The Last Supper - In Round

Through the meal. And then somewhere in the meal, one of the children would come up to the father and say, why are we doing this? What is the reason for this meal? And that would give the father an opportunity to explain to the family the wonderful history of the freedom that the Jewish people had through the hand of God from Egypt. And he would teach.

That was a you know what we call today a teachable moment? Well, a teachable moment was built into the passover meal in families. Well, this was the same the same particular order that was, taking place. We read in Exodus that if a family couldn't afford it or if several families wanted to get together they could buy one lamb. Well that's what the apostles did.

Jesus was the father. He represented their leader. He was the one who was presiding. They were his family if you wish. And so they began the meal taking the first cup of blessing and offering a blessing and Jesus dipping in and beginning to eat.

And then in the middle of the meal something very extraordinary happened. Actually several things took place that we will, that we will talk about. In John chapter 13, read along with me please, one of the very extraordinary things, something that did not that was not part of the passover meal took place. It says here, then Jesus poured water into the basin and he began to walk the disciples feet and to wipe them with a towel with which he was girded. And so he came to Simon Peter and he said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet?

And Jesus said to him, what I do you do not realize now, but you shall understand hereafter. And Peter said to him, Never shall you wash my feet. And Jesus answered him, If I do not wash you, you have no part with me. And Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. And Jesus said to him, he who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean.

And you are clean, but not all of you. For he knew that there was one who was betraying him. For this reason he said, not all of you are clean. Excuse me. Now I want you to go back to the, to the situation as the apostles came in.

Remember I said John and Peter organized this dinner. Apparently they had taken the best spots for themselves. Apparently there was an argument over this. Now you look over there and you see a basin and a towel and a pitcher of water some somewhat representing what was present in the room in those days. In those days, it was polite to receive your guests by washing their feet.

In other words, people would walk long distances. They wore sandals. I'm sorry, I need that excuse me, that water resistance. They would walk long distances. Thanks.

And, they would walk long distances. Their feet would be dirty, and they'd need their feet cleaned. And this was a job given only to the children. So if you're a dad and a mom, you had 4 or 5 kids, the youngest child would do this task because it was the lowest of tasks. Imagine bending down and washing some stranger's feet.

If you were a, a householder and you had slaves, a slave would do this job. But not any slave, the youngest slave. The slave on the lowest rank in your house would be assigned to washing the feet of the people who would come into your home. And so the water and the pitcher and the and the bowl and the towel were set aside so that the people coming in would have their feet washed. But what happens?

Peter and John come in, they look at each other, and they look at the bowl, they look at the water, and they say, Well I'm not washing this guy's foot. And John says, Well if he thinks, he already thinks he's a big shot taking the first spot. I'm not washing his feet, so they walk in and get everything ready. And then the other apostles come in 1 by 1. And could you imagine it?

If you were there, they walk in, they see the picture, they see the towel, they look at themselves, they look at the other ones. They're thinking, I'm not gonna wash these guys' feet. I'm not gonna wash my own feet. And one after another, they walk in and sit down and not one of them has their feet washed, which was really impolite in that society. But after all, they were apostles.

They were men of prominence. Peter and John had the right and the left side of the Lord. They were much too important to get down on their knees and wash their own feet, let alone wash the feet of someone else. So what does Jesus do? He hears the rumblings, He hears the arguments, He hears the apostles.

After 3 long years of teaching and encouragement, He sees them arguing with one another, debating who is the most important among them. So what does He do? Does He say, Hey, everybody be quiet. I'm gonna show you I'm gonna do a miracle here. I'm gonna turn you all into frogs.

I'll show you who's important. You know? Is that what he does? That's what I do. You wanna, you know, isn't that what we do?

You wanna see who's tough? I'll show you who's tough. So what does he do? He goes over and he takes the bowl, and he pours the water in, and he gets down on his knees, the miracle worker, the Son of God. And he begins washing the feet of these sinful men, one after another, even Judas's feet.

It's one thing I'd wash my wife's feet. I've washed my children's feet. I might even wash my friends' feet. But my enemy? The one I know is gonna betray me, he's the last guy in the world.

I wouldn't wash his feet, not for anything. Now we don't wash feet today because it's no longer a sign of courtesy. We don't do that today. I know there are some churches that go in for foot washing and all that as a symbolic thing, but we don't do that today. That's not we've got shoes, we've got floor mats, we've got vacuum cleaners.

We don't do that today as a sign of courtesy. We don't do that today as a sign of humility. We do, however, continue to humble ourselves in service. We do that, don't we? Service is still in style, isn't it, for Christians?

Humility, I think, is still part of our life our lives as Christians. We do that. This is done, of course, in a lot of ways and situations as we volunteer our time and talents to serve the church. When I get up on a Saturday and I come and sweep up, you know, the parking lot or clean windows or do whatever, I'm washing your feet. When you come early on a Saturday morning on your day off, and you go in and you fill 500 little communion cups, one day they ought to come up with a better system, but one at a time.

500 little communion cups, one little cup at a time. You're washing my feet. When you get up and plan your lesson, late on a Thursday night instead of going to bed, and arrive here a half hour early, so that you can be ready with your toys and your games and your lessons and your handouts for little children, you are washing their feet. And when we pass the offering every Sunday, we are washing each other's feet. And I want to make a note here about this.

Do you think it was not a sacrifice for Jesus to get on his knees in front of ugly sinful men and washed their feet. Do you think that was not some kind of moral spiritual sacrifice for him to do that? There's a relationship between that and our giving. And it's this, when we give sacrificially, we are humbling ourselves before God and before one another. And you notice that the operative word that I used here was sacrificially.

When we give and our giving has absolutely no effect on our lives, then where's the sacrifice? Where's the humility? When our giving makes us less than what we could be, then we've begun to learn the lesson of the tau. And so this morning, we're going to begin our communion service with the offering. Because on the night that Jesus shared the passover with his apostles, the first thing that happened before the bread, before the cup was sacrifice, was humility, was service.

And so keeping in keeping with that theme, this morning, we're going to begin our communion service with the offering. Would you join me please as we pray for our offering? Dear Father in Heaven, we thank you so much for having gathered us here. We are grateful, father, for the many blessings that you give upon us. We are thankful, heavenly father, for your son, Jesus Christ, and the image of humility and sacrifice and service that he has etched onto our hearts through your word and in your spirit.

Heavenly father, we pray that each time we give, not only this time, but when we serve in other ways, we pray that it will reflect the sacrificial humility that Jesus provided us in the story of the Last Supper. Heavenly Father, bless our giving this day and strengthen us in your love that we might lower ourselves, that we might make ourselves less than what we are through our giving. Heavenly Father, we know that we feed our pride through our wealth. We pray that you help us to humble ourselves, lessen ourselves before you at this time. We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. Matthew 26, beginning in verse 20. Matthew writes, now when evening had come, he was reclining at the table with the 12 disciples. And as they were eating, he said, truly I say to you that one of you will betray me. And being deeply grieved, they each one began to say to him, surely not I, Lord.

And he answered and said, he who dipped his hand with me in the bowl is the one who will betray me. The Son of Man is to go just as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. And Judas, who was betraying him, answered and said, surely it is not I, Rabbi. And he said to him, you have set it yourself.

After washing the feet of the disciples, the meal continues in its normal course. Jesus takes the cup, blesses it, continues to eat. And let's face it, the apostles are shell shocked. I mean, they've been humiliated, embarrassed by their own pride, their own Lord. Imagine your your grandfather getting in front of you and washing your feet.

You'd say, Oh no, grandpa, please don't do that. You know, you'd hate for him to do that. So they're feeling bad. They've been silenced. They're happy to get on with the meal.

And so if if they weren't shell shocked enough, out of nowhere Jesus said, oh, by the way, one of you is a traitor. And it's interesting to see how they reacted to that. In Mark, chapter 14, Mark tells us that they all started talking at once. Is it me? Is it me?

Lord, is it me? They started shouting, 1 on top of another. And Luke, in his description, says that after they they stopped kind of asking the Lord and all pandemonium breaking out, they kind of began to talk to each other and whisper to each other. Okay. What do you think?

Well, you know, Peter, that guy never trusted him from the start. You know, they they started having those little, little meetings among themselves. It's left to John, seated next to Jesus, to tell us that after Jesus exposes him, Judas leaves the room and seeks out the Jewish officials in order to offer his help in betraying Jesus. After Judas leaves, there's something very interesting here that takes place. Remember I told you that during the week before the Passover, each family would make sure that there'd be no leaven, no fermentation at all in the house so that they could, aspire to being pure, the purity of it.

But with the with the departure of Judas, Jesus has expelled the final impurity among them. Peter and John had been very careful to make sure that the food was right. It was kosher. Jesus makes sure that the people are right by expelling the one who is to be his traitor. And so in Matthew 26 beginning in verse 26, we read, and while they were eating, Jesus took some bread and after a blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take eat, this is my body.

And when he had given a when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink from it all of you, For this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. And so they're at the end of the meal. They've eaten all of the meat, the salad or the mixed greens. They've eaten most of the bread.

They're down to the last cup. Four cups they took. They're down to the last cup, perhaps just a few pieces of bread. And so the bread without leaven will no longer represent the holiness of the people and the purity that they should have, but now they'll represent His pure body, His holy nature offered on behalf of their sins. And the fruit of the vine will no longer represent the blessings and the abundance of the promised land, but rather will become a symbol of the blessings that we will have on account of the offering of his blood.

And so at that moment, Jesus changes the direction of the meal. See, the Passover meal, the direction of it was in the past. They were remembering the past. Now what Jesus does is he takes the bread and the last cup and he points them to the future. And every time we take it, yes, there's a component of thinking of the past but there's also a component of thinking of the future.

What do these things mean for us? They mean nothing for us in the past, but they mean everything to us as we look to the future. And so during this time, no one will ask, what does this mean? No one will ask that anymore because what this Lord's Supper means will be proclaimed every hour of every day of every week of every year until the end of time. No one will have to ask what it means.

The meaning of it will be proclaimed throughout the world, throughout all of the ages until Jesus returns. So this is Jesus' last Passover, but it'll also be the apostles' last Passover Because from now on, they and all the disciples after them will remember this night and share the bread and the wine, remembering Jesus, but hoping for the future. And so today as we enter into this, and I mentioned that you'll be eating true unleavened bread with Gloria Miller, by the way, who made that. Glenna helped us. I'm gonna give credit for for to whom credit is due here.

We'll be taking this and we'll be taking the cup in the same spirit. The reason we changed the dynamics of it, the reason we changed the chairs around, we shuffled the cards, was because it gets old week after week. We're thinking about the movie we saw last night while we're taking the bread. We're thinking about what we're gonna do. And I'm not accusing you, it's human nature.

We've done it a 1000 times. We just broke it up. So we could be reminded of the fact that what we are doing here in spirit in spirit had the same power that it had 2000 years ago. You know why? Because the spirit of the one who shared the meal with the apostles is with us today as we share it with him.

The continuity of history is that the same Lord who broke the bread and shared the cup with those 11 men that night is present with us today as we break this bread and as we drink this cup. He is with us in the very same way. Please keep that in mind. Please keep that respect, not only as we share it today, but as we share the Lord's supper from here on. Let us offer a blessing for the bread.

Heavenly father, we thank you. We thank you for giving us a reminder each week, not only of the price of our salvation, but the reality and the hope for it in the future. Heavenly father, bless the hands that break the bread. Bless the hearts that meditate. Bless the lives of those who are gathered here to celebrate, to honor, and to express their faith and their hope in you, and in your divine Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. If you've noticed, our elders have come to the frontier to break the bread and to distribute it with other brothers, and they'll come in a moment to take a portion of the fruit of the vine to share with you. We could have done it other ways, but we did it this way to signify the fact that there is an unbroken link between the table at which Jesus and his apostles shared this meal, and the table that we, each week, share the meal. It's unfortunate that because of sound and light and so on and so forth, the stage area is there, like a theater, and everyone is back here. A more correct spiritual design would be this here because all of us are around the Lord's table.

We are all at the table. Now there are some religions that say that certain leaders are direct descendants from the apostles. We understand that the Bible teaches us that our elders that serve in leadership role of our congregation, they are the descendants. They are the spiritual inheritors of the leadership of the Lord's church. And so they come to the table, the table that all of us are sitting around, and they are serving us as Jesus served the apostles, and as the apostles served one another in this day.

Let's take this cup this morning, remembering that we're one body, remembering that we are all sitting at this table. If this stage could be big enough and the table could be big enough, we'd all be sitting around it. And let's remember the blessings that come for one that sits at the table today. Shall we pray? Heavenly Father, we thank you for this cup, this cup of blessing that spills over into our lives in so many ways, Father.

Thank you for sending your son to die for our sins. Thank you for resurrecting him to prove that he truly is the Messiah. Thank you, heavenly father, for the opportunity to remember that, to proclaim that, and to hope in that each time we gather around this table. Father, bless the hands that will serve your meal this day, and bless the hearts that will receive it. In Jesus, we pray.

Amen. And so the harsh dawn rose to see the Son of God labor up to Golgotha's hill, the burden of men's sins on his bruised and bloodied back. The Roman soldiers skilled in death quickly mounted this despised Jew on his cross between 2 criminals, satisfied that their work was nearly done for the day. Some amusement for the crowd as the deed long awaited was completed when the Savior's labored breathing whispered, it is finished. All that was left was to dispose of the body which, to their surprise, was claimed by prominent Jews, saving the guards the trouble of carrying the dead man to the common grave where all criminals were buried.

And so he laid 3 days, cut, scarred, pierced, battered, bruised, awaiting the glorious outcome for which men and angels had hoped for since the beginning of time. Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the 1st day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it. And his appearance was like lightning, and his garment as white as snow.

And the guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men. And the angel answered and said to the women, do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for he has risen just as he said. Come, see the place where he was lying. And go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you into Galilee.

There you will see him. Behold, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to report it to his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them, and they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. And then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid.

Go and take word to my brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they shall see me.