Jesus Starts a New Tradition

So today I wanted to start with that conversation.

Thank you guys for sharing and thanks for talking.

I wanted to start with that conversation just because today is all about tradition.

And it's not just about the things that we do and kind of mindlessly do week in and week out or year in and year out.

It's the things that we do that have really significant meaning that's going on underneath it.

Because Jesus is going to step into this moment, into this tradition, and Jesus is not afraid to mess with the tradition.

He's not afraid.

Jesus actually steps into a tradition, makes it a little bit deeper, and honestly starts a new tradition for each and every one of us.

And so let's read together from Matthew chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

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?

And 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 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, and 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, The one 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 by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

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

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

And he said to him, You have said so.

Quick pause there.

We did like a whole Judas deep dive on the podcast, so if you're interested in kind of wrestling with that dynamic with Judas, uh go check it out on our YouTube page.

We kind of get kind of crack open that whole story.

But it continues.

Verse 26.

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

And he said, Take, 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 this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom.

So if you've been at his hands for a while, this should be a very familiar story and a very familiar moment from Jesus' life, because here at his hands, we take the Lord's Supper every single week.

It is like a central part of our gathering.

But for this very first time that Jesus introduces this concept to the disciples, it's in his final hours.

Jesus, in his final hours, uh, before he approaches the cross, before he faces his death, Jesus is kind of tying up loose ends.

He's clarifying his ministry and his vision for what he's here to do on earth.

John records an amazing, really long conversation in his gospel of this dinner, and it's it's phenomenal.

But he's tying up the loose ends, he's clarifying for his disciples why he's here, what he's come to do, and honestly, he's kind of watching the dominoes fall.

Things are set up, things are in place for Jesus to come to do what he came here to do, and it's this meal, it's this meal that Jesus sees as such a priority to make happen in these last few hours of his life.

And we uh we don't take the meal the exact same way that they took it in in this uh moment.

They take bread and they take wine.

We take, we I mean, we've got the little cups.

Let's see if I have my cup.

We've got the little cups, we've got bread and juice, and I think the substitution for wine to juice is acceptable, and here's why.

I don't think that Jesus uh is saying, This is the magic incantation by which you receive my love.

This represents something bigger, this represents something deeper.

The bread represents my body broken, replacing you as the consequence of our sin.

Like the sin has to be dealt with, darkness has to be dealt with.

Luke 22, Jesus has a little bit more specific, Luke records it a little bit more specifically.

He says, And he took the bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

His body is given for us as an act of love to say, the consequences that you had coming to you, I'm stepping in your place.

I'm experiencing the brokenness that really belongs to each and every one of us in our sin.

And so, because we have the body that's given for us, we don't have to be waiting for any punishment that's coming down the line.

If we belong to Jesus, that punishment has already been satisfied.

Uh, God has dealt with the evil and he's dealt with it through his son, Jesus, on the cross.

That's what the bread represents.

And then the wine, the juice, the blood.

Not that just the consequences have been dealt with, but that we have been washed clean.

1 John 1.7 says, But if we walk in the light as he is the light, we have fellowship with one another.

And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

This means that there is no, if we belong to Jesus, there's no walking around feeling disgusting because of the things we've done.

There's no, I'm just so ashamed of what I've done.

I'm just, I can't, I can't carry it.

There's no distance anymore between clean and unclean, perfect and imperfect.

If you belong to Jesus, his blood covers all of your sin and washes you completely clean.

He does.

And it's beautiful, and I'm so so grateful that it's such a big part of our service every single week, and it's such a big tradition for us because it gets us refocused on the main thing.

Uh we take it every single week to remind ourselves of those two truths that we've uh Jesus has died in our place and we are washed clean.

But traditions have this strange thing that can sometimes happen.

Where what once was so special slowly becomes regular.

And what becomes regular becomes mundane, and what becomes mundane becomes meaningless.

And for us that take the Lord's Supper every single week, uh sometimes the specialness of it hits us and the goodness of God really like sinks in.

And sometimes it's like, yeah, cup and bread and cup, yeah, this is great, whatever.

And so today my hope is as we explore what Jesus was doing on that very first uh institution of the Lord's Supper, that we can kind of capture some of the specialness, understand the context of what's going on there, so that we can take it new, so that we can see it fresh, and so that we can understand the lengths that God will go to for his love for us.

That he will stop at nothing to show us how much he loves us, which he's done for his people all throughout history.

Because those disciples were experiencing it for the very first time.

We think of it as the Lord's Supper, but they didn't sit down for the Lord's Supper.

They sat down for Passover.

And generation after generation of Jews had sat down for Passover to celebrate specific symbols with specific meanings tied to their specific history, and Jesus sits down and starts to change it.

So if we understand what Passover is, I think we'll have new insight into what the Lord's Supper is.

We have to rewind the clock way, way back, all the way back to the second book of the Bible.

This is in the book of Exodus.

This starts as uh God's people have been captured by Egypt, they're enslaved by Egypt, and it starts with God hearing the prayers of his people.

Exodus chapter 2.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention

During that long period, the kingdom king of Egypt died.

The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.

God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

And it's from this moment of desperation that we see God kind of hatch a rescue plan.

And I can we're gonna do like Exodus at like 10,000 feet.

So if you know all the details, great.

If you if you want to know more, just dive into the book of Exodus.

But God raises up a prophet, Moses, to lead his people, to go negotiate with Pharaoh, to uh allow them to be free, to say, hey, let my people go.

And I just want to pause here to just point out how cool it is that God hears our prayers.

God's people don't pray to deaf ears.

We pray to a God who hears us, who is tender, who is responsive.

So if you've prayed from like the darkest depths, you have prayed prayers that God has heard.

That God does not leave you alone, that he responds to those prayers, the timing or the way that he responds to those prayers may not be satisfying to us.

They may not make sense to us, but God sees you in your suffering and does not leave you alone because he loves you so much, and he's already gone to great lengths to bring you back to him.

You are not alone when you cry those desperate prayers.

And so the answer to those desperate prayers for Israel is Moses.

God meets with Moses and says, Hey, you're gonna be my guy, go negotiate with Pharaoh, and the negotiations go poorly.

They go really poorly.

Uh conversation after conversation, uh basically, Pharaoh, his grip on Israel just tightens.

He's got calloused, stony hands, and the more he interacts with the people of Israel, the more his grip tightens, and the more his heart grows hard.

And so God, in his love for his people, has to kind of uh step it up a notch.

And this is where we get the plagues.

And the plagues, there's no way around it.

The plagues are severe.

These are divine acts of judgment against the people of Egypt because God has decided he's going to rescue his people from their slavery.

And so we've got plagues like water turned to blood, frogs everywhere, gnats everywhere, flies everywhere, livestock gone, boils on people's face, hail, locusts, and eventually the sun is darkened.

And it's really easy to see these merely as punishments.

To say Pharaoh didn't listen, so I'm punishing them.

But really, keeping it in context, these are acts of love showing the people of God that God will stop at nothing to rescue his people from slavery.

And so all of those plagues happen.

We've got nine so far, and there's a tenth on the way.

And Pharaoh's heart just does not respond.

Does not respond.

And his grip gets tighter, and his rule gets crueler.

And so God makes a final plague, and his rescue plan kind of reaches its its its extreme.

This is Exodus 11.

The Lord said to Moses, Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt.

Afterward he will let you go from here.

When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.

Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.

And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.

Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people.

So Moses said, Thus says the Lord, About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, and the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

There will be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor will ever be, again.

It's horrible, it's tragic, but God responds to the hardness of Pharaoh's heart with the death of the firstborn.

And strangely, the freedom of God's people comes through the death of the firstborn.

It's like the tragic culmination of the rescue plan.

It's almost like in a world so full of darkness and so full of hate that the only response can possibly be is extreme.

But God doesn't forget his people in the midst of it.

He provides a plan to protect them in the midst of this final plague that's going to be really, really intense because he loves his people.

This is Exodus 12.

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

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

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 this 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 two of the doorposts, and the lintel of the houses in which they eat.

They shall eat the flesh at 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 morning.

Anything that remains until 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 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 in the land of Egypt.

The blood of the Lamb becomes this sign of protection and provision for God's people.

This meal is the last meal that they eat before they step into freedom.

They've been enslaved for so long, and they're gonna eat standing up, they're gonna eat with their belts on, they're gonna eat with their stuff in their hands because they are about to be free.

Passover shows us a lot of things about God that are true, and this topic is like infinitely interesting and can be talked about for hours and hours, but it shows us that God does something about the suffering of his people, that he really does rescue those who need it, and that freedom for God's people, ironically, comes through death.

Death of the firstborn, which is what cracks the grip of Pharaoh, and death of a lamb, a spotless lamb.

This final plague loosens Pharaoh's grip, and they are able to step out of slavery from the harsh rule of that pagan king, and it's this meal, it's this meal with all its meaning that generations and generations of Jews have kept, remembering the freedom, remembering the lamb, remembering the plagues, remembering what God has done to answer their prayers.

It's this meal where Jesus sits down and kind of plants his flag and says, This meal is no longer about Egypt.

It's no longer about Israel.

This is about a new family of God experiencing a new kind of freedom.

This meal is about me.

So that when they break the bread and when they drink the juice, they will remember Jesus from this moment forward.

And it's kind of impossible to get in that mind space of understanding how shocking this would have been for the disciples.

It's like if at Thanksgiving, your Uncle Larry, before everyone sits down at the table, maybe everyone is seated, he's gonna say the prayer, but before he prays, he says, friends, family, it's me, Uncle Larry.

We all have an Uncle Larry, right?

I think my Uncle Larry is named Mark.

Or maybe is Uncle Neil my Uncle Larry?

I don't know.

We all have an Uncle Larry.

Sorry, my family's back there.

Um, I love Uncle Neil and Uncle Mark for the record.

It's like Uncle Larry sits down and says, This turkey, it's beautiful, looks amazing.

This cranberry sauce, this stuffing, it's all it's all great.

But I tell you, friends and family, from this point forward, this turkey, this stuffing, it all points to me, Uncle Larry.

It all has always been pointing to me.

I'm it this is seriously, no, no, no, for real.

So much so that um you're not even gonna call this Thanksgiving dinner anymore.

You're gonna call this Larry Day.

And you're gonna eat the Larry meal.

And it will be delicious, and you will always remember this moment where I told you that this meal has nothing to do with pilgrims, it has nothing to do with friends and family and thankfulness.

This meal has always been pointing to me, Uncle Larry.

And then that new tradition starts, and you celebrate Uncle Larry Day every single year.

That's what it would have been like sitting at the table with Jesus saying, I know you've celebrated Passover for generations and generations.

I know that you've grown up doing this, and that this bread means something, this lamb means something, but I'm telling you, it was all about me.

It was all about me.

Do you understand how fresh that would be?

How different you would approach that meal, how different that tradition.

Jesus starts a new tradition in the final hours of his life that we are celebrating even to this day.

It would have been so strange, so potentially offensive.

We even see Jesus kind of process through and signal ahead like this is gonna happen in John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

Jesus says, I am the bread of life.

Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and they died.

This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.

We get to experience that amazing gift, that amazing gift of his body replacing us.

And then we're free from sin.

We're free from the law, which is kind of layered on top of sin, to give us a way to cope with how dark we sometimes are, and Jesus creates an entirely, entirely new way for us.

And the blood it spares us, Colossians 1, 19 through 22.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile himself all things, whether on heaven or on earth, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of the flesh by his death in order to present you as holy, blameless, and above reproach before him.

This meal represents the death of the firstborn.

It represents the death of the Lamb.

But it's not the firstborn of God's enemies or God's people's enemies, it's his own son.

Jesus sent his own son to die in our place as a consequence for our sin, to replace us, to give us freedom.

To allow us to step into a new kind of freedom, not just freedom from bad situations and freedom from bad mornings and bad days.

It's freedom from the cold and callous hand of sin on our own hearts that at one point gripped us so tightly that we could not possibly see a way out of that slavery.

And maybe it's the doing things to prove that you could potentially like pull one finger at a time off of that grip.

It's the law.

It's saying if I perform at a certain level, I'll be able to handle this.

If I just Bible studied enough, if I just prayed in the right way, if I just go to church enough, guys, we're free from all of that too.

In Galatians, they're kind of like figuring out how to manage this dynamic.

And uh Paul says that it's for freedom that you are set free, so that we should not re-enter the yoke of slavery of the law.

Don't make anyone follow all of the laws, guys.

Like Jesus has set you, he has set you free.

Will he call you to Bible study?

His word is so rich and so deep and so um such an easy way to communicate with him?

Of course he does.

But is it by that means that you experience the love of God?

Absolutely not.

It is that Jesus went to the cross, went to extreme lengths to show you how loved you are by God.

And he rose victorious from that grave so that we could experience closeness with him each and every day.

Anything else can get in the way of that.

And so all he asks to experience him is for participation.

For participation.

He takes our place if we take part in him.

Jesus isn't giving us all these hoops to jump through.

He's just asking us to opt-in.

Earlier, I asked you for your participation, and I'm super grateful that there was a buzz in the room, and it wasn't just like three people talking.

The stakes are pretty low.

But Jesus asks for our participation in him, and that's how we experience the freedom.

And it's just an simple yes.

It's a simple opt-in.

It's a simple sitting down at Christmas morning with the present in your hand, and all you have to do is unwrap it, and it belongs to you.

There's no work involved in doing that.

It's probably even less work because it's like actually a really great gift, and you don't have to pretend to like it, you know.

But it's as simple as saying yes.

But he does challenge all of us to that participation.

This is what he says after he says, I'm the bread of life.

Some people are like, that's confusing.

He's going to give us his flesh to eat.

What's going on there?

John 6.

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he will also live because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven.

Not like the bread that the fathers ate and died, whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.

Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught at Capernaum.

When many of his own disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard saying.

Who can listen to it?

And he clarifies what he was talking about in those final hours.

He was shifting our tradition, he was shifting the attention, not to a historical thing just to be remembered, but a person to be experienced.

That God gave so much to each and every one of us.

And to experience the freedom from that grip, whatever that grip looks like for you, the addictions, the frustrations, the dissatisfaction, the temptations, to experience the freedom from that grip, all you have to do is participate in Him, is to opt in, is to say yes.

That's the gift he gave us with this new tradition.

And so no matter how your week went, no matter how far you strayed down the wrong rabbit hole or how dark last night was, or whatever you woke up like this morning, each week we take part in this tradition to remember that it's the last meal that we eat before we step into freedom.

It's the last meal that we eat before we experience true freedom, when we have true food and true drink, true satisfaction.

And so I'm really glad that we do it every single week.

That we take this meal together every single week.

Because it reminds me, no matter how I messed up during the week, no matter what things are kind of disconnected, it reminds me that I don't need to layer anything on top of the love of Jesus, that I don't need to step back into the yoke of slavery, that I don't need to add religion to my daily routine, that it's okay if I missed my God time because I'm tired and I slept through it.

God forgives me.

And so that as we take it, we step into that true freedom.

The one that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15.

O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

And so with that said, I figured it'd be a good time to take Lord's Supper.

So if you guys had your cup and juice, and if you didn't get one, there's tables at the back.

Don't feel like you're messing anything up to stand up and go grab one.

You totally have time.

As we take this today, some of us have taken this 10,000 times or 150 times.

I don't know.

However long you've been here, you've taken it every week for that long.

Maybe you grew up taking it weekly.

For those of you who've done that, what I pray is that the glory and goodness of God would be made new to you today.

That you would experience his comfort, that you would experience his love, that you would experience his forgiveness.

And if that forgiveness looks like, wow, it's happened, it's happened in here, I need to extend it to someone else, if that forgiveness looks like a bravery toward confession, where you're actually able to say the thing you've done out loud to the person that needs to hear it, because you're not afraid of its grip on you anymore.

If that freedom looks like whatever it might look like, I hope that you experience the fullness of the goodness of God.

For those of you who have never taken this before, all are welcome.

For those of you who haven't taken that step to belonging to Jesus, I pray that you would.

To understand that you don't have to live life alone, that you do have someone, someone close, someone who is with you each and every moment of the day, someone who loves you and has gone to great lengths to know you.

I pray that you would say yes, and I pray that this meal might be symbolic of that yes.

That as you take the bread and the juice, you accept the body broken for you and the blood spilled over you to wash you clean.

And that if that is your first moment of doing this, that you'd sign up to be baptized, and that this would be like the first moment in a long journey with God.

And so, if you guys would, let's open up the bread and hold it.

Let's raise the bread.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your body broken for us.

We can be so afraid of the punishment that might come for the wrong things that we've done.

But today we we acknowledge and we remember that it's freedom given to us, and it's for freedom that we've been set free, that we don't have to walk around heavy, laden, that we don't have to walk around burdened or fearful of you, but to know that you gave it all for us on the cross.

Let's eat the bread.

Lord, thank you for your blood spilled, giving us a new way to relate to you.

Not by works or not by the law, but by love.

Thank you for washing us clean of the things that we've done.

I pray that that um that washing would be totally felt and fully felt by everyone in this room.

That we would experience it in our souls, that we would experience it deep, that we would offer all of those things that we've done wrong, all of those missteps, that we would offer them all to you to wash them.

And that we would truly experience the freedom that comes with your blood.

Let's drink the juice.