I already told those in the adult
Bible class that I've got a little something going on in my throat
or lungs or something. And it makes me burst out coughing
with no warning at all. So don't be surprised. But I'll
try to predict it. cover up this microphone when
I do so you don't get blasted out. If you'd open in your Bibles
to Exodus chapter 12, Exodus 12. Let's pray. Father, as we open your book and try
to understand the things that are in us, give us the grace
to see Christ, the grace to understand truly why you had these things
written down. And we pray this in the name
of Christ. Amen. Well, we'll start with verse
25, Exodus 12, 25. When you enter the land that
the Lord will give you as He promised, observe this ceremony,
and when your children ask you, what does this ceremony mean
to you? Then tell them it is the Passover
sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites
in Egypt, and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians. Now this is another message with
kids in mind. And I found that the adults never
mind if I do that. Maybe one of the reasons is that
I generally promise the kids I'll do everything I can to get
done in 30 minutes. So that's always a benefit and
I will. It's about 18 till now, so I'll
try to have this finished by 12 after. But I want to talk about the
Lord's Table. And you know, we need to teach
our children why we do the things we do. Why do we worship as we
worship? Why do we have this? Lord's Table. You young people have sat and
watched us do this. Many of you have watched it many,
many times. And you may have some understanding
of what this ceremony is or what it's supposed to mean. But I
want to make sure you understand it. And so if you'll give me
your attention for about as long as a typical
TV show, I'll explain to you what we're doing, why we're doing
it. Now, in order to understand the
Lord's Table, and we're going to observe the Lord's Table after
I'm done preaching. In order to understand the Lord's
Table, we must go back in time almost 3,500 years. And that would put us at about
1500 B.C. Back to the time when the Jews
were living in Egypt and had already been there for about
400 or so years. And when they'd initially gone
there, they were well received. There was only 70 of them. They
went down there to buy grain in a time of famine. Maybe some
of you younger ones don't know what famine is, but that means
there's no food. Nothing will grow. They went down there in
a time of famine and bought grain, and lo and behold, the one from
whom they had to buy the grain was none other than Joseph, their
brother, whom they had sold into slavery, but now he is second
only to Pharaoh in all the land of Egypt. He's a picture of our
Lord Jesus, Joseph is. But the story goes on to say
that later, another Pharaoh rose up who did not know Joseph. And not only does this mean that
maybe he wasn't even aware of Joseph, but if he was aware of
him, he had no regard for him. He didn't care about him. They're
like, Joseph, so what? And because he had no regard
for Joseph, he had no regard for Joseph's brothers and the
families that had descended from them for these 400 years. And
now they were quite a large group of people. And the Egyptians
were afraid of them and had enslaved them to keep them from growing
so prosperous that they might prove to be a trouble. Now, the
Jews were in this condition. They were in Egypt as slaves,
not in the land God promised them, but a land far to the south,
and they don't have freedom, and they're made to work, and
when they complained about how hard they were made to work,
they were given more work to do. Why were they in that condition? Well, they were in that condition
because while they were down there, they became like the Egyptians. We have this idea that the Jews
were always a godly people. No, they were most often found
in idolatry. And they were worshiping the
Egyptian gods. That's why Moses said, when he
talked to God in the burning bush, he says, well, you told
me to go down there and say, let my people go. Who shall I
say send me? Why do you have to say that?
Because the Jews didn't know. They didn't know who their God
was. They'd forgotten Him. And that always brings bondage.
But God loves His people. And it says that God saw their
labors and their suffering and He was moved. You know what that
means? We'll make sure I use words that
young people understand. He was moved, he felt sorry for
them. That's the best way to put it.
He felt bad for them. They were in awful circumstances.
So he determined to deliver them out of Egypt and make a way for
them through the wilderness until they got to the land that God
had promised to their forefathers, beginning with Abraham. the area
that we know now as Israel. However, Moses going up to Pharaoh
and saying, God says, let my people go. Pharaoh says, well, who sent you to say that? And
he said, I am, because that's God's name for himself. I am.
He said, I am sent me. And Pharaoh responded, well,
who is I am that I should listen to him? And he didn't say that
as though he were curious about the answer. He was saying it
like, who does this I am think he is that he can tell Pharaoh,
king of Egypt, what he must do? And so God showed Pharaoh who
he was. with 10 plagues and each one
of these plagues was proof that I am and we generally express
that by the name Jehovah that's what his name means essentially
what the word Jehovah means I am Jehovah showed that he was more
powerful and ruled over all the gods of Egypt because every one
of those plagues was attached somehow to one of the gods that
Egypt worshipped. They worshipped the sun. One
of the plagues was darkness. They worshipped the river Nile.
He turned it into blood. And on and on, he sent these
plagues. And every time, Pharaoh said,
okay, I get the message. You just tell them to stop, and
then I'll let y'all go. And Moses would plead with the
Lord, and the Lord would stop the plague, and then Pharaoh
would harden his heart against God. Say, well, I got the plague
gone, so why should I bother obeying now? And he'd say, no,
I'm not gonna let you go. He did that nine times. And then God said to Moses, all
right, I got one more. And this one is gonna make him
let you go. And he told the Jews this, or
he told Moses this and told Moses to tell the Jews, that on a certain
day, they were to take a lamb without spot or blemish from
the first year of the flock. As perfect as a lamb can get.
And then at a certain time, they were to kill that lamb by cutting
its throat. And they were to collect the
blood from that lamb in a basin, and they were supposed to take,
well, they were supposed to take it and treat it as though it
were paint and put blood over top of the door, the doors of
the house, and then blood on each side. Then they were to
go inside and they were to roast that lamb And they were supposed
to eat it with unleavened bread. They weren't supposed to leave
any of it, not supposed to leave any leftovers when they're done,
eat all of it. And they were supposed to do this with their
walking clothes on and their traveling shoes on, ready to
leave. Because that night, the Lord
was gonna set them free. And he goes on to say, now I'm
gonna pass through the land of Egypt, and I'm gonna kill the
firstborn of every household. The firstborn of all the animals. Now, way back then, when they
talked about the firstborn, they were talking about the firstborn
son. Because generally the firstborn son in every household eventually
became the head of the household. But it was one's firstborn was
always considered very special in the scriptures. So the Lord
was gonna come and he was gonna destroy every firstborn in the
land of Egypt. Now here's the interesting thing.
He didn't say I'm going to destroy the firstborn of all the Egyptian
households. He said I'm coming through Egypt
and I'm destroying all the firstborn in Egypt and that included the
firstborn of each house in Israel among the Jews. He said however you do what I
tell you you kill that You take its blood and put it on the door
like I told you to. And you go in and you eat it.
You eat it with unleavened bread. When I come through the land,
when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. And so the Jews did
what they were told. And they, when God went through
the land that night, bent on punishing all sinful households, every time he saw the blood,
he said, I'm not going to punish that household. And why did he say that? He saw
the blood. And you know what the blood was?
It was a symbol that judgment had already passed on the household. Blood The life is in the blood,
says the scriptures. And so if blood has been shed,
that means something died. And so what he's showing the
Jews by this is that they're as bad as the Egyptians, and
they deserve this punishment and this plague as much as the
Egyptians But he showed them how they could avoid experiencing
that judgment, and that was by making that lamb experience the
judgment. And the lamb served as a substitute
for the firstborn in all the houses where its blood was found. Of course, this points us to
the Lord Jesus Christ. John the Baptist, when he saw
the Lord Jesus, he said, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away
the sin of the world. He was God's Passover Lamb. He's the one who died as a substitute
for sinners. He's the one who died so that
those who, and he didn't deserve to die, but he did, he died. so that those who deserve to
die would not die. But he told them now, he told
the Jews, we're back 3,500 years ago, he said, now, you're going
to do this every year. And sooner or later, your children
are going to ask you, well, what's this all about? And he says,
you be ready to explain to them why you have this celebration. And so every year, they continued
to celebrate it. God went through Egypt, killed
the firstborn in every household where there was no blood on the
door, and the Egyptians drove them out. Not only were they
willing for them to leave, they insisted, get out of here. You're
nothing but trouble to us. And so they left Egypt. And every year after that, they
celebrated the Passover. But as near as I can tell, there
was a difference, a major difference between how they celebrated it
the night of Passover and then how they celebrated it in the
years after. And it was simply this. They didn't put the blood
on the door anymore. Now, I don't know that it ever
specifically says that, except for this. Once I left Egypt,
They didn't live in dwellings that had doors. They lived in
tents. They didn't have door posts and
lentils. They had flaps. But each year, they would commemorate
that first one. They'd have a lamb to eat, and
they eventually started using a cup of wine which they would drink along with the lamb,
a cup of thanksgiving. But each time they did that,
they weren't redoing the sacrifice. Why? This was a once-for-all
sacrifice. That is, that lamb that was killed
on the very first Passover, His blood went on the door. But it
only had to be done once, because God was not going to come back
through Israel year after year after year to destroy them. Therefore, it was not required
that the blood be upon the door, because there was no danger to
them. But they were, each year, supposed
to remember that night. And so the Passover, one of the
three, one of the major feasts of the Jews that they were supposed
to keep every year. Now you say, what's that got
to do with the Lord's table? Well, turn with me to 1 Corinthians
chapter five. Hope I can remember just exactly
what verse I'm looking for because I didn't write it down. And I can't get my Bible to open
those two pages. There we go. Verse seven. First Corinthians
chapter five, verse seven. Get rid of the old yeast, remember?
When they celebrated Passover, they would use unleavened bread
and leaven is yeast. And so Paul says, get rid of
the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast as
you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb,
has been sacrificed. Now turn over to 1 Corinthians
chapter 11. Paul speaks here about observing
the Lord's table. He says, Christ our Passover
sacrificed for us. That Passover lamb on the first
night there, the first Passover in Egypt, that Passover lamb
was a picture or an illustration of Christ. That little lamb had
to die so that the firstborn in that household wouldn't die. And Jesus Christ is God's firstborn. He's called that firstborn over
all creation. He's God's firstborn. And we
who believe in him are his children. But he came and like that lamb,
he died. He shed his blood. They nailed him to a cross. Blood
was coming out his hands and his feet. They had whipped him
so badly that his back was shredded open. They had put a crown of
thorns on his head and shoved it down to cause extra pain. Our Lord was bleeding all over. And his blood, which of course
symbolized the giving of his life, the shedding of his blood
was the giving of his life. That blood was put upon his household. and nobody in that household
will ever die. That is, Jesus Christ, God's
son, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from all
sin. He is our Passover lamb. Since he died, there is no more
sacrifice to offer. There's no more sacrifice to
offer because there's no more sacrifice needed. When he died,
it truly laid aside or put aside the wrath of God. We are sinners. We deserve eternal
death. But God, because of his great
mercy, the mercy that I cannot begin to measure, I just count
up the mercy, try to figure out the mercy necessary to save me.
But I'm just one of millions whom God has saved through the
blood of His Son. But my sin had to be paid for. God is very, very strict. God is absolutely just. You know, if somebody did something
against you, you can say, and they came up and said, oh, I'm
sorry. You can say, oh, don't worry about it, just forget it. You
can do that because you're not God. You're not the moral governor
of the universe. But God must always do what is
right. And the right thing to do in
response to sin is to punish with death. But
Jesus Christ, just like that first Passover lamb, He died
as the substitute for His people. And He was able to suffer in
Himself all the wrath. You know what wrath is? That's
anger that's so bad so wound up, if you will, it's determined
to destroy that which it's angry at. You ever been so angry at
something that you just wanted to tear it up? God's that angry about our sin.
He poured it out on Christ, and Christ bore it. And now we, We who believe him,
we who have called upon his name, we gather to worship him. And
from time to time, we observe the Lord's table. Now the Lord's
table, the first Lord's table was established at the very last
Passover. Now the Jews went on celebrating
Passover, and I guess they still do. But the very last Passover,
that God approved of was a Passover in which Jesus met with His disciples
to observe the Passover. And that was the very night that
Judas betrayed Him and began a series of events that ended
with Jesus Christ being crucified the next morning at about 9 o'clock
in the morning. And He hung there until about
3 in the afternoon. bearing in his body the punishment
due unto our sins. And he said to his disciples
at that very last Passover, he said, with great desire have
I desired to eat this Passover with you. Why would the Lord
look forward to that Passover? Well, he said, I've got a job
to do. And I am, King James says, straightened. We don't think
of that unless we think of a straitjacket. But to be straightened means
I'm being constrained. You ever had something that you
may not have enjoyed the thought of having to do it, but you wanted
to go ahead and get it done, so it's done. Our Lord Jesus
Christ came into this world for the express purpose of dying
for His people. And even though He's God in human
form, and even though He was a man of complete faith, He knew
that what He was going to endure on the cross was horrible and
horrifying. It involved so much pain, not
only of His body, but also of His soul. And He says, I want
to get this done with. It's what I came here to do.
I came here to do it out of love to my Father, and out of love
to my people, and I'm anxious to get it done. So he says, I've
been looking forward to this Passover. It's the last one.
Tomorrow I will fulfill it. And as they ate the Passover
meal, and the Passover meal would have involved a cooked lamb,
but it also would have involved that unleavened bread, similar
to a cracker, and some wine. And our Lord, if you look here
in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 23, For I received from
the Lord what I also passed on to you, The Lord Jesus, on the
night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks,
he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do
this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after supper,
he took the cup, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my
blood. Do this whenever you drink it
in remembrance of me. And so on this last Passover
night, Jesus took some unleavened bread, and he tore it into pieces,
and he passed it around to the disciples, and he said, this
broken bread is or represents my body, which will be broken
for you. And when they were done eating,
he took that cup of thanksgiving, that cup of wine, and Actually, then they would pass
it around. Each would take a sip from it. That was the tradition.
And our Lord said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Now, do you know what a covenant
is? A covenant is an agreement between two people. Like marriage
is a covenant. Two people promise to do certain
things for one another. That's a covenant. Well, this
covenant is a little different. This one is not two parties coming
together and saying, I'll do this for you if you do this for
me. Because this is a completely
one-sided covenant. This is a covenant, this is an
agreement made up of promises that God gives to His people. And they are promises that depend
upon us doing anything good. And in the New Covenant, and
God describes the New Covenant in the Old Testament, and the
most wonderful part of it is this, He says, and I will forgive
their sins. and their iniquities, I won't
remember. I'll never bring them up again. And so Jesus is saying, this
cup is my blood. It represents my
blood. And it will be poured out for you to bring that new
covenant into force. And God will no longer remember
your sins. Why? Because God will see that
blood. And He will be satisfied. And He will say that's payment
enough for their sin. Now, about once a month, we take
some unleavened bread and some wine. But you know what? We don't sacrifice anything.
What we're doing here is just kind of a symbol or an outward
picture that teaches us of what Christ did for us in His death
on the cross. We take that bread. Jesus Christ
is called the bread of life. Now, He's already been sacrificed,
so we don't have to sacrifice Him anymore, but we feed on Him. continually. He not only died
in order that our sins would be forgiven, it's by his very
person that we live. We who believe in him live by
him. And then we take that little cup of wine that each one of
us gets and we drink it and that's symbolic of his blood. You say,
that's kind of gross drinking blood. Well, that's why it's
wine instead of blood. The idea is of the blood entering
us and cleansing us from all our sin. It's just a symbol. When we eat the bread and drink
the wine, when we're done, we're gonna be in exactly the same
condition we were in before we drank it. This little bit of
bread and that little bit of wine will not do anything. It
wouldn't sustain our bodies for very long. And He couldn't do
anything for our souls. But it is a picture, an illustration
of what Christ did for our souls. And what He did is simply amazing. All you young folks probably
have friends. And you may have had some friends
who did some great things for you. But you've never had a friend
that died for you. And you've certainly never had
a friend who bore in himself or herself all the wrath of God. This is such a simple little
celebration, but it symbolizes the most remarkable
thing that ever happened in all of history. And it represents
the greatest of all of God's works. Something better even
than the creation of the heavens and the earth. By the sacrifice
of Himself. Jesus satisfied God the judge
and none of His people shall ever suffer for their sins. So here in a few minutes when
we celebrate this, That's what we're saying. By the broken body
and the shed blood of Jesus Christ, my sins have been put away, and
God will never punish me for them. Amazing thing. Hear it? And if Karsten and Chris, if
you want to help us with the Lord's Temple,