good news expressed in physical, tangible form.
1 Corinthians
It is no wonder then Jesus said to his
disciples in Luke 22:15 “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”
Jesus
was excited about this Passover meal because it was very special – the time had
now come for the fulfillment of all that 1500 years of Passover celebrations
represented.
The Lord’s Supper fulfills what the Passover meals had long represented.
Because the death of the Lamb of God fulfilled what the sacrificial lambs at the Passover represented.
Please stand in honor of God’s word as I
read Mark 14:12-26
“On the first day
of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the
Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, "Where do you want us to go and
make preparations for you to eat the Passover?"
MK 14:13 So he sent two of his disciples, telling
them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.
Follow him. 14 Say to the owner
of the house he enters, `The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may
eat the Passover with my disciples?' 15 He will show you a large upper room,
furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there."
MK 14:16 The disciples left, went into the city and
found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.
MK 14:17 When evening came, Jesus arrived with the
Twelve. 18 While they were
reclining at the table eating, he said, "I tell you the truth, one of you
will betray me--one who is eating with me."
MK 14:19 They were saddened, and one by one they
said to him, "Surely not I?"
MK 14:20 "It is one of the Twelve," he
replied, "one who dips bread into the bowl with me. 21 The Son of Man
will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the
Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born."
MK 14:22 While they were eating, Jesus took bread,
gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take it;
this is my body."
MK 14:23 Then he took the cup, gave thanks and
offered it to them, and they all drank from it.
MK 14:24 "This is my blood of the covenant,
which is poured out for many," he said to them. 25 "I tell you
the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when
I drink it anew in the kingdom of God."
MK 14:26 When they had sung a hymn, they went out to
the Mount of Olives.
Many of you know that the Feast of
Unleavened Bread was the longer holiday period in Jewish society that included
the shorter Passover celebration.
But Passover was
the main event.
And you know that
the Passover celebration referred back to that first Passover when the angel of
death passed over the Israelite homes, sparing the firstborn in those
homes, as it killed the firstborn in the Egyptian homes, setting the
stage for Israel to escape from 400 years of Egyptian slavery.
God redeemed his people from slavery and led
them to the land he had promised them hundreds of years earlier.
Passover marked
their salvation.
Passover marked
their new beginning as the people of God.
Who they were and what their
future would be flowed out of that event.
And at the heart of the event was the
sacrifice of a lamb.
Each Israelite family was to
take a perfect lamb and to slay it, sacrificing it in the place of their own
firstborn sons, and they were to put the blood of that sacrificial lamb on the
doors of their homes.
When the angel of
death entered Egypt it would pass over those homes.
The blood of the lamb would save them.
As I said, for 1500 years Jewish people had
been observing this ritual of Passover.
Three gospel writers, Matthew,
Mark and Luke, make a direct connection between that Passover and the Lord’s
Supper.
Jesus is excited to radically alter his
disciples understanding of Passover by pointing them to the fulfillment of Passover.
And that fulfillment was what he
would do in the next 36 hours covering parts of three days.
But before Mark gets to the fulfillment of
the Passover celebration in the Lord’s Supper he wants us to note something
else that is very important.
He takes the time to show us that Jesus is
in complete control of the people and events surrounding him.
Knowing that Jesus died, itwould be easy to
think of Jesus as a victim of the powerful Jewish and Roman officials of his
day.
Many people, even today, consider
Jesus to have been in the wrong place and the wrong time.
And thinking that way they see
in his death little more than a sad story of martyrdom.
But Mark demonstrates that Jesus controlled
every thing about what was happening.
He had apparently contacted both
a guesthouse owner and another man and set up the codes that would be used to
get his advance team to the right house to prepare for the Passover
celebration.
And sure enough, when the two disciples go
into the city they see a man carrying a water jug.
Only women
carried such jugs in that day, so he was obvious.
Not only that, when they used
the code words with the homeowner, he immediately let them in to prepare.
Then when they are eating, Jesus
demonstrates that he knows exactly what will happen.
He predicts that one of the
disciples will betray him.
The disciples have no idea of who it is and
each is more worried whether it is him, than that Jesus will be betrayed.
But again Jesus
demonstrates complete planning and control even in this when he says, Mark 14:21 “The
Son of Man will go just as it is written about him.”
Might Jesus have
had in mind Psalm 41:9
“Even my close
friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against
me.”
What is very
evident is that Jesus was moving deliberately toward the event that brought him
to earth.
·
He held the authorities at bay in order to be in
just the right place at the right time.
·
He refused to let the crowds or his disciples rush
him into the wrong objective or the wrong timing.
·
He planned to be in Jerusalem at Passover and he
planned to be the new Passover Lamb when he died on the cross.
And in that plan
and timing he instituted the Lord’s Supper.
Mark 14:22-25
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave
it to his disciples, saying, "Take it; this is my body."
MK 14:23 Then he took the cup, gave thanks and
offered it to them, and they all drank from it.
MK 14:24 "This is my blood of the covenant,
which is poured out for many," he said to them. 25 "I tell you
the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when
I drink it anew in the kingdom of God."
In Jesus’ day the Passover celebration was
observed in each home in the following way:
After sundown the
family would gather.
1.
The father would pronounce a blessing.
2.
The first cup of wine would be served.
3.
The food would be brought in but not yet eaten.
4.
The son would ask why this night is special.
5.
The father would recall the biblical account of the
Passover redemption in Egypt.
6.
Together the family would sing what is called the
first part of the Hallel which is part of Psalm 113-115
7.
Then the second cup of wine would be served.
8.
Following that, the father would pronounce a
blessing on the bread, which he then broke and distributed to everyone.
9.
Then the meal of the sacrificed lamb was eaten.
10.
After the meal the father would bless the third cup
of wine with a prayer of thanksgiving.
11.
Then the family would sing the second part of the
Hallel from Psalm 116-118
12. Finally a fourth cup of wine
would be served. (See notes in William Lane, Mark, 501-2)
Best I can determine, it is points 8-11 that
Mark and the other gospel writers tell about.
It is time in the meal of the
breaking of bread and then after the meal the time of the third cup that Jesus
uses to establish the Lord’s Supper.
And while the early Christian church
continued to have a meal at the time of the Lord’s Supper, the ritual itself
had been simplified to the breaking of bread and the passing of the cup as
Jesus did.
Now with all of that said, what does it mean
to you?
From our
historical perspective it is no wonder Jesus was eager to do this.
He knew how powerful and
beneficial this ritual can be in our lives.
Mark 14:22 “Jesus
took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying,
"Take it; this is my body."
Jesus had often declared himself to be the
bread of life.
Just as bread is
necessary for physical life, so he, Jesus, is necessary for spiritual life. John
6:35 “Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry…”
As it is stated in 1 John 5:12 “He who has the Son
has life; he who does not have the Son of God does
not have life.
When
we eat this bread we take it into our bodies, symbolic of receiving Jesus into
our lives.
It is not that we repeatedly become God’s
children or that we are saved over and over again when we participate in the
Lord’s Supper.
It is that the coming of Jesus into our lives
is dramatically and repeatedly demonstrated.
And that very demonstration confirms over and over again to
us that Jesus has become spiritual bread to us – Jesus in us is
life.
When I eat that bread it symbolizes the very receiving of
Jesus that has saved my life.
Then
after the meal, Mark 14:23-24 “(Jesus) took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to
them, and they all drank from it. ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is
poured out for many,’ he said to them.”
Just as he said the bread was his body, so here he says the
cup, meaning the wine in it, is his blood.
I’ll
come back to that in a minute, but notice he adds, “This is my blood of
the covenant which is poured out for many.”
Here Jesus directly connects his death to the new
covenant relationship with God that God is making with his people.
The Old Covenant, the old formal relationship, which we saw
not too long ago in our study of Exodus 24, was made right after the Israelite
exodus from Egypt, and was also made with blood – the blood of animals.
As I pointed out to you recently in a study of Hebrews 9,
just as the Old Covenant was ratified by the bloody sacrifice of animals, so
God the Son is the sacrifice that ratifies the new covenant.
Everyone knew that the blood of bulls and goats couldn’t
take away sin.
But Christ Jesus came as the perfect sacrifice for sins and
offered himself for us so that we could have a new relationship with God.
Or to
go back to the Passover celebration, Jesus became the final and perfect
Passover Lamb to provide for the redemption of his people.
His blood, meaning his death, was necessary to satisfy Divine justice against our sin and sinfulness - for the wages of sin is death.
But, 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made Christ who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Jesus we might become the righteousness of
God.”
The death of Jesus makes possible a wholly different
relationship with a holy God – we can belong to him forever.
Now back to the bread and the wine.
They symbolize the body and blood of Jesus.
But please understand that a symbol is exact and a symbol has power.
The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. reminds us of the war and the stark facts about it.
But the shape of it, as if gouging out the earth as the war did not only physically in Vietnam but also psychologically in our national conscience, along with the thousands of names engraved in black, bleak, sameness, causes us to experience it in some measure.
That Memorial is a powerful symbol.
Likewise the Lord’s Supper with its bread and cup, when
accompanied by a reminder of the events they represent, not only reminds us but
also put us in that place – we re-live the experience. (Vander Zee, Christ, Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, 32)
The old spiritual sang, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”
The Bible answers that: Romans 6:3-4 “D o you not know
that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into
His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death,
in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
So Jesus’ story is our story as we re-live it again and again in the Lord’s Supper.
When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are acting out the gospel message again.
Augustine referred to the Lord’s Supper as “The
visible word of God.”
Leonard
Vander Zee has written, “As humbling as it may be, we need more than talk, more
than words on a page; we need a touch, a smell, a taste – just as lovers need
more than the words ‘I love you’ but also a kiss or an embrace. But the
sacrament is more than a medium of communication; it is a medium of action,
God’s action.” (Vander
Zee, 192)
God does something in us as we in faith participate in the Lord’s Supper.
Another man wrote of the effects of kissing his young daughter.
“I kiss my daughter in order to love her as
well as because I love her.” (emphasis added)
Vander
Zee adds, “Love requires physical expression. But does a kiss
create love. Not exactly, but it is expected that the kisses will cause his
love for his daughter to grow. The physical display of affection is the means
and instrument by which love grows and increases. The kiss is a ‘sacrament,’ an
outward and visible sign by which love is given the expression it craves and is
given growth and strengthening in itself.” (In Vander Zee, 67)
When we come to Jesus’ words, in the Lord’s Supper, about the bread
being his body and the drink being his blood, we know that he is not
saying that he is physically present in the bread and drink or
that he physically enters us in the bread and drink.
He is saying that he is spiritually present and he comes
to us.
The ingesting of the bread and drink
corresponds to the spiritual indwelling of Christ in us.
He is part of our
very spiritual being, as food becomes part of our physical being.
This is a mystery to be sure but no less declared by God’s word.
When we eat the
bread and drink the wine, Jesus says it is, in one way, like eating his flesh
and drinking his blood.
In other words, by faith we are taking him in, trusting him,
reaffirming our faith, declaring anew our belief and trust in him.
And in that
he ministers his grace to us to believe.
There is a
mysterious synergy in this that we cannot fully explain.
·
He offers us himself in the bread and cup.
·
We obey and eat and drink, believing him.
·
He ministers his grace to us to trust him more
fully.
By faith and the work of the Holy Spirit, we become recipients of the grace behind the symbol as surely as we are recipients of the physical bread and cup.
So we
are not just remembering an historical fact.
We are entering into that history again.
As I
said before, his story is our story.
I invite you to receive him today.
If,
before today, you have not received him by trusting him as your
saving-Lord then we invite you to receive him, trust him today,
even as you receive the bread and wine.
If you
are already trusting Jesus, then receive his strengthening grace
today as you re-live his story, your story.
Each time you participate in the Lord’s Supper, remember this:
This is your story – birth, fall, redemption and glory – in Christ.
To be sure there
will be many distractions, disappointments, discouragements and even distress
between now and the time we see Jesus again, but the Bible says in 1
Corinthians 2:9
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for
those who love him" --
Until we see him
face to face, there could be no sweeter, more intimate fellowship with Jesus
than what he offers us in the bread and cup.
He comes to us - he comes into us to commune with us, reassure us, strengthen us.
Receive him!
Other notes
and resources begin on p 15
Other notes:
As to
whether the meal with Jesus’ disciples was the actual Passover meal (as in the
Synoptic Gospels) or another meal just prior to
Passover (as John seems to note) we cannot be absolutely certain but
Mark clearly calls it the Passover meal.
(See R.T. France
The Gospel of Mark, 559ff for good review of the issues. Most
commentaries deal with this issue).
The Passover not
only commemorated the past event of the Exodus but looked forward to the
Messiah’s coming.
“In that night they were redeemed and in that night they will be
redeemed in the future.” (Attributed
to Rabbi Jehoshua b. Hananya c. A.D. 90 footnote in William Lane, Mark,
501).
After the meal the third cup is presented with the following words:
“May the all-merciful One make us worthy of the days of the Messiah and of the life of the world to come. He brings the salvation of his king. He shows covenant-faithfulness to his Anointed, to David and to his seed forever. He makes peace in his heavenly places. May he secure peace for us and for all Israel. And say you, Amen.”
Should Christians celebrate Passover?
Some churches celebrate a seder (Jewish meal commemorating the Passover of Exodus) on Thursday evening of Holy Week.
While nothing prohibits a seder, it is clear from the NT that the Lord’s Supper supercedes Passover or at least reinterprets it.
The Passover celebration passes over into the Lord’s Supper celebration.
The type, the shadow passes over into the real and substantial.
Just as a fruit blossom on a tree passes over into the fruit that it
represented. (See The Suffering Savior, Krummacher, 44)
Passover celebrates a different event, namely the exodus from Egypt.
The Lord’s Supper celebrates the cross.
Passover celebrates the old covenant.
The Lord’s Supper celebrates the new covenant.
Passover, just like the other sacrifices of the OT, looks forward to the cross.
The Lord’s Supper is the fulfillment of that and looks back on that event and forward to the end of the age.
Just as the sacrifice of Jesus completes, fulfills, the animal sacrifices of the OT, so the Lord’s Supper completes, fulfills, the Passover.
I’m not terribly sympathetic to Christians (Gentile or Jewish) celebrating Passover since it has been fulfilled in Christ.
Leviticus 23:4
“The LORD's Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first
month.
Exodus 12:3-8
“Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each
man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household… 5 The animals you
choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the
sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the
people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to
take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of
the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted
over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.”
The meal consisted
of:
Unleavened bread (“bread of affliction” Deut 16:3)
Wine
Bitter herbs
Sauce of dried fruit, wine and spices
Roasted Passover lamb (1
Corinthians 5:7 “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”)
“Remembering
is not to entertain a pallid idea of a past event in one’s mind, but to make
the event present again so that it controls the will and becomes potent in our
lives for good or ill.” (Hunter
in David Garland, The NIV Application Commentary, Mark, 534)
When we speak to each other there not only words but also “body language.”
The sacraments are God’s ‘body language’ to us. (Vander Zee, Christ,
baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, 60-61)
“Eating
Jesus’ body and drinking his blood is the most vivid way imaginable of being
both participants and beneficiaries of his death on the cross and the
resurrection by which it won victory over sin and death.” (Vander Zee, 153)
“Worthy receivers,
outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in its sacrament, do then also,
inwardly by faith, really and indeed… spiritually receive and feed upon Christ
crucified, and all the benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being
then…really and spiritually present to the faith of believers in that
ordinance, as the elements are to their outward senses.” (Westminster
Confession 29.7)
“We have already seen that Jesus Christ is the only food by which our souls are nourished; but as it is distributed to us by the word of the Lord, which he has appointed an instrument for that purpose, that word is also called bread and water. Now what is said of the word applies as well to the sacrament of the Supper, by means of which the Lord leads us to communion with Jesus Christ. For seeing we are so weak that we cannot receive him with true heartfelt trust, when he is presented to us by simple doctrine and preaching, the Father of mercy, (condescending) to our infirmity, has been pleased to add to his word a visible sign, by which he might represent the substance of his promises, to confirm and fortify us by delivering us from all doubt and uncertainty. Since, then, there is something so mysterious and incomprehensible in saying that we have communion with the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, and we on our part are so rude and gross that we cannot understand the least things of God, it was of importance that we should be given to understand it as far as our capacity could admit.” John Calvin in “Short Treatise on the Supper of Our Lord”
Good resources:
Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Leonard Vander Zee
I Corinthians, Craig
Blomberg
The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Anthony Thistleton
Sunday Dinner , William Willimon
The Lord’s Supper , Robert Letham
John, Donald Carson (re. John 6)
“Westminster Confession of Faith”
“Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper,” John Calvin