Matthew 26:19-35 | A New Covenant

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Would you take your Bible with me and open it to Matthew chapter 26?

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

It's good and appropriate to begin our fall ministry focus with a passage about the covenant God made with his people through Christ, enabling us to become sons and daughters of the living God and to actively remember that covenant by participating in its remembrance.

We find this covenant accounted by Matthew, recounted by Matthew in Matthew 26.

If you direct your attention to verse 17, I'm going to read through verse 30 this morning as we begin.

Matthew 26, beginning in verse 17, says, Now on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?

Jesus apparently already had this all figured out.

He said, Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, The teacher says, My time is at hand.

I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.

And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover.

When it was evening, he reclined at the table with the twelve.

As they were eating, he said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me.

And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him, one after another, Is it I, Lord?

He answered, He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me.

The Son of Man goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that man whom the s by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.

Now Judas, who would betray him, answered, Is it I, Rabbi?

He said to him, You've said so.

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take and eat.

This is my body.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Could you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the scriptures that you have given us this firsthand account by a disciple of that Passover night.

Lord, I ask that you would remove from our from our minds and from our hearts all of the unnecessary distractions of life.

That you would enable us to have ears to hear your word and eyes to see you in it.

May we make much of you this morning to the praise of your glory.

Amen.

Reading and understanding what is happening in this passage is sort of like stepping back into another time and another culture.

If you are not familiar with Jewish customs and you haven't grown up in church, what we've just read here may feel like an entirely different world.

So we'll be helped by reviewing the details and the character of this celebratory meal so that we can feel some of what those disciples felt on that night.

You know, we are 2,000 years from this moment in the life of Christ.

But this night of which Matthew wrote was already, already at least 2,000 years in the making.

Now Matthew shows us the big picture of this Jewish Passover.

I wanted to start this morning and some of what we covered last week, back in verse 17, because he says there that it was during this feast of the unleavened bread.

This is a holiday season for the Jewish people.

That title, unleavened bread, the feast of unleavened bread, came to refer to the feast of the Passover and the feast of the first fruits together.

You might say it was like us referring to Christmas and New Year's as the holidays.

So for the Jewish people, the feast of unleavened bread was a whole period of time connecting two different religious festivals.

And the disciples now are preparing for the first significant aspect of that holiday, the Passover meal.

Jesus had already prearranged the location with the owner of the upper room, or maybe the man was a follower who had offered the space to Jesus and said, Hey, whenever you need it, just let me know.

So Jesus told his disciples to go and to say to him, it's time we need that space.

We've read that during that meal Jesus revealed that Judas would betray him.

And then Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper, with which we're familiar if you've grown up in church.

Most people in church settings are familiar with most of the elements of this account.

But I wonder if we really know what Matthew intends to tell us.

There are some significant details about this text that impact us as believers in the Lord's church.

And for the next few moments, I would like us to focus on one of those truths that is a shocking surprise.

Matthew was silent about something significant.

And the silence is almost deafening.

There's a vital component to this night that is absent from Matthew's account.

And if we were immersed in the Jewish culture of the time, we might be inclined to rapidly pick up that silence and say, hey, wait a minute, what about this?

But since we're not, it's helpful for us to take a little walk through history to help us remember what is this Passover evening, this Passover celebration, this meal, all about.

Well, we have to understand that the background starts about 1,500 years before this particular night.

It began in ancient Egypt, where the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt.

They'd been there for more than 400 years.

And Pharaoh would not let God's people go.

Through Moses and Aaron, God brought ten plagues upon Egypt to judge them, to show his power to the king of Egypt.

He brought water turned to blood, an infestation of frogs, an infestation of gnats, then of flies.

There's boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death, decay.

And then God threatened to kill the firstborn of all the animals and all the people in Egypt.

He promised to send his destroying angel to kill all the firstborns of animals and human beings.

And God would use that tenth and final act of power to redeem, to buy out, to bring out, to rescue his people from Egyptian dominion.

But to receive that redemption, Israel was required to trust God through an unusual action.

Israel was required to trust God's word about the blood of a lamb.

Only one thing, only one thing stood between all of God's people and certain death.

Only one thing would separate God's people from the rest of the pagan Egyptians.

God told his people, take a lamb and slaughter that lamb and paint its blood on the doorposts of your home.

Keep your finger in Matthew 26 and look with me at Exodus chapter 12.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 12, if you don't know where that is, that's the second book of your Bible, very near the beginning.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 12.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

Beginning in verse 1, it says, The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be for you the beginning of months.

It's the institution of their new calendar.

It shall be the first month of the year for you.

Now verse 3.

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household, and if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons.

According to what each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb.

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old.

You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it.

Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts, and you shall let none of it remain until the morning, anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.

In this manner you shall eat it, with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste.

It is the Lord's Passover.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.

I am the Lord.

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are.

And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

And this day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

Here's where we see God's pattern for the Passover, here in Exodus chapter 12.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

This is something brand new that God is telling his people, I'm beginning something that you are to continue.

He's even changing their calendar.

He's saying, This day, this month of redemption, this redeeming month is going to be the first month of your calendar.

He declared the Passover to be in that first month, originally called Aviv, but now called Nisan.

And on the tenth day of that month, every household unit would find a lamb or a goat.

A year old.

A male.

It had to be an unblemished one without a limp, without any kind of sickness or problem.

That was a provision for small families, God said.

And if you were too small to consume a lamb, then you could join with your nearest neighbor, your next door neighbor.

Find out however many people are there, and you get a lamb for everybody that's there.

You watch it for three days to make sure that it's not sick, that it is unblemished, and then you slaughter it on the 14th day of the month.

Now, what they didn't recognize was that eating that lamb and eating that bread on that night would also be provision for their journey out of Egypt.

It would be the last meat that they eat for quite some time.

And the blood would be a sign of trust in God's promise.

Try to put yourself in an Israelite's home.

And you're hearing your elders come from Moses and telling you, kill a lamb, take its blood and smear it on your doorposts.

What?

Really?

Yeah, that's what God said.

God said, trust my word and put blood on the doorposts.

Trust the blood by trusting my word.

That is the second characteristic of this Passover.

The first is this unblemished lamb or goat.

The second requires its death.

The shedding of its blood.

The blood was caught in a bowl when the lamb was slaughtered, and that blood was painted on the doorposts.

That blood was a sign to the destroying angel that the people in that home trusted in God's promise that the lamb's blood would save them from God's judgment.

The lamb was then roasted and consumed that evening without breaking bones.

Nothing was left over.

The sacredness of the meal required leftovers to be burned.

That meal also included unleavened bread.

Verse 8 says, They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, they shall eat it.

Why unleavened bread?

Some places in Scripture, leavening, yeast, is connected with sin.

It tells us that sin spreads just like yeast spreads.

That's not what this is about, though.

Unleavened bread here in the Passover meal on this very first Passover night had to do with leavening agents taking time to come to effect.

And Israel didn't have time.

They were to do this that evening.

Because at midnight they were going to be told, get out.

You don't have time for yeast to have its effect.

So this is unleavened bread that can be baked very quickly.

It's not like sitting down in your easy chair in front of your TV and having a relaxed meal.

Notice verse 11.

How are they to eat it?

It says, in this manner you shall eat it, with your belt fastened, with your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste.

Your stuff in your mouth, because you're going to go on a really long walk.

Carrying everything that you can possibly carry.

Eat it quickly.

The reason is in verses 12 and 13.

God would pass through the land in judgment.

And the only protection from that judgment was trust in God's promise that the Lamb's blood would be sufficient.

If they trusted in God's promise about the blood, he would pass over their homes, sparing them from judgment.

Now that that Passover meal became a provision for Israel's future continuation.

It was a memorial of remembrance.

In verse 14, he calls it, This shall be for you a memorial day.

Well, what are they to remember?

Well, that's exactly what they're supposed to do.

Remember, tell the congregation, verse 3, that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb.

He goes on, as we read, talks about everything that's to take place.

This shall be for you a remembrance day, a memorial day, and you shall keep it throughout your generations.

He goes on to describe the feast of unleavened bread that follows it.

And he connects these two and says, here's how you are to do it.

It is to be remembered.

This is a significant event in the life of Israel.

This rescue is to be remembered because it is also a day of redemption.

Verse 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted, its head and its legs and its inner parts, let none of it remain.

And the blood that's already out of the animal when it's roasted shall be a sign.

And when I see you, I will pass over.

Because he's redeeming them by the blood of the Lamb.

Notice verse 14.

You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

This tells us that God's provision for the Passover was not just remembrance, was not just redemption, but to teach successive generations about God's saving work.

God wants his people to never forget his powerful work of redemption, in which they were called upon to trust his word about a lamb's blood.

Craziest thing ever.

Trust what I say about the blood of a lamb.

Israel celebrated the Passover.

Again, Scripture tells us when they left Egypt and then again when they entered the promised land.

We don't find any record of Israel keeping the Passover for the 40 years of wandering in the desert.

It's just when they leave Egypt and when they end that 40 years of wandering and are about to enter the promised land.

Maybe they kept it.

We don't know.

It's just not recorded for us.

But what does record, what is recorded for us, reminds us that this is a program that God is doing to rescue his people.

Now gradually, changes began to take place in that Passover celebration.

God later ordained that it was to be celebrated in the city of Jerusalem.

It became one of the required pilgrimage feasts where every Israelite male was required to go to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast.

That meant that you had to take the lamb with you or buy a lamb in the city because the sacrifice had to be made in the city of Jerusalem.

Remember, before it was made in Egypt in each home.

Forty years later it was made in the desert.

Throughout time it came to be in Jerusalem.

There was no longer any need to put the blood on the doorposts of the house.

It became a remembrance.

Changes began to be instituted to remember various aspects of the first Passover meal.

And by the time of Jesus, the process of the Passover meal had evolved into a very lengthy process.

First would be the gathering at the temple for the sacrifice of the lambs.

The priests would take all of the people that were gathered together and separate them into groups.

Each group would bring their sheep to a priest who would slaughter.

Another priest would catch the blood of the lamb in a basin.

That basin, we're told, was passed down by brigade until the last priest in line took the blood of the lamb and tossed it on the altar of burnt offering.

And that continued as thousands of sheep were slaughtered at the temple.

That process served as the reminder of that very first Passover in Egypt, when the blood was caught and painted on the doorposts.

After the lamb was slaughtered and the blood was tossed onto the burnt offering sacrifice, the lamb was taken home and cooked whole over the fire.

Special candles were lit to mark the beginning of the meal.

Then the head of the household took a first cup of wine and would remember verbally with his household the first statement of Exodus 6, verse 6, where God said, I will bring you out.

Exodus 6:6

The head of household would offer a praise or a blessing before everyone drank from the cup.

He would say something like, Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine, who brought us out of Egypt.

Then they would wash their hands in a bowl, in a basin.

After that, they would take some bitter herbs, dip them in salt water, and eat those bitter herbs with salt water so that they could be viscerally reminded of the tears that their ancestors shed in slavery in Egypt.

A second cup of wine was then brought out.

Not consumed yet, but brought out to remind people of how God delivered Israel, specifically through the ten plagues.

This is often called the cup of plagues.

The Haggadah followed.

That's a Hebrew word for the telling.

And that was often done by a child asking scripted questions.

Four questions based on Exodus 6, verses 6 through 7.

Exodus 6:6–7

And the head of the household answered each of those questions by retelling the story of God's redemption from Egypt.

Next came the singing of the first part of the halel.

Your Bible might have it listed that way, beginning at Psalm 113.

So they would sing Psalm 113 and Psalm 114.

Singing of the first part of the halel, the praises.

Then that cup that had been brought out was passed around and consumed, that cup of plagues.

Reminding that after the bitter tears, God brought plagues in his power.

Hands were rinsed again, followed by unleavened bread and herbs dipped in a mixture of fruit, nuts, ginger, garlic, wine, etc.

Varied.

You could make it however you wanted.

Then came the eating of the roasted lamb, followed by the third cup of wine.

Based upon Exodus 6.6, God's statement, I will redeem you, which is often referred to as the cup of redemption.

After that third cup, they would sing the rest of the halel, Psalms 115 through 118, and then consume a fourth and final cup of wine.

That fourth and final cup of wine referred to God's statement to his people, I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.

And that concluded the whole evening, the whole meal consumed together.

Now, by New Testament times, there were some variations that were allowed in the tradition.

There's evidence of different mixtures in the mixture of fruit, nuts, ginger, garlic, wine.

Sometimes things were moved around a little bit.

But the essentials remained the same.

Sheep were slaughtered on the day of Passover.

The blood was caught, and it was offered to God.

The sheep was cooked whole and consumed.

There were the cups of wine and the bitter herbs and the unleavened bread.

But there were other requirements that were added to it over time.

Came to be said that the Passover had to be consumed within the old city walls of Jerusalem.

So it was a much smaller place, as you can imagine.

Everybody coming for Passover had to be packed into that smaller place.

And you had to stay within the city limits of Jerusalem during the entire festival week.

That meant that the city limits kept getting expanded.

Because as the thousands turned into tens of thousands and the tens of thousands turned into hundreds of thousands, they had to provide room for these people to keep their traditions of men.

That's why Jesus, in the previous section, is in the city of Bethany, the village of Bethany, about a mile or so outside of Jerusalem.

That was within the city limits for the Passover.

On the Passover day itself, you could not leave the city limits of Jerusalem proper, which is why Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives and didn't go beyond there.

So we see in Matthew 26, verse 6, that Jesus is in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper.

Matthew 26:6

Disciples know that they need to prepare.

They come to him in verse 17 and say, we have to get going on the preparation here.

We assume that they know how to prepare and what they need to prepare.

Jesus tells them the protocol he wants them to follow.

And in verse 19, it says they did as Jesus directed them and they prepared the Passover.

Very succinct and concise statement there.

That includes everything that would be needed for the Passover meal.

They took care of everything that was needed for their evening Passover meal.

Now the Gospels don't include every single detail of the evening because they're not all and each one individually important to the author's account.

So we have to look carefully at what is recorded to see what the authors see as most important to their account.

And from Matthew's perspective, Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of the Passover.

He perfects the Passover and brings it to completion.

First, Jesus says the unleavened bread that had to be cooked and eaten in haste no longer represents the hurried nature of the meal and having to get up and leave Egypt.

Now it pictures the broken body of Jesus.

So the picture of bread changes.

No longer do they eat the unleavened bread to remind them of leaving Egypt in haste.

The unleavened or more breakable, crispy nature is now an image of the breaking of Jesus' body in his giving himself for us.

The third cup of the meal, the cup of redemption, now pictures ultimate redemption through Jesus.

So when it says in verse 27 that Jesus took a cup and gave thanks, most scholars agree that the cup referenced here is the third cup in the meal.

They've had the first cup and the bitter herbs with salt water, followed by the second cup and its fruit and nut mixture.

Then the main course, and now the third cup of redemption based on Exodus 6.6, where God says, I will redeem you.

That makes this cup a powerful message.

Jesus says it depicts his redeeming blood.

He says, just as God redeemed you from the slavery in Egypt, so now Jesus says, I will redeem you with my blood.

There's no fourth cup of wine mentioned here in Matthew.

They did, though, in verse 30, sing the closing hymns, those last parts of the Hillel in Psalms 115 to 118.

And then they left the upper room for the Garden of Gethsemane.

Why is there no fourth cup?

Why no conclusion there?

Well, just because it's not mentioned doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Again, the gospel writers record what they do for a reason.

They're trying to tell us something.

Jesus does inform us that he will not consume the fruit of the vine again until he does it with us in the future.

And that shows us, I think, that the Passover was not simply looking back at the past, but it's also looking forward again to God's gathering of his people and consuming this with them.

In the same way, when God's people today partake of the Lord's table, we look back at what Jesus has done for us and we look forward to doing this again with him in his glorious presence.

Now, what is missing?

Well, the fourth cup, you already said that.

Yes.

The fourth cup is a minor element.

What is the deafening silence in this text?

What would every Jewish person have noticed is missing from this description of the meal?

What was the most important part of the first Passover that would be obliviously absent from this account?

I say oblivious because it seems like, well, Matthew, you don't know what you're doing.

It's obviously got to be in there.

You have an idea.

Matthew's account of this Passover meal walks us through the Passover night, where they're obviously remembering the Passover.

They probably would have gone through the Haggadah with the disciples filling the parts, the role of the children asking the scripted questions, and Jesus recounting for them.

And imagine for that the Lord Jesus Himself recounting how he led Israel out of Egypt.

Matthew leaves out the lamb at this remembrance.

No lamb is mentioned in the gospel record of this Passover.

My friends, it's because Jesus is our Passover lamb.

For the person familiar with the Passover meal, leaving out any mention of the Lamb would have been the equivalent of saying, we're going to have our Thanksgiving meal with no turkey.

Or we're going to celebrate Christmas with no thought of the birth of Jesus Christ.

The pagan equivalent would be we're going to celebrate Christmas with no gifts.

Notice what Jesus says.

He says, this, verse 28, this is my blood of the covenant.

Where does the blood come from?

The lamb.

What would that mean?

What would that mean for the disciples?

The blood of Passover lambs, the lambs were taken to the Temple Mount and handed over to a priest who would slaughter the lamb and catch its blood, and the blood of Passover lambs was poured out each Passover on the altar.

And now Jesus says that his blood will be poured out.

Where is the lamb?

I said that this night was 2,000 years or more in the making.

We might naturally think its beginnings go back to that first Passover in Egypt long ago.

To that night in which Israel was called to trust in a sacrifice whose blood would shield them from the wrath of God against a sinful people.

But I would argue that this night in Matthew 26 had its beginnings long before that.

As an institution, Passover began in Egypt.

But this night that Matthew records echoes a moment hundreds of years before that first deadly Passover night.

As we look through Matthew's record of that Passover evening, we can rightly ask, where is the Lamb?

And because Matthew knows his Old Testament so well, I can't help but think that he had another moment in mind when that same question was asked.

Think with me back to Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

God sent Abraham and his son Isaac to a mountain called Moriah, which most likely was the Temple Mount.

And he told his son, told Abraham, go and take your son, your only son, the one that you love, and offer him there as a burnt offering.

They go part of the way and then they stop, and Abraham says to his servants who were going along with them, you guys stay here, and Isaac and I are going to continue on.

So Abraham got up early in the morning, took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, tied it up in a bundle, and put it on a donkey, probably.

He arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

On the third day, Abraham looked far off and he could see where he was going, and so Abraham said to his young men, You stay here with the donkey, donkey, I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

How were they going to worship?

They were going to worship by Isaac being offered as a burnt offering.

Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering.

He laid it on his son Isaac, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife.

They went together.

And Isaac starts to get a little curious.

Hey Dad?

Yeah?

What's up, Isaac?

Look, we've got the fire in the wood.

Where is the lamb?

And Abraham said, God will provide for himself.

The lamb for a burnt offering.

My son.

A lamb is missing from Matthew's account because there is no longer a need for an animal sacrifice every year.

Because Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We are rescued from the wrath of God against our sins when we trust in the blood poured out for us.

Matthew didn't want us to see an animal sacrificed and eaten because he wanted us to see the blood of the true Lamb of God who was crucified for us.

In just a few hours from this point, Jesus would have his blood poured out just like the Passover lamb.

Like the lamb, Jesus' bones were not broken.

Like innocent Isaac, we ask our heavenly Father, Father, where is the Lamb?

And the Father says, I will provide for myself a lamb.

A perfect lamb.

Without blemish.

And of course, we don't eat that lamb.

Instead, we we eat bread and we drink the vine's fruit because that lamb said, This is now how you will remember your redemption.

I believe Matthew intentionally avoided any mention of the main course of the Passover meal so that we might ask, Father, where is the Lamb?

And all, all with eyes to see and with ears to hear respond with John the Baptist, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Isaac prepares us to see Jesus as our sacrifice by enabling Matthew to subtly ask, where's the Lamb?

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus.

We humbly come before you, looking to you as the Lamb of God.

We don't hear the bleeding of the sheep.

We don't smell them.

We don't participate in the slaughtering of the lamb and the cooking of the lamb.

Because you are the perfect one who fulfilled that.

And so we gather together in trust of God's promise that all who believe in the blood of the Lamb will be saved, will be redeemed.

We ask in our haggadah, in our asking of the scripted questions, knowing the answer.

Where is the Lamb?

And we know the answer.

He is there on the cross.

A body broken for us and blood shed for us.

But this Lamb will not remain so.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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