Sermon Text: Luke 22:14-22
Scripture Reading: Exodus 12:1-28
The 7 Old Testament feasts (Passover; Unleavened Bread;
First Fruits; Pentecost; Trumpets; Day of Atonement; Tabernacles) had, among
other important features, this one peculiarity—that they brought to the
remembrance of Israel the great underlying facts and principles of their
covenant-relationship to Jehovah. They invited the pious Israelite at stated
seasons to collect his thoughts and fix them upon those things which were
fundamental in his religious life. This is precisely why we regularly practice
the Lord’s Supper together. What is the Lord’s Supper and what does it signify?
The Lord’s Supper is one of two sacraments that Christ
gave the Church for the purpose of worship and joy. The Old Testament feasts
were like mile markers, billboards, or appetizers. Paul best described them as
shadows, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and
drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a
shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians
2:16-17).
The Backward Glance of Passover
It was especially in connection with the Passover (the
oldest of Jewish festivals) that this purpose which the feasts were intended to
serve became most apparent. The Passover was preeminently a historical feast.
It pointed back to the deliverance of the people from Egypt. Each time this
feast was celebrated in the families of Israel, it proclaimed anew that
redemption through substitutionary blood, grace and by sovereign choice was the
great fact which lay at the basis of their existence.[1]
The Backward Glance of the Lord's Supper
The Lord knew we would be forgetful. The Lord knew we
would grow complacent. The Lord knew we would be distracted by service, work,
and play. The Lord knew we could even be absent minded of Him where we sit this
very hour. What the feasts were to Israel (remembrance of what had passed and a
shadow of what was to come), the sacraments are to us [and] that the Lord's
Supper especially ought to be to us.
Our Passover also has been sacrificed and each time that
we repeat its observance, the Lord himself invites us that we shall call our
thoughts home to the contemplation of that one thing on which our very life as
believers depends, His atoning death.
We may well, therefore, adore the wisdom of our Lord who
has given us this ordinance. Namely for the reason that it comes to meet our
human weakness, that it brings His own person and grace within the reach of our
senses, so that symbolically our eyes can see, our hands can handle, our mouth
can taste the Word of Life.[1]
Symbolism of the Lord's Table
They are four primary guiding principles to remember in
observing the Lord’s Supper.
- A recognition of sin and slavery
- The necessity of a substitute
- Faith is not intellectual agreement but a union
- Abandonment of slavery and movement towards love for God as displayed primarily through trust and obedience
Exodus 12 records the swift movement from the story of
Joseph in Genesis 40-50 to the forgetfulness and fear of Egypt’s Pharaoh.
Read Exodus 1:1-14 with an emphasis on the following:
- “let us deal shrewdly with them” v. 10
- “they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens” v. 11
- “they were oppressed” v. 12
- “they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves” v. 13
- “they made their lives bitter with hard service and in all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves” v. 14
Passover exposed sin as something far more personal than
personal errors or moral failures, but as a power that holds people in bondage.
Ancient Israel’s daily grind was lived under Pharaoh’s thumb. He owned her; she
was in his labor pool and her babies no more than replacement workers. Sin
enslaves and its bondage is cruel. It is bitter and joyless because it strips
life both of freedom and of hope. Passover also showed that bondage is costly.
Liberation can come only by death – not only that of a lamb but also of the
idols our foolish hearts cherish in place of the only true God. For the LORD is
jealous for our love: to break sin’s death-grip, he had once destroyed the
no-gods of the Egyptian pantheon through 10 plagues. Today, the counterfeits
our hearts cherish, counterfeits that enslave our lives must fall under this
judgment too. He simply loves us too much to allow sin to deceive us into
believing that real and satisfying life is possible apart from him.[2]
Read John 8:31-36 – Satan has never made a good man bad.
Satan makes a flawed man worse by playing on his tendencies. Use Keller’s
illustration of singing into a piano. Do you remember when you had to sing
back? Do you remember when you tried to change and were stuck in a perpetual
cycle with willpower as your only weapon? Are you still a slave? That baby you
are holding in your womb or in your arms was likely doomed to be a replacement
worker for the Kingdom of darkness if you would have remained a slave.
But now as you struggle you can say, “So then, brothers,
we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh” (Romans
8:12).
In the second place, there is the positive and clear
affirmation that the necessity of a substitute in death of the Son of God, his
body broken, his blood poured out [and] appropriated by faith are the only and
all-sufficient means of obtaining the remission of sin, peace of conscience and
the title to eternal life.
“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the
people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their
cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and
God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw
the people of Israel – and God knew” (Exodus 2:23-24).
Passover was first celebrated on the day of Israel’s
departure from Egypt. As we read, Israel
was required to select a perfect lamb (without defect), kill the lamb, spread
the blood on the door post, cook the lamb, and eat the lamb. The lamb was dear
to the family, as it would live with them for four months before its death.
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world” (John 1:29). Passover showed that redemption is not based on the efforts
of those in bondage – no knowledge or behavior on our part will make right what
sin made wrong – but by the substitution of another.[2]
In the third place, there is the eloquent reminder that
there can be no true participation in the merits which flow from Christ's atoning
death except through such a faith consisting not merely in the mental
acceptance of his sacrifice as a historic fact, but a faith which mystically
feeds upon him, the living sacrifice, as he now exists in heaven.[1]
Not only were the Israelites passed over due to the blood
of the sacrifice, the very sacrifice that shed its blood “indwelt” them. If we
were to hold up Christ as a mere example to be followed by us in our own
strength to the exclusion of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in the
heart, would we not be silently corrected by our Lord's own voice speaking to
us at his table: "Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son
of man, ye have no life in yourselves"? (John 6:53).
And lastly, we have here impressed upon us the solemn obligation
of everyone who receives Christ as his sacrifice and enters upon the communion
of his sanctified life, to abandon sin and walk in holiness. You will observe
it is specifically this fourth principle which Paul has in mind when he says to
the Corinthians—"Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of
the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of
the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink
of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and
drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some
have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when
we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned
along with the world” (1 Corinthians 11:27-32). It is never recorded that any
Israelite or Egyptian participated in the Passover without also participating
in the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In other words, they ate and began a movement
away from their old home.
Thus we see that the Lord's Supper spans the whole
breadth of our Christian religion. Besides being what it must always primarily
be, the means for strengthening our faith, it may also render us the additional
service of becoming to us an occasion for self-examination.[1]
“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.
Test yourselves.” (2 Corinthians 13:5a).
The Lord’s Supper
Read Luke 22:14-22. Here we see Jesus the God-man serving
the Lord’s Supper to the disciples. Soon, they would see Jesus, the priest
presiding over his own sacrifice cry out, “It is finished!”
Never mind that bread and wine, unless you can use them
as folks often use their spectacles. What do they use them for? To look at? No,
to look through them. So, use the bread and wine as a pair of spectacles. Look
through them, and do not be satisfied until you can say, “Yes, yes, I can see
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” – 45.525
Sources:
- A Sermon by Geerhardus Vos. Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton, New Jersey. October 1, 1902.
- Sittema, John. Meeting Jesus at the Feast: Israel’s Festivals and the Gospel. Grandville, MI: The Reformed Fellowship, 2010.
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