My Body, My Blood, I Cor, 11:23-26

First Corinthians 11, 23 through 26. And as we do that, though, we're going to be kind of doing a little bit of backtracking. So I'd like you to be ready to do a little time travel. Can you handle that? OK, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be stepping back in time in order to get the full background for this passage. We want to get the complete sense of what Paul was speaking to when he was writing to the church at Corinth here in chapter 11. So we'll be traveling in time. You can just have to prepare yourselves mentally for that. More than an hour, okay? A little different. And we're traveling back about 3,400 years, and in case you're wondering, no, I'm not that old. All right.

So, it began as a Passover, okay? This account of the first Passover is given in Exodus chapter 12. And, of course, you're free to read that as you care to do. The Passover feast was originally given as a celebration and as a preparation for Israel's delivery from 400 years of slavery. As you recall, Joseph had become number two in Egypt And as a means of preserving his family, as his father and his brother and brothers and their family, he brought them all down into Egypt. Well, as a change of pharaohs brought the family of Jacob of Israel into a position of slavery, they now for 400 years were slaves and they were on the night of the Passover being delivered.

And it went about like this. They were in the land of Goshen, okay, which you see from, this is a satellite's eye view here, okay? And so here's Goshen, it's on the Nile Delta. You can see the Nile there from the satellite view, and then in the Delta where things are pretty lush there on kind of the Eastern portion of that Delta. And now, what had happened, there had been 10 plagues, okay?

And as you see in your handout, there's also a little website link there if you want to dig up lots more detail because this is a summary. It is therefore simplified in the short version. Some of these plagues actually were an assault on as many as nine Egyptian deities all at once. So this is very much the simplified version. If you don't have internet access and want information, just see me. I'll make sure you get a more detailed printout. It's about a dozen or more pages, okay?

Now, the Passover was related to this last one, the death of the firstborn, okay? And that's the one that we'll be focusing on here. As I look down this list, you know, there's all these different plagues, you know, I looked at it and, you know, oddly enough, some of it seemed familiar. It's about like raising kids. Anyway, we'll go on. Alright, the Passover went like this. Exodus 12, 23 through 24.

The key point in here being, and what we have highlighted in blue, when he sees the blood on the lintel, that is the Lord passing over, when he sees the blood on the lintel, the two doorposts, And on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door. That is there, before we get the name Passover, the Lord passing over the door. And this blood on the lintel and on the doorpost then was to be a symbol, a picture of the cross in its form, as well as picturing the shed blood of Christ. And we'll see in a little bit, even more so, how that is a fulfillment or a prefiguring of Christ's death on the cross for us.

The first Passover went like this, and you can imagine here, they had been slaves for so long, it was like that's what they knew how to do. If you could just try to put yourself into it, it would be something on the order of, if all the people in this room had been in that position since the year 1600, been slaves. That's a long time to be slaves, okay? They were now getting ready to not be slaves.

You can imagine that. That is a radical change. That's about to take place. And so the Lord says, OK, I want you to prepare in this way. I want you to have an unblemished year old lamb for each household. And the intent was to roast this lamb. It'd be served with unleavened bread and bitter herbs on the lamb. And then all of it was to be eaten in haste for that night standing.

Why? It's to picture, we're getting ready, we're getting ready to leave. The readiness to depart out of that slavery is the picture. They were to be in every way prepared for this imminent exodus, this exodus which was to take place in a matter of hours in the beginning of this Passover time. Ready in every respect.

They were to eat unleavened bread, and they were to begin by ridding their households and all their belongings of any leaven, that is, any yeast or any bread risen with yeast, from the very first day of the Passover, and they were to maintain that for seven days.

So the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread was the Passover. That was what they were beginning here. And you hear of Jewish groups speaking of matzah, that's the unleavened bread that they would have to begin this feast of unleavened bread, the Passover being the first day of that feast. So this first Passover, what happened, they started in Goshen.

The very next morning, the Jews were to depart from Goshen and from the land of Egypt in great haste. It wasn't like, hey, we'll mosey on along here. and see how it goes. They were to get ready, as they're eating this Passover, to hurry their way out. Get on with it, okay? So that's the kind of the mindset that they were to have as they were eating this Passover.

The Jews were then, and we see this throughout the Jewish law in the Old Testament, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, They were repeatedly told to observe these practices as a memorial to all generations. It wasn't like, hey, do this a year or two from now and after that you can forget it.

They said continue to observe this. So that was a consistent directive that they had. So here was a generalized path, and in fact, historians and archaeologists have gone through the scripture and looked at maps and come in more detail. But this is the big picture, going from Goshen and then down into the Sinai Peninsula and then over to the eastern side of the Dead Sea into what is now Jordan and then into Canaan.

That was the path that they were made to go. Now, in fact, this is not very far. It took them 40 years, okay? Long trip. But that's the big picture, but it was Passover that was the very start of this trip. Now, let's look at the timeline, and you also have it in your handout. If you're joining with us here this morning for the first time, this is page 2. This is to indicate to you what page number you're at so you can track with us. Now, there's a Passover timeline we want to look at, and the reason is Because from the time when the Passover was instituted until the time we'll be looking at here when Christ had the Passover with His disciples, and then shortly thereafter when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians chapter 11, there was a period of time of almost 1500 years. That again is a long time.

If we were to put it in our own time frame to think of from the year about 500 until about now. That's a long period of time. That's how long it had been from the time of Moses until the time that these events are taking place in the New Testament. A good stretch of time.

So for 1,500 years the Jews had been observing the Passover. Good thing to keep in mind. That is a long time to carry on a tradition, especially having been hauled all over the countryside the way they have. And yet to still come back to Israel to be there and to observe this Passover. Now, by the time the New Testament era, again 1500 years after this exit from Egypt, this exodus, whatever aspects were required of the Old Testament, and frankly they were fairly simple, whatever the Old Testament said, you must do this, that they did. They continued that on.

Now, as I say that, one exception, you might want to make note of this, the one exception was In the original Passover directive, they were to most certainly stand. By New Testament times, it had long since been established that Passover must be done seated. Now you say, why? Why the change? The reason is this. Standing during a meal was something that slaves did.

And so they determined, since we are no longer slaves in Egypt, down to the very poorest of households in Israel, you must not stand during the Passover. You are no longer a slave in Egypt. So the Passover, by the time of the New Testament, and for some time before that, had been changed in that one respect.

Everything else was as it was directed in the Old Testament. But in addition to what was directed there, there was a great deal that had been added in the way of written and oral tradition. These are other things that we do. These are other practices that we have, certainly not to contradict anything in the Old Testament, but simply to add to it and give more structure. And so they developed additional traditions, and we'll want to take a look at that.

One of the key things that we should keep in mind as we look at the Gospels, all four of the Gospels describe this Last Supper, Passover event that Christ had with His disciples. And as they do so, keep this in our mind, rather than keeping account and describing every single detail exactly as they did it, what the Gospels describe is what was exceptional.

You see that? If the gospel writers had recorded, you know, we drank this and we ate this and we did this, everybody would have said, yeah, duh, okay? Because it would have been, you know, we know that. Tell us something we don't know, okay? So rather than record everything that was something everybody already knew, what they recorded is what was exceptional, what was different.

See that? And so what we'll be looking at as we go through this is we will be looking at what was different from the usual Passover event. That's what's highlighted. That's what the gospel author's recorded. And so we'll be focusing on that aspect because that's what's recorded for us.

Okay. To kind of get some perspective, this is a picture looking at Jerusalem in the foreground and the Dead Sea in the background. Okay. This is called a bird's eye view. The bird is really up there. Okay. So there's the Dead Sea in the background, you can see that, and then you see the progression up towards the Mount of Olives and then the Temple Mount, which now has the Muslim Dome of the Rock, but that was about the same site as the Temple, and then Jerusalem. Things have obviously grown a bit since then. Now, here's the sequence.

The Bible describes in the New Testament Jesus and his disciples progressing through Bethany, which is the House of Figs, and then Bethphage, the House of Dates, and then as they got closer here, then the Mount of Olives. And with cresting the Mount of Olives, then, was the event that oftentimes is called the Triumphal Entry, although as we went through a couple of years ago, it's actually, I think, mischaracterized as the Triumphal Entry. Yes, there was all sorts of hosanna and praise him, but as Jesus crested the Mount of Olives and saw Jerusalem, he heaved great sobs. But it's this event here that's described as the gospel writers go through the story, It says that he went through, you know, into the temple area, would have gone through the eastern gate.

It's now walled up. The Muslims heard about 500 years ago that the Jewish Messiah was going to come through that gate. And so they said, well, we'll stop that. And they put bricks in the hole. Okay. And they put a bunch of Muslim graves in front of it and figuring that would stop the Messiah. Good luck. Okay. Nonetheless, that was their rationale. Jesus went through that eastern gate and into the temple area. That's what the Gospels record.

Through that week, they went several times back and forth between these smaller towns in the background and into Jerusalem. The population of Jerusalem was somewhere, you know, 50 to 100,000 people and During these times of festival, they would have, and it would vary, 85,000 to 300,000 pilgrims visiting. So if you can imagine, this place is overwhelmed. Many people would have to travel outside the city often to stay, but it was considered, if you lived in Jerusalem or in the area, it was customary, you're going to be host to a lot of people a lot of times.

Here's the picture. Here's Jerusalem about 30 AD, aerial view and a drawing here. And it was over in this corner here that it appears that the Lord had the Last Supper. There's an upper room there. And again, this is tradition, so we don't know for certain. But according to tradition, this is the room where the Last Supper was held. One thing I should note is that from about the middle of the columns up, was restored in about 1335 by the Franciscan order. That was kind of the tail end of the Crusades.

And so that architecture you'll notice is a little bit out of character. And that's why it was done separately. Also, there's a little detail on the wall over here. That's also not original construction, but this lower area and probably some of the wall structure was indeed original. And so if this was indeed the place, then this would have been the room. Here's another view of the same room from a little different angle.

Now, so they would have had this place prepared. The gospel accounts describe how Jesus sent them ahead and said, here's how you'll find it. And they went to the place and to have them prepared. The Jewish tradition was to have everything ready by noontime on Passover except for the actual final preparation of the Passover lamb and the small details of the food. Everything else was to be prepared by noon that day.

Now, let me ask you this question. Do you enjoy the kind of puzzles, what's wrong with this picture? You like those? Well, let's try one. Here's one. Can you find what's wrong with this famous painting? Do you see them? There are a few things. All right. Now, let's see how good you did. Time's up.

First one, you might have nosed Bob Lockwood's over there on one end of the table, and Isaac Yoon is on the other end of the table. You might note the Hemingway family at the bottom there. So those are definitely a little bit off the mark. What you might not have noticed, though, is the other thing that I was hoping to point out, and that's that they're sitting on chairs. That's not the way they did it back then. They didn't sit on chairs.

What they did is they would instead recline at table. This drawing carries across the idea. They would sit at floor level on cushions and folded blankets and pillows and things of that sort and eat off a table that was just barely raised off the floor. that was more the typical pattern and I'm not just guessing on this this reclining at table is something you see consistently laid out in Scripture and those passages Matthew 2620 and John 1328 are the passages to refer to the Lord's Last Supper. and it says they were reclining at table. The other passages or other instances where they said reclining at table, it's the pattern of a slightly raised table and sitting basically at floor level on cushions and pillows and things of that sort. That would have been the norm. So the Last Supper would not have been a sitting at a table in a chair event. The cups in the New Testament era, the cups could either be pottery, metal or glass. Any one of those would have been acceptable.

And it turns out that glassblowing had just been invented before the time of Christ. Archaeologists find a number of glass items of this kind as they dig through the various archaeological sites from that era. So very well could have been a glass like this. This is an example that's well-preserved, as you can imagine. And if you have glass that's 2,000 years old, a lot of it's broken. This one isn't. So we present that.

It could very well have been pottery or metal. Very unlikely that it's like some of the things that you see pictured where you have some cup and it's made of gold and it's got jewels all over it. Forget it. That's medieval mythology, but not likely what took place there. The plates would have been something like this.

They did have pottery that was glazed. This one here is somewhat well-preserved and restored. It's about a foot across. This one here was found in Samaria, and it dates from just a couple decades before the birth of Christ. But it gives us an example of how they would have had things, and they would have had this.

So this low-level table, glasses of glass or pottery, cups of glass or pottery, and plates like this, maybe a foot across, and you could put various things on it. They did not have eating utensils. you use the unleavened bread for that. Whatever you're going to scoop up off the plate, you use the unleavened bread to scoop it up. Now, here's what the Old Testament would have required. It would have said, okay, you had to have this male year old lamb roasted and served with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

Those who were either living in Jerusalem or visiting in the area of Jerusalem would go in at three o'clock in the afternoon The man of the house would have this responsibility. Take the male lamb, go in at three o'clock, and the priests would then slaughter the lamb. Thousands of lambs. They would start at three o'clock, and they would just have everybody lining up, and they'd have, you know, it's like all priests on duty, eh? Just getting all these lambs ready.

Lamb after lamb after lamb preparing them, and they would They would basically do some preparation and give the lamb back folded up in the skin and ready for the family to prepare at home. They were to have all the work done, as I mentioned, by noon. No work done except for what was necessary for the last minute preparations for the Passover.

That only was allowed. So one of the disciples, perhaps, would have gone to the temple and had their lamb, stood in line with the rest of the people, had the lamb prepared and brought it home, and then roasted the lamb right there at the house. These requirements are given in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, as we have listed there. Again, scripture was emphatic to the Jews.

This is what you do. You do it as an annual remembrance. Okay. By custom, four servings of wine have been offered at the Passover. And notice I put but, okay, and underline. And some of those caveats are this. The wine was diluted, according to the rabbis, five parts water with one part wine. Very dilute. Okay. That was point one.

Point two, the wine was consumed with a substantial meal as well. And the wine was consumed over a period of a few hours with a typical Passover meal. So it was spread out over a period of time. There's certainly no encouragement at all. As a matter of fact, every discouragement of getting drunk or anything of the sort, that wasn't in anybody's thought or mindset.

So they would have these four servings of wine, and those servings of wine would be milestones in the Passover meal, and we'll see what those milestones are here. Here are the four cups. What they did is they were not told, you must have four cups of wine, okay? Instead what they did is they reasoned from Exodus 6, 6, and 7 that there are some steps here that the Lord has said He will do, and we're just simply looking at those steps and we're going to say we're going to commemorate each of those with this dilute glass of wine.

The first one, cup one, I will bring you out of Egypt, bring you out deliverance. I will rid you of their bondage, freedom. And cup three, I will redeem you, I will I will take you out of that position of slavery. And finally, I will take you for my people and will be your God, the consummation. So those are the four cups that were typically served at the Passover meal.

By the way, I might mention If you have any groups that, you know, like maybe you've, you know, stood with a group and they've showed you, this is our custom, you know, here's how the Jews do it, and various groups like Jews for Jesus and different ones will present that, you may have seen that, okay? Frequently those traditions that they present are often traditions that are developed subsequent to the New Testament era. So keep that in mind as they go through that, that's probably got some things added to or varied from what we're presenting here. So if you say, well, Vern, it didn't include this, it's because I'm presenting what was New Testament year accustomed and not what's been developed since.

OK? Now, the first one, I will bring you out, deliverance. That was the beginning cup. And what they would do is they would have an opening prayer for the day of Passover with that first cup. The tradition was to begin kind of asking the Lord's blessing during that period of time with that first cup. And the second cup, excuse me, I will rid you of your bondage. This is the Passover explanation. What they would do is they would explain the Passover and what it meant and what took place.

And it was traditional to sing Psalm 113 and 114. And so then they would complete the second cup. Now, the third cup, this would be associated with eating the bread, lamb, and the bitter herbs. That would have been the the third step here with that it would be I will redeem you and then finally the fourth cup I will take you for my people and be your God they would complete the sing the sing of Psalms 115 through 118 and by the way 113 through 118 is called the Hallel okay it means praise hallelujah you hear that praise God That's what this is about. They would sing Psalm 113 through Psalm 118.

Those were the Psalms, by the way, that were sung by tradition by Jews as they were walking towards Jerusalem for feasts like this. And it was those songs that they were probably singing during what we call the triumphal entry. Groups of them would alternate back and forth with each other, singing these psalms back and forth. And they had included words that say things like, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest. Praise Him, Son of David. And that's why that would accompany what we call the triumphal entry. Tradition. Tradition. Now, let's go through these.

It appears that Luke 22.17 describes the Lord saying this blessing before they all drank from the first cup. That would have been the very beginning of their Passover celebration. So Luke makes mention of that. Interestingly enough, remember what I told you earlier?

The gospel authors did not record every jot and diddle of detail. about it because they weren't interested in giving you, here's how we celebrate the Passover. They wanted to note the details, so only Luke seems to make note of this particular first cup. The third cup, and notice they skipped over the second, the third cup is the one that would have been associated with the eating of the bread and the lamb and the herbs, and so the gospel authors seem to have made note of that. It was during the eating of the bread and the lamb and the bitter herbs that Christ spoke of Judas' betrayal in the middle of that event.

He would have said, there's one here who is, you know, dipping the bread with me, who will betray me. And of course, they all said, who is that? Because everybody was. And by dipping the bread wasn't some special deal that they just, certain people did. That's how you ate the food. Okay? So he's basically, that's why they were puzzled. Everybody is dipping bread. What are you talking about? Okay? Everybody's dipping bread. What do you mean? And so they're saying, who is it? It's not me. Is it you? You know? They were puzzled because everybody's dipping bread. That's how you eat. But Christ said, there's one here dipping bread who will do that. Why was that so startling? Because Psalms, the book of Psalms, says that the one who you eat bread with will most certainly not be your enemy. Okay? And so to them, dipping bread and being a betrayer was just incompatible.

And yet that's what he was pointing out. It's also during this time that he said, this is my body. This is my body, given for you. That they were eating the bread, the unleavened bread, was no shock at all. They would have said, we've done this all our days, as long as we can remember we've done this. But that he would say, this is my body, that was new. They had never heard such a thing, ever.

Not a part of the Passover tradition. Now, is that third cup following the meal that he would have said, this is my blood with the third cup? That also would not have been a part of the Passover tradition. The third cup? Yes. This is my blood? Brand new. They would not have heard that before.

Now, he tells them repeatedly in the Old Testament, God tells them, now this is to be a memorial. We need to take a look at what is this memorial? What's that all about? Now, this day will be a memorial to you and look at what the rest of what is described there. It's a permanent ordinance.

You're to continue to celebrate it, even telling them in Exodus 12, 25 through 27, you need to give them the story of here's how it was that we were released from bondage. And that is associated with the second cup. OK, in the New Testament tradition, they would have done exactly that, go through and describe Here's what the Passover meant. Here's what it means. Here's historically what took place. And so they would have fulfilled this, not by Old Testament directive, but by tradition with the second cup. Tell the Passover story.

Now that word for memorial, nemosunon, is the word that you see there in the Greek Old Testament. And it's interesting, as you look up this word, this Exodus 12-22, that this word nemosynon is a memorial. And now when we come to Luke 22-19, and also our passage here, 1 Corinthians 11-23-26, The Lord says, do this in remembrance of me.

And what word do we have there? Okay. Anamnesis. It may say, you look at it and you say, well, those are a little different, you know, not quite the same word. The truth is both of those words mean memorial. They're synonyms. And they're also from the same verb. Okay. Naomai is to remember. And that word that our Lord used at the Lord's Supper, and Paul repeats it from Luke's account, anamnesis, it means again, to again remember, recall again, okay? I want you to remember again.

And so finally, we look at it, we have in our own language what we call a mnemonic device. You may or may not have heard of that, but even tying a string around your finger is a mnemonic device. It's from that same Greek word, okay? So that's the idea. Mnemonic device.

All right, so what exactly does the bread and the cup mean? Jesus said this is my body. This is my blood. What's that supposed to mean? Let's get down to brass tacks here. What does it mean? Okay? Here's this word used to describe this Old Testament pattern, this memorial. Mnemosynon. Okay? And here's this word used by Luke and by Paul, that is, it's to be a memorial, you're to remember it. Both of them are saying this is a memorial, we're to remember this thing, okay?

Now, so when Christ says, let's take a look here, here's Matthew 26-26, here he's giving this bread to the disciples and he's saying, take eat, this is my body, or In the next verses there, drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.

Those actions of having the bread and having the cup would have been to the Jews, we know what this is. We've done this for years, for generations. I mean, believe me, when you've done something for 1,500 years, I think you get familiar. They were very familiar with the process.

What Jesus said that we have marked out in the blue highlights here that was very different. I think that the disciples that heard this were at first puzzled. What is he saying? What's he telling us? We never heard this before. This is some tradition that has never crossed our ears.

So the question is, is that literal or figurative? John 654, the Lord is long prior to this time by a few years probably. saying to people, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood is eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day. Now, to get an inkling of what does he mean by that, let's just step ahead 14 verses.

John 6.40 says, for this is the will of my father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.

Do you get the picture? He describes in literal terms, what the figure of speech is. Eating his flesh and drinking his blood is beholding the Son and believing in him. Okay? He makes it clear there. It is a figurative expression, but it points to a literal reality. Belief is the key point here. Something else to consider here.

The Jews' Passover was held every year, and now by this time the Lord's Table for 1,500 years almost, was to be done, and the Jews were told, do this as a memorial. Do it as a memorial. The context in which the disciples would have understood this is my body or this is my blood didn't have anything other than that memorial context.

That was all that they were thinking about. Both Luke's and Paul's characterization of this is in remembrance of me. It's the same Greek word. Each of them use the exact same Greek word, in remembrance. Again, the word is a memorial. And this Greek word for remembrance, as we quoted above, is a synonym for the Passover memorial in the Greek Old Testament. So it's very clearly the pattern established by what the disciples would have thought this was and by what Luke and Paul described it as, points to, this is a memorial. Consider also these things here.

When our Lord, the very next day, was done with His work on the cross, He said, it is finished. Finished. Done. He's completed with His work on the cross. Hebrews 10, 14, and by the way, this is one of chapters 9 and 10 of Hebrews, keep making this point, but I'll pick this one out. For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And what's interesting is that these two passages are emphatic. Both finished and perfected in these verses are in the perfect tense.

It means a completed past action with ongoing results into the future. So, what he's saying is the exact same thing that comes across there in English. It's done. It's finished. The Lord's work is finished. His sacrifice is ended. There's one other thing.

Romans 6.10, Hebrews 7.27, 9.12, and 10.10, and 1 Peter 3.18, when they speak of the Lord's death, use the Greek word hapax. And that means once given, perpetually valid, no need for a re-sacrifice. Unlike the lambs at Passover, which every year they have another sacrifice, right? This instead points to Christ as the final sacrifice. Once given, perpetually valid, no need for a re-sacrifice. Now, Christ had this intent then. The intent was to have believers remember him, very clear from the words that were used there, remember him for what he has done for us and who he is. And the intent was also to have believers anticipate his coming.

We know that from several passages in the Gospels, I quote one here, Luke 22, 18, I will not drink from the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. Until, always tells you something's going to happen in the future, right? And then, what does Paul do when he finishes up this passage in 1 Corinthians 11?

In 11.26 he says, do this until he comes. Until he comes.

In both the Gospel passages and in Paul's restatement of it, there is this pointing to an anticipation of Christ's coming. That is a part of it. So the spiritual value of the Lord's table is in remembrance. remembrance of Him and what He has done, and in anticipation of His coming. Okay? Let's look at this. I think it's good for us, because we've been talking about the Passover and talking about the Lord's Table, to look at the contrast between the two. Under the law was the Passover.

You must do this one generation to the next, year after year after year. Under grace, do this in remembrance of Me. as often as you do it. Do it in remembrance of me. For the Passover, it was a memorial specific to Israel. There is no directive to the church, you must observe the Passover. It was specific to Israel. The Lord's Table is for the church, a memorial for the church.

And finally, and this is a time perspective, the Passover looks back to the Exodus. Remember we said it was almost 1,500 years from the Passover until the Lord's Supper, that last supper? And what were they doing? All those Passovers were looking back to that time of Exodus, and they were looking forward to God's salvation, giving His Messiah.

Now, under grace, here we are, and we look back at the cross and look forward to His coming. See the contrast there? There are comparisons, certainly, but it's critical that we see also the contrasts. Now, the other point to be made here is that Christ is our Passover, okay? And why is that? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, 7, for Christ our Passover also has been, notice the past tense, sacrificed, okay? Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.

Let's take a look at this in a time perspective. Here's the perspective here. On the one end, we've got the Passover. There's 1400 BC. And from there up until Christ, who is the last Passover, if you will, until then, you have the Passover celebration of the Jews, which looks backward to that event and then looking forward to the cross. That's the Jews' perspective on this thing. What you have over here from the time of the cross From there until He comes, you have the church looking backwards to the cross and forwards until He comes. The midpoint, the handoff here, what you see is right here.

So the Lord's last supper, what was that? It was the last Passover, because did they do everything according to the Passover? Yes. They had an entire Passover meal. it was also the first Lord's Table. See that? So it was a hand-off. And that's what's key about that event, the Lord's Table. It wasn't that the Lord ate for the last time. It's that now we have a crossing over. Here we have the last Passover and the establishing of the Lord's Table as a remembrance. Key point. And this chart, I think, helps get that perspective across. This is a passing of the baton where the two events cross at one time, at one place.

Let me ask you this, do you think the disciples understood all this? I think not. I think that they hadn't a clue what was going on until later. That's when they sat down and said, remember he said this? Remember he said that? We didn't know what was going on at the time, see? But he established it nonetheless so that afterwards as they began to look back on that evening, they could say, Now I know what he meant. Now I understand. It was a whole bunch of aha moments, okay? A whole bunch of aha moments for them.

One more thing. Can you handle one more thing? This is just one more thing. Well, one more, more, more thing. But anyway, one more thing. Okay. We want to take a look at marriage practices in the New Testament era. And no, I've not skipped a gear or jumped my track, okay? There's a reason for this.

First thing, the prospective bridegroom would travel from his father's house to the home of the prospective bride. First step. There he would negotiate with the father of the woman, and the two of them, by negotiating, would establish the bride price, the ketubah. They would establish the bride price. Now, the next thing, once the bridegroom had paid the price, the marriage covenant was established. The young man and the young woman were considered husband and wife, and they would say that they are betrothed.

This is the position of Mary and Joseph. You can imagine they were in this position right here, when Mary comes up to Joseph and says, hey, guess what? I'm pregnant. Anyway, I won't go into that too much, but you can imagine what that was like. From that moment on, the bride was declared to be consecrated or sanctified, set apart, exclusively for the bridegroom. And then they would finally finish it off with a symbol of the covenant relationship. The two of them would take a glass of wine and drink it together. And the groom would say, this is the new covenant. that we have with one another.

Now, let's step through that one at a time and just make sure we catch the significance here. I don't want that to head past us. Prospective bridegroom would travel from his father's house to the home of the prospective bride. Did Christ do that? He has come from his father. So he did that. Next step.

There he would negotiate with the father of a woman and determine the price of the bride. What was the price of the bride for his purchase of the bride? His life. He was to pay the bride price. That's the bride price. Once he paid the price, the marriage covenant was established. They were called betrothed. Has that happened? He's paid the price. The bride was to be declared consecrated or sanctified, set apart. Is that what the Church is? Is that what the Apostles write? And they say, and you are sanctified. You believers are sanctified.

Ding! Here's the point. The position that the Church is now is betrothed. We are now set apart, sanctified. What Christ was doing here at the Last Supper, was using a symbol, a picture for them, that would make clear to them, this is official. This is for real. This is really going to happen. We've made a covenant. You see the picture there? This is why in John 14, it says, In my Father's house are many mansions. I go there and prepare a place for you, to take you with me. That would have been the fulfillment of the covenant.

Folks, that's yet to happen, isn't it? So what are we now? Betrothed. We are sanctified, awaiting the time which we will be notified about with a shout. That was the custom. How about that, folks? Isn't that neat? So that was my one more thing. Can you handle that? Okay. So here's this passage. What a wonderful thing. Our Lord has sat before His disciples, and I'm sure through their lifetimes it was dawning upon them, oh, that's what this means! What a wonderful, wonderful thing this is. The Lord said, I'll pay the price.

Hebrews 12.2 says, for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. He said, for that bride, I'll pay the price. I'd love to.

Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that great? That's just marvelous. He delighted to pay the price for us, folks. That just grabs me. I don't know about you, but he says, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross for us, for you and for me. So as we take the Lord's table this morning, we won't do it quite yet, but as we take the Lord's table this morning, keep these things in mind. The Lord loved dearly to pay that price for us. It says, until then, do this in remembrance of me. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, what a marvelous thing you have done, and what marvelous things that we can look forward to. Lord, you lived out these things as a living picture for these disciples, and they've passed these truths along to us for our benefit and behalf. And Lord, because of that, what a marvelous eternity we share together because of what you've done and the covenant that you've made, the new covenant in your blood. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.