If you would open your Bibles
to Luke, chapter 22. Luke, chapter 22. Before I read, we'll pray. God our Father, we thank you
for this opportunity to come together in the name of the Lord
Jesus to sing your praises, to seek your face. We pray that you'll come among
us and make yourself known to us, that you'll captivate our
minds and pull them away from whatever may be distracting them. We pray that the word will be
preached with power. with the demonstration of the
Spirit of God who is able to take the things of Christ and
reveal them to the hearts of God's people. We pray, Lord, that everyone
who is gathered here today will have a hearing ear. It is several times written in
your word, Lord, blessed are they who have ears to hear. We
pray that we all would, Lord. We're so dull in these matters. Sometimes, as we listen to the
gospel, it's though we're trying to listen to a conversation in
another room, and we can't quite make it out. Lord, speak clearly
and give us ears, spiritual ears, to fully understand this glorious
truth of Christ. We ask you, strengthen us, encourage
us. And Lord, you commanded the prophet,
comfort ye, comfort ye my people. And yet Lord, there is none who
can truly comfort us but you. Take the words of your book, preached, explained, And Lord,
make them a comfort to us. In the name of Christ we pray,
amen. All right, let's begin reading
at verse 14. When the hour came, Jesus and
his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, I
have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat
it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. After
taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, take this and divide
it among you. For I tell you, I will not drink
again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to
them saying, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance
of me. In the same way, after the supper,
he took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant in my
blood, which is poured out for you. But the hand of him is going
to betray me is with mine on the table. The son of man will
go as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him. They began to question among
themselves which of them it might be who would do this. Also a
dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered
to be the greatest. Now, we're going to observe the
Lord's table when I'm done preaching. Our Lord instituted the table,
instituted this ceremony right here. The very last time that
the Passover was celebrated by the Jews under the command of
God. Now they went on celebrating
it, but this is the last God-sanctioned Passover. Every Passover celebration
since that time has been a denial of the fulfillment of it in Jesus
Christ. But he established what is called,
we call it the Lord's Table, others call it communion, it's
sometimes called the Eucharist. Every Christian church has some
form of it. Some are very ornate. Some are
simple. Some are very strict about how
they believe it should be observed. I know one church that when they
would observe the Lord's table, they would go into their fellowship
hall and all the believers would sit at the table. And all those
who were not believers would stand around the wall and watch
if they chose to stay behind. And it's true that the Lord's
table is for believers. because it's a confession or
a profession of something. But here's something we know
about ceremonies, and this has always been true. Ceremonies
of the old covenant were the same. Any of the ceremonies that
God has ever told his people to observe, none of them ever
accomplish anything spiritual. That is, they do not make a change
in the person who performed them. Now we have only two ceremonies
that the church was called upon to repeat, to keep doing. The first one is baptism, and
we have what we believe to be a scriptural view of that ceremony.
Peter talks about baptism being the confession of a good conscience. Now, normally people say, oh,
he has a good conscience, and by what that means is he has
a very sensitive conscience. But what Peter meant when he
said a good conscience, and he's talking about a good conscience
before God, a good conscience is one on which there is no guilt. No guilt. Now, you and I know that every
one of us is guilty. I mean, if we were to look at
our lives, look at how we've lived, why, we've done enough
this morning to send us all to hell. We're guilty. Yet, the
believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has a good conscience in the
sight of God. He has no guilt in the sight
of God, and there's a reason for that. And that's what baptism
shows. That's why we don't sprinkle
babies, we don't pour water over people, we dunk them in water. Because the reason that we have
a good conscience before God is that Christ died, was buried,
and rose again. He died for our sins, put them
away. He died completely, perfectly,
fully, bearing within himself all that God meant when he told
Adam, in the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will
die. Everything that word meant, die then, that's what our Lord
endured. Everything that a just and holy
God would do against someone who is guilty of sin, he did
that to his son, the Lord Jesus. Now the scriptures say that the
sins of all of God's people were laid on the Lord Jesus Christ,
charged to him. And he bore those sins in the
presence of God and God did what God will do to anyone who comes
before him with sin on him. Now we couldn't see what God
did to him. We could see what the Romans did to him. We can
see what the Jews called for the Romans to do to him, and
that was awful enough, but there were things going on in his soul
that you and I have no understanding of. Imagine someone who had never
sinned. I mean, he's God in human flesh.
There was nothing about him that was sinful, and suddenly the
guilt of a multitude no man can number is laid on him. He stands as one, even though
he is God, he stands as one who is estranged from God. He says,
my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There may be times that you have
felt God forsook you. He never has. Our Lord Jesus Christ said emphatically,
I will never leave you or forsake you. Now we have a rule in English
grammar. You don't use double negatives
because if you use two negatives, it makes a positive. Well, John
who quoted our Lord there used three negatives because in the
Greek language, the more negatives you pile up, the more negative
it gets. I will not no ever never leave you is what he was saying.
Being as emphatically negative as you can about him leaving
or forsaking us because he was forsaken of God, we who are in
him are never forsaken by God under any circumstances. Now Christ died that death and
such was the glory of his person and the completeness of his suffering
that when he said, it is finished, all the sins that he bore were
gone. The Old Testament says things
like, cast into the sea. God says, they're cast behind
my back. We used to like to sing that chorus, under the blood
of Jesus. Someone once said, well, they only had atonement
in the Old Testament, because atonement means a covering. And
sins were only covered, they were put away in Christ. You
know, anything that's been covered might be uncovered. That depends
on what covered it. And you can't get through the
blood of Christ. If a sin's been covered by His blood, it's covered
forever. And so, according to what the
word baptism or baptized means, plus the way in which it demonstrates
why we have a good conscience. We immerse people in water and
bring them up. It's a picture of them dying
with Christ and being raised with Christ. And just as Christ was raised
from the dead, no longer bearing sin, all who are in him no longer
bear sin in the sight of God. Now, our sin will no doubt make
us grieve. And it ought to. Sin's an awful
thing. Particularly for those of us
who believe, because we're not just sinning against the God
who created us, we're sinning against the God who redeemed
us and who forgave us all our sins. But we never need fear
God. That's what the writer of Hebrews
means about perfect as pertaining to conscience. Our conscience
is clear in the sight of God, the judge, because all our sins
have already been paid for. Now, just as a child does not
need to be judicially afraid if he has disobeyed his parents. If he has good parents, they
may discipline him for his action, but they're never going to try
to exact a punishment, a penalty, as it were. They're not going
to try to get their pound of flesh because they're upset. A child who has sinned so long
as they try to, that sin against his parents, so long as he tries
to keep it a secret, it's going to bug him. He's going to feel
bad. But he never has to be afraid
of his parents. And in like manner, our continuing
sin should make us grieve, but it should never make us fear.
Remember, when the Lord Jesus Christ died for us, he already
knew everything we were gonna do. Like Donny Bell said, there
are some people who believe that when you, quote, get saved, you
know, God forgives all your past sins, but, you know, sins of
the future. Donny said, when Christ died
for me, all my sins were future. And he died for all of them. And so we have baptism, and then
we have this, the Lord's table. It's the only other ceremony. Now many churches have added
many more ceremonies. Why is that? They can be made
appealing to the flesh. And I've noticed, generally speaking,
the more ceremonies a church has, the more ornate those ceremonies
become. You can go in some of these churches
and they begin with a big processional down the aisle with people in
robes and somebody's carrying a stick with some kind of emblem
on top of it, you know, and they're kissing this cloth and doing
all that. Why? It's impressive. We're easily impressed. God is
not, but we are. Dazzling displays in the flesh. Know this. Salvation does not
come by anything you can see. It's impossible, it's a spiritual
thing. We keep this ceremony, we keep
this ceremony for one reason. Well, we can say two reasons,
the Lord told us to. But the reason he told us to
is that we would remember what he did for us. Now we hold, I
think, a pretty strong line on never preaching anything but
Christ and Him crucified. That is, everything we preach
is related to that. And I can't remember preaching
a message in which there was not some reference, some explanation
of what Christ did. Paul said, I determined to know
nothing among you other than Christ and Him crucified. But
we are frail, and if we have done that, if we've been faithful
in that regard, the only reason we can claim faithfulness on
it is because God's been faithful to keep us that way. And there
are other churches, and they're legitimate churches, by that
I mean that the people in them are believers, but they are not
so consistent in preaching Christ. You go one week, you might hear
a good gospel message. You go the next week, they're
going to tell you about how much money you ought to give. And
then the next week, they're going to tell you how to have a good
marriage. Some of them even get political, you know, and they'll
talk, they address the issues of abortion or homosexuality,
whatever is the sin du jour, you know. The Lord instituted this ceremony
so that even churches like that would have to come face to face
with the essential truth of Christianity, that Jesus Christ died, that
his body was broken and his blood shed for sinners. And I believe when it is celebrated
or observed with our hearts, I say it doesn't accomplish anything
spiritually, it has the ability to accomplish what a sermon can
if God's in it. Because it's a testimony to us
of what's been done for us. And any reminder we get of that
is good. Anytime we are forced to, I hate
to use the word forced, because really, we believe we delight
in this. Even though we get distracted,
we love, you know, tell me the old, old story. We, we love this
truth, but in our frailty, we're easily distracted. And so the
Lord set up a ceremony and said, well, you may get distracted,
but I'm going to get in your way. See, baptism only happens
to a person once. You might forget about things
later on. This is over and over and over
again. And it shows us the fact that
it is a ceremony. We don't just do it once. Here
we do it every month, thereabouts. Some churches do it every week.
The Lord didn't specify how often. But we continue doing it, and
this shows us one thing. We not only were made alive to
God through that work of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are nourished
and kept alive by that same death, burial, and resurrection. I didn't just need the blood
once. I need it over and over and over again. I don't just
need the body once. And in these symbols,
symbols of his blood, symbols of his body, It's interesting,
this was a meal. Now, it wasn't a big meal, the
Passover meal with the lamb and all of that. He just took some
elements of that Passover celebration and incorporated them into this
Lord's table. One of them was the unleavened
bread. And then they'd already had some
to drink, but after they were done with the supper, I mean,
they had fulfilled Passover obligations. That's when he took the cup and
said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. But he has used an aspect of
our natural lives to illustrate something very important in our
spiritual lives. And that is, we need continual
nourishment on the very same things that gave us life to begin
with. I mean, we eat every day. Why? Well, if you quit eating, you
eventually die. That doesn't mean if you quit
observing the Lord's table you would die, but if you quit feeding
on Christ, if you quit living upon what the blood and the wine
represent, You perish. Now, God never lets that happen
to one of his people. But we need Christ continually,
just like we need food continually for our bodies. And we don't
just need Christ, the nice guy that everybody likes. We don't
need Christ, the miracle worker, to keep us alive. We need Christ,
God's sacrificial Passover lamb. When Abraham and Isaac were going
up Mount, I believe it was Mount Moriah, because God had told
Abraham, sacrifice your son to me. And so Abraham did so, and
he did so in faith. When he left the men back at
the bottom of the mountain, he said, you all stay here. The
boy and I are going up and then we will return. By faith he knew that if it went
so far that Isaac actually got killed, Isaac can't stay dead.
And why is that? Because God had promised Abraham
an heir through Isaac and Isaac had no children. Scriptures teach
us that. That's exactly how Abraham was
thinking. But they're going up the hill.
And Abraham, we don't know how old really they were at this
point, but remember Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was
born. And Isaac was at least old enough
to carry enough wood to burn up a sacrifice, a sacrificial
animal. So we're not talking about a
five-year-old boy or anything like that. And they're going
up the hill, and Isaac's been taught well. And he says, Father,
you've got fire. Which meant he had a little tinderbox
with coals in it that he could use to start a fire. You've got
fire. And I've got some wood. So he knew what they were going
up to the top of the hill for. They were going up to worship
God by sacrifice. He says, so we've got the fire
and the wood. Where's the lamb for the burnt
offering? And Abraham said to Isaac, son,
the Lord will provide himself a lamb for the offering. This is him. That's why when
John the Baptist saw him, he said, behold, the lamb of God,
that one provided by God, behold, the lamb of God that takes away
the sin of the world. How many thousands, maybe millions
of lambs had been sacrificed in Israel in the 1500 years since
the establishment of the Old Covenant until the days of our
Lord? And yet not one sin was ever
removed by any of those sacrifices. But by one sacrifice, This Lamb of God made God's people
perfect in the sight of God, without guilt. God provided the
Lamb, God sacrificed the Lamb, and God accepted that sacrifice
in behalf of all for whom it was made. If Christ bore my sin, in the
presence of God, the judge, and was killed for it. I never will
be. Say, well, you gotta believe.
Well, it's true if you don't believe, you'll be lost forever. It'll also be proof Christ did
not bear your sin before the Father. Because God's just. He's
not gonna punish sins twice. He's not gonna punish sins in
Christ and then punish them in you later. Everybody for whom
Christ died, the Spirit of God, will come with unstoppable power
and give them spiritual life so that they will believe and
He'll sustain that life. But as the old hymn writer said,
this is my hope, this is my plea, that when Christ died, He died
for me. We don't just believe that Christ
died. We don't just believe historical facts. Christ died, was buried,
and rose again. We believe those facts, but that's not all there
is to it. We understand the significance of his death. Why did he die?
He died because he bore the sins of many in the presence of God,
and death is God's response to sin. Now our Lord amazes me in many
ways. And here's one of them. He knows what time it is. Now
the Passover was eaten. It would have been past six o'clock
in the evening. They started their new days at six o'clock in the evening. And he knew that
before six o'clock the next day, he would be dead. He knew what awaited him. He knew that in a few short hours,
they would arrest him. That they would beat him to a
pulp. that they would abuse him in every way they could think
of and then they would crucify him and stand there and watch
him hang there for six hours and mock him the whole time. He knew that during that time,
he would suffer the penalty of those sins and he would die. And before six o'clock the next
evening, they would lay his body in a little cave carved out as
a tomb and rolled a stone in front of it. Now, if you knew
that tomorrow you would be dead, would you be having a meal like
this with your friends? Would you say something like
this, verse 15, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover
with you before I suffer. I don't think I would have been
eager for this day. He was. Why would he be eager to eat
this Passover? Because he knew it was going
to be the last one. And that his people would move from the
types and shadows of the old covenant because the reality
of those types and shadows will have been fulfilled. He has desired, and the word
really means I've desired with great desire, to eat this Passover. Because he came here not only
in obedience to his father, he came here in an unexplainable
love for his people. Counting it joy to give himself
for them. Paul says in Ephesians 5.25,
showing us husbands, how we're supposed to treat our wives.
Husbands, love your wives. I do. All right. How much? Love your wives as Christ loved
the church and gave himself up for her. And while there was much sorrow
in his suffering and agony and all that, he came here glad to
do it. He's like a man out to rescue
his beloved, and he knows she's nearby. There's a fight ahead,
but I know I'm going to win. And I'm going to get her. She'll
be mine. Completely mine, redeemed, bought
out of a slave market. He said, I've eagerly desired
to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you,
I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom
of God. So what's he saying here? Before he eats any more bread, The Passover and what it symbolized
will have been fulfilled and the kingdom of God will have
come. People say, I can't wait for the kingdom of God to get
here. It's here. It's been here since Christ died
and rose again. So what is the kingdom of God?
It's a spiritual kingdom. It's a kingdom made up of all
of those who were chosen, redeemed, and called to our Lord Jesus
Christ. It's a mystery to the world,
and I understand it. It's such a mystery to the world
that many of the religious people of this world have seen those
words, kingdom of God, and they've come to think that that means
they have the right to rule other people in this world. No, it's
not that kind of kingdom. the various versions of the church
that have come and gone over time, some of them were just
plain vicious. Because they thought this kingdom was an earthly kingdom,
but the Lord Jesus said, my kingdom's not of this world. He said, if it were, my servants
would rise up and fight. So that shows us this. The business
of the church is not the business of this world. our spiritual kingdom, it's here. And all that time is doing is
gathering the citizens. In our adult Bible class and
in the passage that our brother read, it says, our citizenship
is in heaven. And it means, that word translated
is isn't the usual word for is, it's another word that means
something already possessed firmly. Every believer is right now a
citizen of heaven. And then after taking the cup,
he gave thanks and said, divided among you, for I tell you, I
will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom
of God comes. I never thought of this, but
remember when he said, I thirst, And they took
a sponge and put vinegar wine on it. In other words, nasty
cheap wine. And that's what they give them
some, you know, to help with the pain or whatever. And when
they touched it to his lips, he wouldn't drink it. Why? He said, I will not drink it
again until everything's fulfilled. And he didn't. And in the same way, oh wait,
verse 19, he took the bread, gave thanks. Now once again,
see the love of our Lord here. He's giving thanks for the breaking
of his body. He broke that bread and he said, that this is my body which is
broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. I can imagine enduring some suffering
for the sake of others. I really can't imagine being
thankful for the opportunity to do that. The Lord gave thanks. And then he said in the same
way, after the supper, he took the cup saying, this cup is the
new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you. Blood is the symbol of death.
You can't live without it. And that's why blood plays such
a prominent role in all that God has said and done in the
salvation of his people. But Christ, when he said blood,
essentially what he's saying is my life is poured out for
you. People argue whether it's supposed
to be grape juice, wine. You know in the scriptures it
never says what's in the cup. It always talks about the cup.
It never says what's in it. But we know this. No covenant was ever put in force
without blood. That old covenant given on Mount
Sinai, the Ten Commandments and all those temple regulations
and all that, when they put that in force, I mean, they sacrificed
so many animals and they put blood on the thumbs and the big
toes of the priests and they put blood on every article that
was to be used in the temple. Blood everywhere. Why? It was
by that means that something could be put into service to
God. You initiated that covenant with blood. And it's the same
with the new covenant of the gospel. It was put in place by
blood. But much better blood than what
was used to put the old covenant in place. This is the blood of
God's spotless Son. And he said it's a new covenant.
The old covenant, there's an annual reminder of sins. because
they had that annual liturgy of feasts and sacrifices. So
every year their sins brought up again and again, but Christ
died once and the new covenant was brought in and one of the
most blessed characteristics of that new covenant is our Lord
says, I will forgive their sin and will remember their transgressions
no more. Now we observe this table. But we're not sacrificing anything.
This is a symbolic remembrance of the sacrifice. And it's a
remembrance not to remind us of our sin, but to remind us
that our sins have been put away. See, the believer does not live
his life in fear of his sins falling upon him. He doesn't
walk Well, they say the straight and narrow, but they don't understand
what they're saying. The straight and narrow way is
the gospel way, and it's not talking about morality. But they
don't, believers don't obey because they're afraid that if they don't, they'll end up
in hell or they'll lose some kind of reward in heaven or something.
A believer lives his life in decency. because his sins have already
been put away. That motivates him. His debt
has been utterly forgiven, and he has been made free, and
he uses that freedom as a means to express his love
and his thanks to the God who not only made him, but redeemed
him. Well, he gave them this simple
ceremony to observe, to show forth his death, and to cause
us to remember him. And then he says this, The hand
of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table." That's kind of an unsettling
thought. We're going to celebrate the
table. Of those that participate, there
might be a betrayer. There might be somebody who's
professing Christ but really has no love for Christ, who sees
that Christianity is just a way to obtain other things. With, he said, the hand of my
betrayer is with mine on the table. The worst enemies of God
and his people have always been found. within the assemblies
of his people. But you know something? On the
one hand, that's kind of a warning. Sobers us up a little bit. But
it's also a great confidence in it. Judas was going to betray him,
but Judas was not going to overthrow the plan. He was part of it. He's going to betray the Lord
and he'll pay the price of that betrayal. But it was ordained before that
that's what he was going to do. And he was going to do it in
order that Christ would be turned over and crucified and sacrificed. It says the devil
had entered his heart and motivated him to do it. Every time the
devil does something against Christ, he finds out that he's
playing right into the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's causing
to happen exactly what the Lord ordained would happen. Judas
is a betrayer, but he doesn't upset any of God's plans. He's
part of it. Well, that started an argument
among them. I wonder who that's going to be. They started discussing
essentially who of us is the worst. And then verse 24, also a dispute
arose among them as to which of them was considered to be
the greatest. I'm glad that that got recorded
in there, aren't you? You recognize that pattern? Look at him. That's awful. Look at me. God's people. God bless them. They've had their sins forgiven,
they've been given grace and mercy unimaginable, and they're
still so full of pride. They try to line themselves up,
see who's best, see who's worst. I can tell you right now who's
worst in this church. All of us. Really. If you could look into
the hearts of each person here, The only reason you wouldn't
be utterly amazed at what you saw there is because you know
what's in your heart. But for all of Judas's intent
to betray him and derail him, and for all the frailties of
the 11 remaining faithful ones, nothing of the purpose of God
was the least bit hindered. I'm so thankful to God that this
salvation that he designed, I can't ruin things. As Brother
Bruce Crabtree said in one of his messages, it's unmessuppable. That's not a real word, but I
like it. God's salvation is unmessuppable. It cannot fail. And may God give
us eyes and hearts to see that. Lord, bless us now as we observe
the table and we pray that you'll seal the truth that it represents
to our heart. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Scott and Jacob, if you all come up and
help.