The Lord's Last Supper
Pastor Marty Tuesday, November 24, 2020 at 9:51AM Songs in our song service:
- I Will Sing by Albrecht
- Sing to the King by Foote
- Our God is Lifted Up by Smith
- Thank You Lord by Moen
- Let the Worshippers Arise by Farren
- My Country Tis of Thee by Smith
- Let There Be Glory & Honor & Praises by Greenelsh
Mark 14:22-26. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on November 22, 2020.
Today, we join Jesus and his disciples on the evening of his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. Jesus knows that this will be their last meal together, and uses it to be a special time of communion before he becomes the Passover Lamb for the whole world.
Let’s look at it together.
Jesus is the Bread of Life
The context of this passage makes it fairly clear that this is a Passover meal. The Passover meal in the Exodus emphasizes the lamb, but there were other kinds of food that would be present. One of these is bread. In John 16:33, Jesus says, “the Bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Then, in verse 48 of that same chapter, he says, “I am the Bread of Life.”
Bread has great significance within the Bible because it represents sustenance, that which keeps a person alive. When you are hungry and starving, natural bread is extremely important because it can save your natural life. Israel faced just such a situation when they went into the desert following Moses, who was following God’s instructions. They quickly ate the bread that they had brought with them into the desert. God supernaturally provided bread that would sustain them in the natural. However, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that they had a need that was greater than natural sustenance. They needed something that could give them spiritual life and sustain their faith during the wilderness march and beyond.
Jesus tells his disciples that the bread in the meal that they were eating represented his body. Not just the body, but also what he was doing and going to do with it in the near future. Jesus would use his body to produce eternal life for those who put their faith in him.
This is important because the items of the Passover meal would be explained in relation to the Passover and the Exodus from Egypt. However, Jesus is giving a new, or contemporary, explanation. We might better call it a parallel, yet higher, explanation. His explanation gives the old explanation a greater meaning because of its connection to the greater Passover, and the greater Exodus. Jesus is the Passover Lamb that had to be slain in order to be protected from the Death Angel. Jesus is also the unleavened bread that they carried with them and lived upon in the desert. In the Exodus, the bread was unleavened because there was no time to put yeast in it and let it rise. However, calling Jesus unleavened bread is a reference to the lack of sin. Just as yeast puffs up, so sin puffs up a man to make him what he is not meant to be. This is fine when eating food, but not when living life. Jesus is without sin and we are to feed upon him. Yet, we also purge all yeast or sin from our lives as we follow him. The temptation for believers is to feed upon the leavened bread of this world that is full of sin and feels like it gives life, but in the end, it delivers death.
The bread that Israel ate in Egypt is referred to as the bread of affliction. This phrase is used throughout the Old Testament. The bread in the Passover meal is a reminder of the bread of affliction they ate as slaves in Egypt. In Christ, the same bread that the world despises becomes the bread of life. On the same night that they were delivered, the bread they would eat on the road would represent the life that they were walking towards. Isaiah says in chapter 63 verse 9, “In all their afflictions He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them; in His love and in His pity, He redeemed them; and He bore them and carried them all the days of old.” Wow, what an explanation of what God was doing when He brought Israel out of Egypt.
In Jesus, God takes on a body not just to join us in our affliction, but that we may feed upon His affliction. My affliction by itself cannot produce life, but His can. Even greater, when I have Jesus as my Savior, my affliction now has meaning and purpose because He gives me eternal life, and I am joining, identifying, with him in his affliction, just as he did ours. This communion of suffering becomes Life because the Lord of Life has joined us in it and leads us through it.
Notice that Jesus offers the bread to them. They had to take what the Lord was offering them. Though it was natural bread, he is telling them that they are taking hold of something that represents him. Now, Jesus is an interesting character. There are things about him that even the world admires and gives up lip service. However, they want to pick and choose what part of Jesus to consume. This will not work. You must take Jesus as he presents himself completely, not partially. Yes, he is the bread of affliction in one sense, but that affliction will be filled with life because of him. No matter what I may have to face in the future, though the way be blessed with freedom, or it becomes a valley of the shadow of death, I must take what the Lord is offering me.
More importantly, we must eat it. Jesus tells them to take the bread and then consume it. Feeding upon the body and work of Jesus is a spiritual thing in which we draw sustenance in our faith journey from the past, present, and future work of our Lord. He has joined us in our affliction; he has won us the victory with His affliction, and now we have eternal life with him, a portion in the eternal kingdom that will one day be realized upon this earth, and beyond.
The elite of this world are talking about taking advantage of Covid-19 in order to create a Great Reset of how the world is ran. However, they willfully ignore that God has declared a Great Reversal of His own. The kingdoms of this world will soon be taken from the great ones of this world, and will be given to Jesus and those who have fed upon him. This becomes our bread in this dark world. It is a bread that produces light within us to shine out into that darkness. We also feed upon the words of wisdom and life that are written down for us that they may shine light upon our path through this world.
His blood cut a new covenant with God the Father
Jesus also took the cup of wine and gave a different meaning to it. Like Moses led Israel into the desert and cut a covenant with God at Mt. Sinai, so too, Jesus came into our desert of a world and cut a new covenant with God at the hill called Golgotha. This is the new covenant that God promised Israel, especially through the prophet Jeremiah (31:31).
Just as with the bread, they all drank from the cup that Jesus gave to them. This too is a phrase that is loaded with meaning in the Bible. Jesus referred to the events of his beatings, humiliation, and crucifixion as a cup of suffering. Drinking from his cup would allow them to show that they would participate in the new covenant, but also in the suffering that lay ahead. In Exodus, the blood of the lamb had to be wiped on the doorposts of their house, signifying a household that had faithfully performed the command of the Lord. Similarly, we must apply the blood of Jesus to our own hearts. We are those who have heard the Father’s command to receive his son as our savior and lord. We not only see his death as paying the price for our sins, and bringing us into the family of God, but we also see it as an invitation to join him in his suffering. We join him in the things that we are to face ahead, though that be times of ease or times of difficulty. I do not believe that there are many times of ease left in this old world.
There is an interesting contrast in this. The disciples of Jesus drink of the cup of his blood representing his affliction and his agony, yet also his victory. However, in Revelation 17, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes holds a cup as well.
1 “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication… 6 I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.”
This is a spiritual prostitute that has led the world into a spiritual adultery against the Lord of heaven. Notice that her cup also has blood in it, but it is not her blood. It is the blood of the saints. Yes, the kings of the earth are drunk on this cup of the blood of the saints, but so are the inhabitants of the earth. We are headed into a time when the world as a whole, not just pockets here and there, will require mankind to enter into a “new global covenant,” but not God’s new covenant. This is a covenant with death and will feed upon the persecution and death of the true saints of God. This cup is already here in some regards. The world is beginning to get drunk on the idea of removing the restraining influence of God’s people, who trust in His word over the top of the word of men. What cup are you drinking from?
Jesus then states that he will not drink of this again until he does so with his followers in the Kingdom of God. This is often called the Last Supper, but we should recognize that it is only his last supper in a mortal body. At his resurrection, Jesus took on an immortal body. In such, he will one day gather his people together for another great supper spoken of by the Apostle John in Revelation 19. It is the Marriage Supper of the Lamb of God. The picture is of Jesus fasting until he can drink and eat with us on that day. Many believe that this marriage supper will take place in heaven before the return of Christ because it is mentioned immediately preceding the Second Coming. Regardless of how and where it exactly takes place, what a day that will be! The cup of suffering will have been drained to the dregs, and the world will enter into a time of righteousness and peace of which it has never known. Amen. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.
We rejoice in the salvation of our Lord
Of course, there is irony in the fact that they sung a hymn before they left to the Mt. of Olives, in particular the Garden of Gethsemane. In Washington State, we are currently in a 4-week decree of Gov. Jay Inslee that Christians in Church must not sing during worship in song. The singing of the saints has always bothered Satan, not to infer that the governor is Satan. He is following the spirit of this world, that spirit that hates believers. Like the Grinch hearing the singing of the Who village, so the faith of God’s people in the face of his undeniable logic is maddening to the devil. That said, many times Christians have found themselves in tight spots with the world clamping down on its freedoms. Yet, no government can control your heart and your mind unless you let them.
In Ephesians, the Apostle Paul told them,
“17 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of God.”
Today, we speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, but I pray that as you go home, the Lord will put a song in your heart, a song of joy, a song of deliverance.
May our songs spiritually prepare us for the challenges ahead. These are not about great musicians and performers. Rather, they are about the cry of the heart in the midst of the furnace, “Make me like Jesus! Make me like you, Lord!”