Mark 14:22-31

Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning and we admit that even on our best weeks,

there are times where we think of ourselves in a way that makes you look small, that we

put ourselves ahead of you.

We put our own will ahead of your will, our own desires ahead of your desires.

And Lord, we humbly confess that we want to walk in your ways and live under your word

and bend a knee to your kingship.

Lord, we are frail and we need your strength.

And as we open your word, pray that you would bolster us, that you would build us up, that

you would encourage us and help us to grow in you and to love you in deeper measure and

to know your will and by your grace have the strength to walk it out.

So Lord, we ask that you would bless us as we open your word this morning.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

At any time, there should be some Bibles at the back.

If you want to get up and grab one, that would be terrific.

I'd encourage you guys to follow along if you can.

Amen.

Chapter 14.

It is the single largest chapter in Mark's ancient biography of Jesus' life.

And we enter into the portion, well, I'll just say that chapter 14, it's really funny,

I mentioned this last week.

Mark takes the first two-thirds of his gospel account and he packs three years into it.

And the last third, it's the last week or so of Jesus' life.

And chapter 14, by and large, is about 12-ish, maybe 24 hours of Jesus' life.

And Jesus here is in Jerusalem partaking of the Passover celebration.

And as we will see this week, Jesus takes this beautiful celebration of the Passover and he

will apply it, in a sense, to his own life, showing how he is the fulfillment of that.

But also we see something else happen in this text.

And namely, it helps us to be very honest about who we are and the nature of humanity.

And the nature, actually, of free will.

And how that interacts and intersects with God's sovereignty.

And then it will help us to have an honest look at what true mercy and true grace is all about.

So three things we'll look at.

And we'll kind of jump around the text.

So we're going to look at verses 17 to 21 first.

And that will help us to have a really honest look at what free will is.

And what sovereignty is.

And how the two interact.

Then we're going to actually jump from verses 21 to, we're going to jump to verse 26 to 31.

And we're going to take an honest look at human nature.

What it means to be human.

And the things that we're kind of disposed to.

And then we're going to finish off looking at what true mercy and grace really looks like in verses 22 to 25.

So let's jump right in.

Verse 17, take an honest look at free will.

And really, we addressed a bit of this portion last week.

I'll read it, but we're going to just spend a bunch of time on verse 21.

This is what it says.

And when it was evening, he came with the twelve.

And as they were reclining at table, Jesus said,

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

The disciples, they began to be sorrowful.

And to say to him, one after another, is it I?

And Jesus said to them, it is one of the twelve who is dipping bread into the dish with me.

Verse 21, the son of man goes as it is written of him.

But woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed.

Who would have been better for that man if he had not been born?

That person, the betrayer, is Judas Iscariot.

And he, we found out a couple weeks ago, that he betrayed Jesus.

He was indignant at Jesus because a woman came, an unnamed woman came,

and took a very, very expensive bottle of perfume and anointed Jesus for burial.

And it said some of them, they scoffed, they were angry because that perfume could have been sold and given to the poor.

And immediately after, Judas goes out and he conspires with the religious leaders on how to betray Jesus,

and they pay him for it.

Jesus here, knowing everything, he addresses this.

And it is a bit cryptic for the other disciples.

Nevertheless, it is about Judas.

But it will be about the other disciples.

And we'll see that in this next section, verses 26 to 31.

But looking at verse 21, we have to ask a question.

Is it fair for Jesus to say what he says about Judas,

specifically, 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.

Is it fair that Judas is held responsible for something that was God's will?

We see in verse 21, just the beginning,

for the son of man goes as it is written of him.

Multiple times we've seen thus far in Mark,

that Jesus, he foretells his passion and death on the cross.

Jesus knows he's going to the cross.

In fact, it is God's will.

There's many allusions throughout the gospel of Jesus fulfilling the scriptures,

and yet Judas here is the vehicle by which that will happen.

And you think, okay, Judas is, you know, he is participating in this.

Maybe, you know, definitely not maybe, not in the best way.

But if it's still God's will,

why is he held to personal responsibility for betraying Jesus?

If he has free will in this, then sure.

But it seems that he is a pawn in God's divine plan.

And if so, is that fair?

And it raises a question about what the relationship is

between divine causality and personal responsibility.

It's a very interesting question.

It has divided the Protestant church in a big way.

And it is still a very live issue today.

I don't...

We're going to walk towards it.

We're not going to walk away from it.

But we're not necessarily going to exhaust everything

that the Bible has to say about free will and God's divine sovereignty.

But nevertheless, we walk...

Our commitment is to walk towards the difficult scripture verses

and see what the Lord would have to say to us about it.

So this verse, like I mentioned, it captures a conundrum.

If it was the Father's will for Jesus to go to the cross,

and it says that clearly in the first part of verse 21, like I read,

why does Judas bear responsibility for being that instrument

to achieve the Father's divine plan?

Is this not a grave injustice?

Does Judas really have free will if he is a pawn of God?

So, like I mentioned, this is a very complicated,

difficult doctrine and question in scripture.

But this is where we, as Anglicans and as Christians really,

have this beautiful opportunity to not have to figure out the Bible all by ourselves.

We have this wonderful history and tapestry that we can have access to

of what Reformers and Church Fathers and big, big, big, big giants in the faith have said before.

So the Reformers and the Western Church Fathers, especially St. Augustine,

they understood free will in an interesting way.

They talked about free agency and free will.

And really simply, because this is above my pay grade,

but in a sense, free agency is, in a sense, how God created us in his image,

so that we have the ability to make decisions,

and by extension are held responsible for those decisions that we make.

Decisions towards God, decisions towards fellow people.

In a very real way, we are decision-making people.

We don't just go on autopilot.

We're not given over to our instincts like any animals we see in the jungle,

in the forest, at the zoo.

But the Reformers and the Western Church Fathers, and especially St. Augustine,

they understood also that there's this other aspect to decision-making,

and they called it free will.

So free agency versus free will.

And how?

Because of original sin, because of what happened in the Garden of Eden,

where our first parents sinned against God,

and sin entered into the human condition,

we are unable to truly discern and choose righteousness

in a way that gives God glory and praise.

So we have no natural, in a sense, inclination towards God,

because we are, as Ephesians 2 talks about, we are dead in our sins.

Our hearts, in a sense, aren't alive to spiritual things.

Martin Luther calls this the bondage of the will.

It's interesting here that, well, the Church Fathers,

they talked about how the will is not free unless it is freed.

Unless God Himself, in a sense, massages life back into a dead heart.

So that we can then, in a sense, have spiritual discernment

to know what God desires to please Him, to give Him glory.

So it's interesting that Judas' betrayal takes place at the Passover

and reminds us of another figure who also opposed God,

but was also used by God to achieve God's will.

If you know the Passover story, it is about the deliverance of God from Egypt,

but there is this leader, this king, that looked to oppose God's people.

His name was Pharaoh.

And just like with Judas, Pharaoh,

his heart was continually hard towards God

and continually got harder and harder as the story, as the narrative went on.

So like Pharaoh, Judas was witness to the power and will of God.

Judas was walking with Jesus for years.

He would have seen the miracles.

He would have heard the teachings.

He would have seen the man that was lowered through the roof

rise up off his bed, the paralytic, and walk.

He would have seen Jesus cast out demons, the Gerizim demoniac.

Incredible things Judas was witness to, just like Pharaoh.

Pharaoh was witness to the plagues and the miracles

and how time and again God, through Moses, proved true.

Like Pharaoh, Judas' heart was not enlivened to the ways of God

and as such he did not bend a knee ultimately to the goodness of God.

And it's a big, big, big pity.

Judas, on one hand, is used by God to achieve God's will,

but it's not like God did not expose Judas to his love and his power and his kindness and his will.

Time and again, Judas, like Pharaoh, he saw God's goodness

and clearly chose not to engage with God at all.

The eyes of his heart were blind.

The life in his spirit was just dormant.

God did not quicken his dead heart, but instead used him to achieve his will.

So, in a sense, Judas' free will was not an illusion,

yet God's sovereignty wasn't somehow downplayed.

There's an interaction here.

Yet, if one's heart needs to be brought to life by God, first and foremost,

to have a free will, your will needs to be freed,

this still does not answer our question about Judas' injustice.

Why didn't God do it?

Why does God save some people and not other people?

Why are people in this church today hearing even the name of Jesus

when there are people in the world that never, ever, ever hear the name Jesus?

They're never exposed to the gospel.

Or people that we know that have been exposed to the gospel,

and yet they claim to be atheists or they follow another religion or philosophy.

Why?

Why is this the case?

If God is the one who saves,

how can, in this sense, how can Judas be held responsible for his actions?

If God chooses not to quicken his heart.

Bit of a conundrum here.

It seems unfair.

Is this not injustice?

Is this unjust?

But consider this.

It is only by God's sovereignty that we even have the freedom that we hold so dear.

In a sense, that it's only because a sovereign God created a world with order and beauty and goodness

that we can even have a semblance of choosing anything.

That God himself, in his sovereignty, gives us the very foundation for choice to exist.

It is only Christianity, in the Christian worldview, that has a full and robust view of what it means to be a person.

On one hand, having agency, interacting with the sovereign God,

and yet, and yet, there is an aspect of justice in all of our decisions.

That we are held responsible for the things we do.

And if this still feels unjust, I think it's important how we consider the Christian understanding of free will

and divine sovereignty as we consider the alternatives.

And I'll just give two examples.

We see atheistic modernism throughout our systems, our government, our school systems.

It is kind of rife throughout our culture.

Not to say that everybody's an atheist.

But this idea of atheistic modernism essentially makes freedom an illusion.

And responsibility a matter of difference in a philosophy.

As we simply are subjects to our environment,

we find ourselves also morally not really responsible

because morality, in a sense, is relative.

So on one hand, we are the product of our homes or our environment.

And on the other hand, I don't know, morality is, it can come and go.

Who's to say what is right and wrong?

So how can there be, in a sense, free will if there isn't a choice to do right and wrong

if morality is relative?

The second example is more what we see, by and large, in our day

for a number of different people.

I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush.

But there's a curated kind of a la carte spirituality

that we see in our neighborhoods and our workplaces

that, in a sense, are desperately searching for meaning

and help from the divine or spirits or mantras or mediums

where there is a willingness, in a sense, to suspend our agency.

There is a desire for the spiritual, whatever it may be,

to do something in us, whether we agree with it, in a sense, or not.

We want, we're willing to, in a sense, suspend our agency,

to be seized, to be possessed, almost,

and yet, at the same time, to never fully submit our personhood

or our wills to that divine power.

It's a weird contradiction.

We want to have all the benefits of spirituality,

but without the responsibility, in a sense.

So, last night, this is highly theological,

I was driving around and on the radio,

I was listening to Jan Arden's podcast, okay?

I don't know, whatever.

It was on the radio.

I thought it was interesting.

She was talking about going to see a fortune teller

or, like, a medium.

And they were talking, her and her guest.

I have no idea who her guest was.

I didn't even know it was Jan Arden until, like, halfway through.

But she talked about how, when her mom died,

she felt like her mom was watching her.

And she asked her mom, in the spiritual world, for a sign.

And she knew her mom loved pineapples.

So, mom, if you're there, show me pineapples.

This is in the podcast.

And for, like, three plus months, she saw pineapples on TV.

Pineapples here, pineapples there.

Her mom used to wear this apron with a pineapple

every day when she was in the kitchen.

And then she, Jan Arden, ended up talking with her friend

about going to see this medium in Calgary.

And it was just this openness to, essentially,

whatever happens, whatever is going to possess me,

whatever they have for me, I am open for it.

Like, basically, take me.

But then she said,

but unless they say something like,

you're going to die in three months,

because I have no time for that kind of negativity.

Bizarre.

Either you're open to submit to this kind of spirituality,

or you're not.

But, by and large,

we have this kind of bizarre understanding

of how we want to interact with the divine,

if there is a divine,

and how our free will,

or lack thereof,

or how we maintain personhood and responsibility.

It's kind of like a big, giant pot of soup.

Like, we can't distinguish one from the other.

It's bizarre.

And I'm trying to, in a sense,

not straw man, but steel man, Jan Arden.

I was listening to her last night.

It's kind of fresh.

She has a lovely voice.

But it is only with Christianity

that we see a coherence

in this understanding of the divine,

and how we interact with God's sovereignty,

and how our free will and our personhood

is respected and is dignified.

How we can make decisions

and be held responsible,

but know that God's will is active

and working to achieve his ends.

So divine sovereignty

neither cancels human freedom

nor excuses our responsibility

for immoral choices.

Because God knows all,

and his will will not be stymied.

Not a bit.

I mean, like we talked about last week,

the religious leaders have this big plot

to upend the ministry of Jesus,

and it gets turned on its head,

and it becomes the vehicle

by which God will achieve his will.

Yet, nevertheless, it's still a mystery

why God gives grace to some and not others.

We can know God's will

only as much as he has revealed it to us,

and he has not revealed to us

why person A comes to faith

and knows God,

and person B does not.

And there is a mystery within our faith

that in a sense,

we can reconcile with faith,

but without faith,

it's going to drive us crazy.

Because in the end,

we relinquish control and say,

not my will be done, Lord,

but your will.

But we do know that God's heart

is to restore and to redeem.

That he takes no delight

in the death of a sinner,

but rather that that person

would repent

and change their ways

and come to him.

We know that that's God's heart.

Nevertheless, we don't know why

some people receive that grace

and others do not.

So another thing

that is important to consider

in all this,

and we're still on verse 21,

is how we are all too quick

as human beings

to downplay or excuse evil

and sin in our own lives,

and yet quick to point it out

in others.

We are entitled to think

that we are different

than other people,

that we are more worthy

of salvation.

So we see somebody like Judas,

and we get frustrated

in a sense that he is being

used as a pawn

by God,

that his free will

is somehow suspended

because we might find ourselves

in the shoes of Judas.

What happens if that happens to me?

Is it fair for Judas?

It might not be fair for me.

And we somehow think

that we can downplay

our own sin

and our own evil,

that somehow

we are the eternal

exception to the rule.

But the reality is

sin is real

and it is crippling.

And evil is real

and it is destructive.

And we are prone to both.

And this is

where we'll go

to our next section

where the Bible

is very helpful

in helping us understand

just an honest look

at human nature

and what it means

to be human,

prone to sin.

So jump with me

to verse 26

to 31.

Verse 31.

And when they had sung a hymn,

that's Jesus and his disciples,

they went out

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.

Verse 31.

But he said emphatically,

If I must die with you,

I will not deny you.

And they all said the same.

Jesus speaks of the falling away

of the twelve.

So we have Judas

who is betraying

the remainder of his disciples.

They will abandon him.

And Jesus speaks of them

as falling away.

And he says it,

in the falling away,

it carries with it

a passive sense,

which is to say that

these external forces

and factors

will cause them to stumble.

There will be pressures

and temptations

that they'll experience

that they will not be able

to stand

with that weight

over top of them.

Jesus,

his capture,

his torture,

his crucifixion,

being associated with Jesus

will be too much

for them to bear.

And because of this,

they will fall away.

Nevertheless,

it's still

a failure

to heed Christ's call

to watch and wait.

If you remember,

chapter 13

was all about

watching and waiting.

Knowing God's,

that God's plan

will come to pass,

and trusting that

he will do the things

he's called to do.

And here,

they are failing at that.

Still,

they think they are strong

when they are really weak,

especially Peter.

Peter,

once again,

this isn't the first time,

he boisterously

flexes his spiritual muscles

and he has none.

He has no spiritual muscles.

Pounding his chest,

I will never deny you.

Never.

Jesus says,

before morning,

three times,

buddy,

you will deny me.

Three times.

And he goes,

I'll die before that happens.

I swear to God,

I will never leave you.

Can't really swear to God,

to God,

if you're not going to

follow through.

Bit of a problem here.

You just,

I can picture Peter,

like,

he is,

his voice is raised,

I mean what I'm saying.

But then he,

he throws his buddies

under the bus.

And he says,

these guys,

they'll fall away,

but not me.

I will be with you

to the end,

even to the grave.

And you just think,

my goodness.

Peter,

he has this inflated

view of himself.

And it's easy to

just rip on Peter,

but really,

Peter is us.

Because all too often,

we are quick

to downplay

our own sin.

our own shortcomings,

to not be real

about ourselves,

and to point to others

and say,

hey,

look at them.

We are,

we do not give people

the benefit of the doubt,

yet we demand

the mercy

and understanding

to be extended to us

without reservation.

I'll give an example.

And,

you know,

hopefully you can

understand this

in your own life.

I'll give an example

of my own life.

A while ago,

I,

my brother,

he,

he was making fun

of me

and,

um,

it was behind my back

and I,

I got,

I got frustrated

at it.

And I was incensed

and he was just joking around.

It was harmless.

But for whatever reason,

I was just bent

that day.

I was so angry

and all of a sudden,

I start hashing out things

and his behavior

that he used to do

when we were kids

and all throughout

and no grace

extended to him

and then,

maybe it was God's,

God's spirit

at work,

but he,

uh,

I just remembered

two days before

I did the exact same thing

to him,

behind his back,

just ripping on him.

He was the butt

of the joke

and I think,

if my memory serves me

correctly,

my dig at him

was worse

than his dig at me.

And nevertheless,

I still,

after thinking about that,

justified,

well,

it wasn't as bad

what I did.

It was way worse

what he did to me.

And I was,

and all of a sudden,

I started living

in this,

just,

gross attitude

for a period of time

where,

obviously,

my stuff doesn't stink.

His reeks

and I extend

grace to myself,

but he doesn't,

he gets a short end

of the stick.

How often

are we people

that we downplay

our own sin?

We're not real

about who we are

and evil

that lurks

in our heart,

but we are so quick

to point it out

to other people.

Peter,

I'm not at all

going to betray you.

These guys,

they,

they're like

half of me.

They're nothing

compared to me.

And,

and they say,

no, no,

we'll follow you

to the grave too.

Like,

they're just

as kind of lost,

but we do this.

We're not honest

about ourselves,

but the Bible

is very honest

about the human condition.

It's like a sword.

It really,

it really cuts

right to the heart

of the matter.

The Bible

is honest with us

about the nature

of evil.

And on one hand,

evil is a mystery.

It really is.

Because it's not

merely the result

of someone being

ill-formed

in a bad family.

There's a lot of

people that come

from fantastic families

that do evil things.

And people that

come from maybe

not the greatest families

that are really

well-to-do,

courteous,

kind people.

In a sense,

evil's a mystery.

But on the other

hand,

the Bible is clear

that evil finds

fertile soil

in the inclinations

of the human heart.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn,

he was a political

prisoner in the 80s

in the USSR.

And he spent

a lot of time

in the Gulag.

And he wrote a book

called The Gulag Archipelago.

And it's a very famous line.

This is what he says.

And he was

himself a Christian.

If only it were so simple.

If only there were

evil people

somewhere

insidiously committing

evil deeds.

and it were necessarily

only to separate

them from the rest of us

and destroy them.

But the line

dividing good and evil

cuts through the heart

of every human being.

And who is willing

to destroy

a piece of his own heart?

I think it's just

a beautiful line

that captures

the reality

of the human condition.

That the human heart,

if we are honest

with ourselves,

it is

prime time

soil.

It is fertile soil.

For evil

to germinate

and to take root

and to grow.

Yet,

yet,

even in this,

Jesus gives assurance

that the lapse

in devotion

of his disciples

that will lead

to their defection,

even Peter,

will not be

the final word.

Look with me

at verse 28.

But after I am raised up,

I will go before you

to Galilee.

It was at Galilee

where Jesus

called the twelve.

It was at Galilee

that he invited them

into his inner circle

and where they first

met Jesus

and they grew

in their knowledge

of God

through Jesus.

And it is

at the Galilee

where Jesus,

the risen Lord,

will visit them again

to restore them.

And it is

a beautiful picture

of the truth

in Scripture

that the work

that God starts,

he will see it

to completion.

He finishes

what he starts.

It is Christ's

great joy

to forgive

and his

great glory

to restore.

And I'll just say this.

I didn't know

if I was going

to include this

but I think I will.

I don't want

to grade sins.

I mean,

sin is sin.

Okay?

The disciples

didn't tell

a dirty white lie.

They didn't

steal

a loaf of bread

from the market

because they were hungry.

This little tiny thing

that they did wrong.

They betrayed Jesus.

One,

in the most egregious way

and the others,

they abandoned Jesus.

It was a type

of betrayal.

In Dante's Inferno,

not the Bible,

so I'm not saying

it's the Bible,

but in Dante's Inferno,

the lowest rung

of hell

has Judas

and Brutus

in the mouth

of Satan

for eternity.

That is to say

that

there is not

much more

of an egregious act,

an egregious sin

than betrayal.

And yet,

Jesus promises

restoration

and forgiveness.

And I'm not too sure

that any one of us

has gone to the lengths

of the disciples.

And even still,

you'd have to think

the grace of God

is bigger even than that.

And this is a wonderful truth

that we're going to see next

of what pure and true

mercy and grace look like

because a betrayal

and defection

and abandonment

right in between

these two terrible,

terrible,

terrible evils

is the Lord's Supper.

This beautiful picture

of mercy and grace,

love abounding.

And remember,

in verse 21,

Jesus says,

for the Son of Man

goes as it is written

of Him.

And then down

in verse 20,

in 27,

Jesus said to them,

you will all fall away

for it is written.

That is just to say

that Jesus knew

exactly what was going

to happen.

He knew that Judas

was going to betray Him.

He knew the disciples

would defect

and abandon Him.

And yet,

even with that knowledge,

He takes them

to the table

in the most intimate,

deepest way

to express friendship.

And He has a meal

with them.

It's this expression

of mercy and grace.

Look with me

in verse 22.

And as they were eating,

Jesus took bread

and after blessing it,

broke it

and gave it to them,

the disciples,

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.

Nestled in between

these two egregious acts

of betrayal and abandonment

is the institution

of the Lord's Supper.

This is precisely

what Mark is doing here.

It's a,

it's,

in a sense,

it's the most scandalous thing.

Why on earth does Jesus

extend this kind of mercy

and grace?

For the last supper

isn't just a meal,

but it is a gift

of God's very presence

to His people.

On one hand,

it looks backwards.

It looks to the Passover.

Jesus is taking

the Passover meal

which was the high point

in the calendar

for the Jewish nation

where they were rescued

out of slavery

and bondage to Egypt.

The high point,

and He says,

it's about Me.

I am the real Passover Lamb.

But also,

it's about the present.

So it's about the past,

but it's about the present.

Because Jesus is there

present with His people

and promising them

that where they gather,

He will be there.

And He gives of Himself

in the meal.

But it's more than just

the past and the present.

It's the future as well.

Because if you look

at verse 25,

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.

It envisions

the culmination

of all of redemptive history

where God,

the Son of God,

Jesus the Bridegroom

will sit at His marriage supper

with His bride,

the church.

And He will enjoy fellowship

and she will enjoy fellowship

in the deepest,

most loving way

for all of eternity.

And this is what

the table envisions.

So it is more than just

a remembrance

because Jesus Himself here,

what does He say?

He says,

take,

this is my body.

And He takes the cup

and He says,

this is my blood

of the covenant

which is poured out

for many.

What it's not saying

is that

these elements

literally become

the body

and literally become

the blood of Jesus.

But it is to say

that God is communicating

to us

as we partake

of the bread

and the wine

grace

that bolsters our soul.

So,

what's helpful

to understand

in all of this

is that

we gather

at the table

in the same way

that the Israelites

gathered in their homes

on Passover.

In Passover,

the Israelites,

they put their faith

in God's Word

that the blood

that was smeared

on their doorposts

would save them

from death.

Whether their faith

was a little bit

or a lot,

it doesn't really say.

It says that their faith,

in a sense,

as they gathered

in the home,

they trusted

that God's Word

was true

and death

would pass over.

And likewise,

we come to the table

by faith,

trusting that God

has done everything

He has promised to do,

defeating sin

and death forever

in His Son,

in the broken body

and the shed blood

of His Son.

And we partake it

by faith,

trusting that God

is going to complete

the work He started

in our lives.

We call this

a means of grace.

grace given

to our souls

and a helpful way

to understand it,

at least in our perspective

as Anglicans

and in the Reformed

understanding

of God's

sacrament,

the communion,

is what the minister

is to say

as he is distributing

the elements

in the Book of Common Prayer.

Now, I don't say this.

We've kind of

incorporated it

into various parts

of our liturgy

for communion,

but it says this.

If this was a traditional service,

I would give you

the bread

and I would say

the body of our Lord

Jesus Christ,

which was given for you.

Preserve your body

and soul

unto everlasting life.

Take and eat this

in remembrance

that Christ died for you

and feed on Him

in your heart

by faith

with thanksgiving.

And it's very similar

to the cup.

And it's just to say

that the meal

doesn't save,

but it is for the saved.

The meal

doesn't

become the

literal body

and blood

of Jesus,

but it is,

in a sense,

a very real

communication

to us

of the presence

of Jesus

right now,

here.

And that

builds up our soul.

It is a gift

of God

to build up

our soul.

So like I mentioned,

the past,

the Passover,

the present,

the presence

of God,

but the future

is the marriage

supper of the Lamb

and that is every time

we come to the table,

every single time.

So when we come today,

we're going to come humbly.

We're going to search

our hearts

for sin

and confess it

to Almighty God.

There will be a time

of confession.

And we act

in faith

that Jesus

will certainly

forgive our sins.

Why?

Because he has

forgiven our sins.

And that we are saved,

we are being saved,

and one day

we will be saved

when we dine

with him

as his bride.

He is our bridegroom

in the age

to come.

All because of

the cross

of Calvary.

I'll close

with this.

In the second century,

early on

in the second century,

a church historian,

a church father,

suggested

that Peter

was the source

for Mark's

gospel account.

I have no reason

to not believe it,

but if it truly

was Peter,

I'll say this,

if I was telling Mark

the gospel account,

I would scrub,

I would scrub

verses 26 to 31.

You know,

we'll leave that part out,

okay, Mark?

I, you know,

it makes him look

terrible.

And yet,

it's there.

And if it was Peter,

then it is a testament

to a man

who fell

in a most

egregious,

terrible way,

but who has been

restored

to even greater heights

because of what

Christ has done.

A man that knows

grace

and love

and mercy

deep in his soul.

A man that is,

in a sense,

is willing

to just be open

and honest

about his shortcomings

from the past

because they are

buried with Christ

forever.

forever.

And it is a great

hope for us

when we consider

that that same

grace and mercy

is extended to us

today.

What,

what have you done

that is worse

than Peter?

And even if it is

worse than Peter,

what have you done

that is,

is too big

for God's grace

and love

and mercy?

to bury it

and for you

never to see it

again

and to live

in true freedom.

Tell me what's

more free than that.

This has been

offered to us

today

and it is a reminder

every single time,

every time we gather

around this table

that our sins

are dealt with,

gone,

we are restored,

that Christ

has begun something,

that he will finish,

and he is extending

grace

upon grace

upon grace.

Amen.

Heavenly Father,

we thank you

for this table

and how this table

is a gift

to us

and that we

need to receive

in a worthy way

by faith

with thanksgiving

but all we can do

is receive.

We don't bring

our own merit

to this table.

The institution

of the Lord's Supper

was done

with betrayal

and abandonment

bookending it.

Lord,

help us to come

throwing ourselves

at the mercy

of your blessed Son

knowing

that he will not

scoff at us,

he will not hold

our shortcomings

in front of us

to shame us.

In fact,

he bore the shame

on our behalf.

Lord,

help us

to constantly

embrace that,

to look to Christ,

to thank him

and to live

a life

empowered by his spirit

doing what he has

called us

to do

out of joy

in our hearts.

Lord,

help one of us,

each of us

to encourage

each other

in this.

Lord,

this Christian life

is not easy

but it is full of joy

when we walk

with you.

Help us,

we pray.

In Christ's name.

We pray to God

in our hearts

to prevail.

Amen.

Thank you.