Mark 14:1–31 — Do This in Remembrance

This sermon is from Mark 14, verses 1-31, and is entitled, Do This in Remembrance.

Mark 14:1–31

It was delivered to Ecclesia Churches on Sunday, December 14, 2025.

In Mark 14, we begin to walk through the final days of the life of Jesus.

All of the public confrontation with the religious leaders has passed, and now they plot his death

in private.

All of the public teaching is done, and now Jesus willingly walks into the final private moments with his disciples.

All of the empty threats are done, and this very real threat takes shape with a betrayal by one of the twelve, no less, and the abandonment of Jesus by them all.

And it is in the midst of a meal sitting with the very people who will betray and abandon him

that he initiates a new covenant between God and man, a payment for our debt that he alone

is qualified to pay and which he pays freely, a celebration that's instituted for his future

followers to continue remembering who Jesus is and what he has done until he returns.

and his final steps of obedience into the garden where he will be handed over to death.

Most important to this entire passage is that it gives us the big picture to understand the

sacrifice of Jesus. And that's actually the primary purpose for communion. It is a regular

remembrance for those who follow Jesus of how worthy he is of our worship, of how willing he

was to sacrifice himself for us, and his sacrifice is sufficient. It is enough for the neediest person

who would repent and turn to Jesus. It also gives us a right understanding of the practice of

communion, which is important because it's a central practice of Christians since the beginning

of the church. This passage really helps us to find a place of balance with Scripture for why we

don't want to view communion too low. We don't want to cheapen it to just a religious symbol

that we can receive without the heart being involved. I think many evangelicals fall into

this mistake, that it is more than just a tradition. It's not just a song we sing or a prayer we read.

It's something that we must engage our heart and mind in, or we should not do it at all.

We also don't want to turn it into some kind of supernatural ritual that gives us some measure

of salvation on its own.

This is the failure of the modern Catholic Church and many other offshoots of biblical

Christianity.

The bread and the cup do not become the body and the blood, and they cannot save you any

more than baptism can without your willing and active faith in Christ.

So this passage is primarily about the sacrifice of Jesus.

And we'll see three aspects of that come out of this text.

Jesus was the worthy sacrifice.

Jesus was a willing sacrifice.

And Jesus was the sufficient sacrifice.

So let's go ahead and begin with the first 11 verses of this passage, trusting that the

Lord is going to teach us from his word and is going to convict us and encourage us to

bring our whole hearts to him.

This is beginning with verse 1.

It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him.

For they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.

And while he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment, of pure nard, very costly.

And she broke the flask and poured it over his head.

There were some who said to themselves indignantly,

Why was the ointment wasted like that?

For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor.

And they scolded her.

But Jesus said, Leave her alone.

Why do you trouble her?

She has done a beautiful thing to me.

For you always have the poor with you.

and whenever you want you can do good for them, but you will not always have me.

She has done what she could.

She has anointed my body beforehand for burial.

And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world,

what she has done will be told in memory of her.

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve,

went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.

And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money, and he sought an opportunity to betray him.

We have hopefully become very familiar at this point with the way Mark likes to compare and contrast things to make a point.

It's been lovingly dubbed the Markin sandwich by theologians because he makes a point by putting something important right in the middle of two other things to make it stand out more clearly.

It's a kind of contrast or clarity that he's adding by arranging things in this way.

So here we have another one of those in which he begins telling us in verses 1 and 2 about

the people plotting against Jesus.

Then he gives us in great detail this story about this woman who comes to worship Jesus

with a gift of great value.

And then goes back again in verse 10 and 11 to tell us about the plot taking shape again,

specifically with Judas.

Mark is making a statement in this section, and it all centers around this woman who not

only seems to understand who Jesus is, but also wants to worship him with everything

that she has.

Perhaps through her own example, which Jesus said will be told everywhere the gospel is

proclaimed, we can also consider the worth of Jesus and our response to him in this.

So let's just start by doing a little comparison of the people like the religious leaders in

Judas with this unnamed woman and kind of see what jumps out. Let's start by looking at what

they each possess already. The religious leaders have a lot of influence in their role, and they

want to accumulate even more of it. They're afraid of losing it. These are people who have basically

won the lottery when it comes to cultural influence among their people. They are like

the super influencers of today. The disciple Judas has something even more valuable. He has

proximity to Jesus. He's been chosen as one of the 12 disciples. The other disciples will become

people who literally change the world in the years to come. The woman doesn't have notoriety,

but she does have something of value. This nard that she has is a real treasure. It's worth,

it says almost a year's wages. So we're talking tens of thousands of dollars. It's like a very

expensive oil, which would have been purchased in this amount, probably not for use, but as a way to

store and pass on value. And that's probably how she came by it. It was probably a family heirloom

that would have been passed down to her because we know that most women in this time did not have

the ability to raise that kind of capital. So what do each of these people do with what they possess?

The religious leaders, in spite of their influence, are so worried about losing it that it's all they

can think about. They are willing to trade their integrity for more influence. They are willing to

kill Jesus, trading him in order to hold on to the influence and the power that they have.

What about Judas? Judas has proximity to Jesus. He has potentially a front seat to the coming

kingdom of heaven in the beginning of the church, but he's blinded by wealth, by his own agenda that

we maybe don't fully understand, but regardless, he is willing to betray Jesus for temporary wealth.

And he ends up trading Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, which is about $20,000, so not

an enormous amount, but also not a small one. So far, these people are willing to trade Jesus

for something that they value more. But what about the woman? She gives up what was almost certainly

her most valuable earthly possession, and she gives it up just to show how highly she values

Jesus. And it's not just a gift of something valuable, it is an offering to Jesus, breaking

the jar that it's in with this costly substance, pouring it over his head. This is perhaps one of

the best examples of worship that we have in Mark's gospel. This gift, like the widow putting

her last two coins in the offering box, was a statement about the worthiness of the one to whom

she gave it. The disciples in the room cannot understand it because they don't see Jesus

through the same eyes that this woman does. They have a better strategy for the money that could

have been received. They have a nonprofit structure in mind. They have ways to help the poor. But this

woman didn't come in the room with a strategy to do the most good. She came in with a desire to

worship, the one who is worthy of our everything. She even seems to understand some of what Jesus

has said over and over about his approaching death and sacrifice, and Jesus says that she

has anointed him for it. I find it really interesting how often women are highlighted

in the Gospel of Mark compared with other places in Scripture, and even more interesting that

they are usually the ones to see Jesus for who he is. On the other hand, most of the 12 men closest

to Jesus would eventually figure it out. Thomas a little slower than the rest, right? But the women

who in that culture had so little were the first to see the worth of Jesus. I think there's something

to that. So I want to ask maybe an uncomfortable question. When was the last time that you came to

Jesus with a heart like that of this woman. One of the worst things that the modern worship

movement has done for the church, and I'm putting that in air quotes that you can't see,

is to convince us that worship is something we come to the church gathering to get something from.

That the songs we sing in our gatherings are about pleasing us and sounding good to our ears and

filling us and satisfying us. That we can come to church and have our attendance somehow make us

look better than we are. That we've maybe fooled God into giving us his favor. That view of the

worship gathering is like a cancer in the American church. And quite honestly, it is more in line with

the heart of Judas than anyone else in this passage. If we want to worship Jesus in a way

that pleases him, in a way that Jesus calls beautiful, then we must come with a desire to

pour ourselves out at his feet and proclaim that he is worthy because he is, holding our greatest

treasures before him with open hands because he is worthy of them. And communion for most Christian

churches is really the highlight of Christian worship. It is this moment that a lot of our

center around in which our worship of Jesus is expressed clearly in both the proclamation of what

he has done for us and our surrender to the work of Jesus in us. So just like in order to worship

truly, we must recognize the worth of Christ in order to celebrate communion truly, we must

recognize the unending worthiness of Jesus. In this next part of our passage, we're going to see

in addition to being a worthy sacrifice, Jesus was also a willing sacrifice,

willing to put all of the plans in place for what would be his final meal.

So let's go ahead and read verses 12 through 16 together.

And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb,

his disciples said to him,

Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?

And he sent two of his disciples and said to them,

Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.

Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house,

The teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

And he will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready.

There, prepare for us.

And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them,

and they prepared the Passover.

As far as our timeline goes for what we would call Holy Week, the week of Jesus' death and

resurrection, this is taking place on Wednesday.

Passover begins on Thursday evening.

So the fact that they were sacrificing the Passover lambs on Wednesday actually tells

us a lot about the atmosphere in Jerusalem during Passover. Our church actually gathered earlier this

year in my home to celebrate a Passover meal together, also called a Seder meal. And during

this multi-course guided meal, we talked about how the Israelites would have celebrated this meal

to remember leaving Egypt. But we also got to make all of the connections together that pointed to

the eventual final sacrifice of Jesus for all of mankind. It was a really powerful evening,

and we pushed the limits of kind of how many people we could fit in my house, and I'm excited

to do it again next year. We'll go a little more in-depth talking about Passover in a bit, but for

now, let's just put ourselves in Jerusalem during Passover. So if I thought my house was full, well,

that was every house in first century Jerusalem at Passover. This was a day in which hundreds of

thousands of pilgrims came from all corners of the Roman Empire to celebrate Passover

in Jerusalem. And the reason that the temple was sacrificing lambs the day before Passover was

likely just to accommodate the volume of lambs needed for Passover feasts. So generally,

we're talking one lamb for every 10 people or so. You would celebrate it as a family.

Single people would need to celebrate it with another family. And with estimates of 50,000

lambs being sacrificed, that gives you an idea of the size of these crowds. The expectation for

residents of Jerusalem during this time of year, particularly those with an extra room, was that

they make that space available to pilgrims coming in to celebrate Passover. So just like Bethlehem

at Jesus' birth, there was no room anywhere with the city at basically 10 times its usual population.

And it's into this context that Jesus' disciples rightly inquire, where in the world are we

supposed to find room for you to lead us through the Passover celebration? You'll notice that Jesus'

response is almost identical to another event that we talked about just a few weeks ago. In fact,

the whole thing plays out very similarly to the triumphal entry with palm branches.

So with perhaps a million people running around Jerusalem the day before Passover,

he says to his disciples, well, a guy with a water jug is going to meet you. Follow him to

the house that he's going to. Say to the person in that house this, and he'll take you to a room.

That's A, unoccupied, and B, is furnished, meaning with carpets on the floor to recline

on and prepare this meal.

So we don't know how that came about, but we know that Jesus had it all planned out,

that he had foreknowledge about these preparations.

And this is all very interesting, but the reason I share these details about Passover

in Jerusalem, and the reason that Mark tells us this is to show us that Jesus,

is the one executing this plan that is clearly leading to his execution.

You may have heard people describe Jesus as a good teacher who stood up to the establishment

and was silenced because of it. Or you may have heard him described as some sort of influential

man who was finally caught by the people he spoke out against, but that is simply not the case.

Jesus is not a tragic hero who unknowingly came here.

He foreknew and foretold everything that was going to happen.

He knew the plan of God, every detail of it, and willingly took every step into Jerusalem,

into the room for the Last Supper, into the Garden of Gethsemane where he would be arrested.

And I've got to say, most of the time, I'm grateful that God doesn't give me

the details of how everything is going to play out.

I'm glad that I don't know what I'm going to have to walk through most of the time anyway.

I'm glad to take my confidence in knowing that God is sovereign and his spirit is with me.

But Jesus walks knowingly toward the cross, toward a death of willing sacrifice to offer forgiveness of sin to anyone who would come to him willingly to receive it.

It's really important that we understand the gift that Jesus offers us.

We must come to willingly.

God's word clearly says that this gift of salvation is something that we cannot earn,

but it is also something we cannot be forced into absent of faith.

So the phrase that you'll hear me use often is that salvation is by grace alone,

through faith alone, in Christ alone.

by grace through faith in Christ. So just let me make that really clear. The salvation that Jesus

paid for is offered to us by the grace of God alone, not because we deserved it. It is offered

to us by faith alone, meaning not by works. It's not something that we can be good enough to earn.

It's not partially our faith in Christ and partially our being good. And it's also only

by our personal faith in Christ alone that we're saved, not by a combination of faith in ourselves

and in Jesus or in church attendance and Jesus or of somebody else's faith for you and Jesus.

This is one of the many reasons that we believe baptism can only be a proclamation of faith

by the one being baptized. I'll admit it certainly sounds very nice to say that I can

baptize my child, and ensure their salvation prior to their personal decision to follow Jesus.

The problem is that you don't find any support in Scripture for that belief.

Baptism is only ever talked about in Scripture as a kind of physical sign of existing faith in Christ,

a personal declaration of faith in Jesus alone.

So, if you were told that you were baptized as a baby, I believe that Scripture testifies

that you are not, which means declaring Christ in baptism is something you are called to

do.

For this reason, we require that you have been baptized as a believer before you take communion,

Because believing Jesus is the worthy one and having come willingly to proclaim that publicly

is the preparation necessary to participate in this act of communion.

So without further delay, let's look at the remaining verses of our passage and the context

of the Lord's Supper as instituted by Jesus.

This is beginning with verse 17.

And when it was evening, he came with twelve.

And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said,

Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.

They began to be sorrowful and say to him one after another, Is it I?

He said to them, It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.

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

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

And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to them, and said,

Take, this is my body.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank of it.

And he said to them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

Truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it

new in the kingdom of God. And when they had sung a hymn, they went to the Mount of Olives.

And Jesus said to them, You will all fall away, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd,

and the sheep will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.

Peter said to him, Even though they all fall away, I will not. And Jesus said to him,

Truly I tell you, this very night before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.

But he said emphatically, if I must die with you, I will not deny you.

And they all said the same.

We've already talked about what Jerusalem was like during the Passover, but let's talk through

what that actual meal is all about from a Jewish standpoint.

Because it's during this meal, this Jewish celebration, that all of these connections

to Jesus and the cross happen, that Jesus makes the promise of a new covenant between God and man,

fulfills everything that came before. The Passover meal was instituted by God through Moses as the

people of Israel are preparing to witness God lead them out of slavery in Egypt. They're getting ready

to leave. But there was also a subtext to the whole meal that pointed forward to something that

God was going to do through Jesus. So before the meal, a lamb without blemish or defect or any kind

of injury would be slaughtered, a perfect spotless lamb. And the family would roast and eat it as part

of the meal. And then the blood from the lamb would be put on the doorpost on the outside of

a door, as a sign, that when the angel of death came through, the occupants of that

house would be passed over, hence the name Passover.

Blood would continue to be a central part of the sacrificial system in which animals would

be sacrificed to cover the sin of the people.

And it was a reminder that their sin came at a great cost, that it was something that

stood between them and a holy God, but also that God was making a way for them to come to him.

Through the blood of lambs, they might be covered or passed over for now, but one day God was going

to provide a way to forgiveness instead of just covering. And Israel had been waiting for this

salvation for generations. They were waiting for God to send a Messiah to save them as a nation,

to save them from exile. We've talked about this extensively through Mark, to save them from

Roman domination. They were also waiting for this character who God would send who would suffer

on their behalf. So Isaiah 53 talks about this suffering servant who would be cut off and

afflicted, who would bear the transgressions of the people, their sin. But what nobody in the time

before Jesus had ever done was to really understand that the Messiah and the suffering servant

were the same person. The Messiah and Isaiah's suffering servant were one and the same,

and they were Jesus. The road to the ultimate victory over sin and the grave led through

his suffering and death, but would end with his triumph over death and his resurrection.

And if you'll notice, it's actually in the context of betrayal and abandonment that Jesus

talks about this cup of salvation, which is the title of the cup that he lifts and says,

this is a new covenant in his blood. Look at the structure that Mark has used as we look at these

verses to frame this meal of broken bread and blood poured out. In the first section,

we have Jesus telling them that one of them will specifically betray him. And this betrayal will

be so bad that it would have been better if that person had not been born. This is one statement

that makes me think it is highly unlikely Judas repented, even though he seemed to regret what

he had done. Regret is not the same thing as repentance. And his is not a story of repentance

and redemption. Repentance means turning from our sin and turning to Jesus. That's what's necessary

for salvation. On the other side of this part describing the meal, we have verses 27 through

31, where Jesus quotes Jeremiah saying, the shepherd, Jesus, is going to be struck down and

the sheep, the disciples, are going to scatter. So Judas alone may have betrayed him to the Sanhedrin,

but they will all deny and abandon him, every last one. Peter denies it, even though he will

actually deny Jesus not once but three times. All the others join Peter in telling Jesus,

you're wrong, we won't leave you. But wrong is something that Jesus has never been once.

And it's into this context of betrayal and abandonment and a group of men who do nothing

but deny the truth of what Jesus says, that Jesus says, it is for you that I give myself,

for you that my blood is shed.

The Apostle Paul later in Romans 5.8 will say that while we were still sinners, Christ

died for us, and it was perhaps never so clear as during the Passover meal with his disciples.

This was a table that was set and provided by the grace of God, and it is still available to us

today because Jesus rose from the dead. He did indeed go to Galilee, where he first called his

disciples and he called them again. There is forgiveness for betrayal, for failure, for the

sinner like them and like you and like me in the shed blood of Jesus. We can look back at all the

things that we've done and the ways that we've failed and know that we can be forgiven when we

repent and we turn to Jesus for forgiveness. So before taking communion, I think we should

consider at least these three things. And I think it's good to recognize that this may actually lead

some of us to decide not to participate on occasion in communion, and that's okay.

There's no pressure here. The first thing is that in order to rightly celebrate communion,

you must have come to the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, the only worthy one, and that He

did indeed rise from the dead. If you're not there yet, I am thrilled that you are listening to this,

But you can't understand or celebrate the sacrifice of Jesus without knowing who he is.

The second thing is that beyond just believing Jesus is the Messiah,

you must have come willingly to proclaim that he is your Lord and Savior.

This is why we believe baptism, and specifically baptism as a believer, must come first.

Because until you have declared and submitted to Jesus, you cannot celebrate the result of that.

In other words, you cannot celebrate walking with Jesus until you have decided to begin the journey with him and his people, the church, one step at a time.

The proclamation of baptism has to come first.

Finally, communion is an invitation to ongoing repentance.

turning from sin and coming to Jesus. And for believers, that is something we must continue

to do, just as all of the disciples in that room would need to repent for turning away from Jesus,

for stumbling. If there is sin that the Holy Spirit is bringing to light,

take time before taking communion to ask God for forgiveness. If there is someone that you need to

make things right with, to ask for their forgiveness or to give them yours, go make that phone call or

seek that person out beforehand. And sometimes that's something that is going to involve a little

more effort, in which case it is okay to abstain and not take communion at that time. There have

been several times in which I knew there was some hard stuff that I needed to deal with

before I could rightly come to the table and take communion.

Sometimes I needed to talk things through with a pastor.

Sometimes I needed to talk things out with somebody that I was at odds with.

But it is more important when it comes to communion that you have your heart right with the Lord

than it is to appear to everyone else that you do.

We're actually making a slight change in how we take communion as a church,

and we're going to sing a song while people go to the back to get communion

and make that decision to partake and allow some time for heart examination before we celebrate

that meal together. The body and the blood of Jesus brings reconciliation between God and man,

and that is something to celebrate, but we can't do it without a repentant heart

that knows it needs Jesus. There are only two sacraments that we recognize as a church because

they are the only two that Jesus actually commands of his followers. They are baptism

and communion. And I need to give a definition to that word, sacrament, because understood biblically,

it is a visible physical action that serves as a sign or symbol of an invisible spiritual reality.

And the action or the symbol itself has no power at all, but is only a way of seeing

the power of God at work doing things that we cannot see. So baptism, for example, is a visible

picture of a person choosing to die to themselves and be raised to new life that is found only in

Christ. Communion is an action in which we see and touch and taste and remember the goodness of God

us through the sacrifice of Jesus. So using Mark's account, we take the bread and we remember Jesus

saying, this is my body. What Jesus is saying goes beyond a representation of his body. And he is not

proclaiming that the bread becomes his body because he is still physically present when he says this.

What he is saying is, this is all of me given for all of you.

Jesus gave all of himself for us, and so we say thank you, Jesus, when we take the bread

of communion.

We take the cup and we remember Jesus saying, this is my blood of the covenant poured out

for many.

Jesus willingly surrendered himself to death to save the same people who were betraying

him, putting him on a cross and abandoning him there. And so when we take the cup, we remember

our great sin and the sufficiency of the blood of Jesus to forgive us and cleanse us from all

unrighteousness, for which we say, thank you, Jesus. And when we have taken this meal of

remembrance together, we also look forward to the day when he returns and we celebrate together anew

in the kingdom of God.

Ekklesia is a church of house churches

gathering weekly in Council Bluffs, Iowa

and in homes throughout the week

we are a Bible-centered church

focused on preaching from Scripture

and making disciples of Jesus

you can learn more about our statement of faith

and contact a pastor

by visiting ekklesiachurches.org