The Lord's Supper

Good morning.

Our passage today comes from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 14.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, we praise you for your providential care and your constant provision for our church.

Lord God, we pray that you that we would be able to have the wisdom to receive with gratitude the good things that you've given to us.

Lord, we pray that the plans that you have in store for our church, that we would be able to see and discern wisely.

Lord, that we would be able to have patience with one another and with uh the work that you are doing here.

A patience that's grounded in your promises, that you will always be with us, Lord, that your kingdom will come.

Lord, that the your plans for the church, the the gates of hell will not prevail against.

Um, Lord, gates are defensive, and it that means we can't be stopped, Lord.

And so we just pray that uh uh we would move and act with with hope in your continued provision um towards a future that we can't see, but that we move towards in faith, Lord, because of your great promises.

Pray that um uh you would equip us to just uh share the gratitude that we have for Krista and the work and that the seeds that she's planted here would just continue to bear fruit and multiply.

We pray that the plans that you have in store for Gibson, that you would attend to those and that they would be to prosper him and to uh raise him up uh for the equipping of your church, Lord.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So today we are uh looking at the Lord's Supper.

And this is, in a sense, it's like a passage that the whole book of Mark has been arcing towards, and that this whole holy week that we have been looking at has been moving towards this moment of the Lord's Supper.

This is when Jesus finally makes this institution, the one that we participate in every week, where we take the bread and the wine and we eat them in remembrance of him, that we remember the Lord's death until he comes.

Now, church history is proof that the Lord's Supper is uh an incredibly deep mystery.

And you can tell because of how much arguing has taken place regarding the Lord's Supper throughout church history.

And sometimes this uh uh arguing over what it what the Lord's Supper is, how to do it, has uh bred just argument and division that is necessary.

Sometimes it has bred argument and division because it is unnecessary.

But we shouldn't look back, and that we can have this sort of tendency, I think, as modern Christians, to look back and say the things that caused a lot of argument in church history in the past are the things that are not important.

They got hung up on details.

If we just focus on the important things, then there won't be argument about this.

But I think that that would be a wrong read.

Generally speaking, I think that's a wrong read.

But I think that in particular, in this instance, that's a wrong read because it was argued so deeply about because the importance of it is so it has an almost indescribable importance, the Lord's Supper.

So why does it have an almost indescribable importance?

It's because the Lord's Supper tells us what the death of Christ means.

And because the death of Christ has an indescribable importance for all of humanity, then the Lord's Supper, the sacrament that we've been given, which tells us what the death of Christ means, has this almost indescribable importance.

And so what the Lord's Supper shows us is that the death of Christ is not merely exemplary.

Meaning the death of Christ is not just the most inspirational story of a martyr.

The death of Christ is not just the perfect example of how someone should live.

Sometimes Jesus is talked about like that.

In fact, oftentimes Jesus is talked about like that.

The perfect example, the one who we the maximal example of the best life lived, or the most inspirational story of somebody who was so committed to their faith and what they believed in that they were willing to lay their lives down for it.

But throughout history, there have been lots of wonderful stories of people who were willing to lay their lives down for the things that they valued, even for the good things that they valued.

But Jesus' story is not just an example of how to do that.

What the Lord's Supper shows us is that Jesus' death is not just an example, it is effective.

That the Lord's death actually accomplishes our salvation.

That the Lord's death is not just a picture of how we ought to live, but it is the event in world history which makes peace between humanity and God.

It doesn't just show us the way, it makes the way.

It doesn't just teach us the path of salvation.

Jesus saves sinners by his death.

He really does it.

And so this is the claim of the Lord's Supper, that Jesus in his death, he really did it.

That what he could say on the cross is it is finished.

You know, to to um quote William Wallace, Buddha didn't do that stuff.

Let the reader understand.

See who's been keeping up on your podcast lately.

So there is a but this raises a this raises another question, which is Jesus' death two thousand years ago.

What does that have to do with any of us?

How is it that that death, the death of this man in particular, how could I make the claim that because of that death we are saved?

Now, when I say Jesus' death saves sinners from the wrath of God, every Christian says, yes, I agree.

And I think that there is this place where it's like deep in our hearts, I think almost anyone resonates with that phrase and has a sense, has a glimmer of I think I have a sense of what that means, that Jesus' death saves sinners from the wrath of God.

But when pressed to say, but why?

Why does Jesus' death actually accomplish this salvation?

Why did I need that?

Because if you consider an ordinary martyr story, it is the effectiveness of the martyr is in the inspiration of what the martyr might accomplish in those who bear witness to the martyr laying down their life.

But we're not saying that of Jesus.

We're not saying that the effectiveness of it is what he inspired in the world.

We are saying that the effectiveness of it took place in the death itself.

It actually accomplished something.

And the way to understand that is that the answer to that question of what did it accomplish?

Why does that death save me?

The answer to that question is in the Lord's Supper.

Without the Lord's Supper, the the disciples would not understand.

We could not really know what is this?

That what does the death of Jesus mean?

What did it do?

And the Lord's Supper is described to us by Jesus, instituted by Jesus as a covenant.

So the answer to the question of why is it that that man's death means I have peace with God?

It's because it satisfies the requirements of the covenant and brings us into a new covenantal relationship with God.

So because Jesus describes the Lord's Supper as the institution of a new covenant, and that teaches us what the Lord's Supper means and therefore what his death means, it is of extreme importance.

And so to understand it, we have to look at the covenants.

And what is a covenant?

A covenant is what happens when you have an HOA.

A covenant is, that's just a preacher joke, you can use that whenever you're preaching.

A covenant is more loving than a contract and more binding than affection.

So it's not just merely a contract, but it's it's not just merely affection either.

It's something that's more than both of those things.

Now, intuitively, you understand that all relationships have something like contractual obligations.

All relationships that you're a part of.

They have some boundaries that if you cross outside those boundaries, then you're no longer in that relationship.

All relationships are like this.

They all have boundaries and requirements, such that if those are crossed, then that relationship is not that relationship anymore.

Now, this is of course true, consider marriage.

Marriage has explicit boundaries and requirements, so that if you fall outside certain patterns of behavior, then we would say you are no longer abiding by this marriage.

And the marriage should become a divorce.

So in marriage, you commit and you say, we will have have no other partners outside of this.

And then if you say, Well, I have one other who is who I you know enjoy some of the marital benefits with outside of this, we'd say, then that's not a marriage.

You've destroyed what the marriage covenant requires.

Or you can consider this with parents and children.

A parent who has uh has an implicit responsibility to care for their child.

Now, if they neglect their child and they do not treat them as their own child, then we would say, then this relationship has been fundamentally broken.

And we are now outside the bounds of the requirements of the parent-child relationship.

And so we would even have the state step in and legally say, because of your neglect of this child, you can no longer operate within this parent-child relationship.

And so we know that there are implicit and explicit boundaries to all relationships.

But consider just friendship.

Well, but we know that there are implicit boundaries for what a friendship is.

And if it goes outside of those, we would say, then this isn't really a friendship.

So you might consider, like, you have a friend, and it's like, yeah, he's a pretty good friend of mine.

Um whenever I don't think exactly what he thinks, then he yells at me and berates me.

Have you noticed that?

This friend, and then your other friend, who hopefully is a real friend, would say, I don't think that I don't think you have a friend here.

You know, I think it I think you have somebody who's not treating you like a friend at all.

Sounds like they're treating you more like a tyrant, and what you should do is not be friends with this person.

Because the boundary has been encroached.

They've gone beyond something which fundamentally breaks the relationship.

And so we can't say, we we could no longer say we're friends, because that's not how friends treat each other.

Now we know this intuitively, this is not a surprise, but that's because all of our relationships, and in fact, the whole world is structured covenantally.

It is not that we all have these relationships with boundaries, and therefore we prescribe to our relationship with God these same sorts of boundaries.

That's not the direction that it works in.

The direction that it works in is we are all covenantally bound to our Creator.

Because what's fundamental to being a human is that you are a creature.

You were made.

And you were made with purpose and intention.

You are not a generic sort of thing, but you are a type of thing that has reason for your existence.

And because you have reason for your existence, that means there are oughts.

You ought to act certain ways.

You should do certain things, you ought to abstain from certain actions because you were made with a purpose.

And that's what having a purpose is.

If you want there to be no oughts or shoulds, then you also will have no purpose or meaning.

So ots and shoulds mean hope.

No ots and shoulds means nihilism and meaninglessness, despair.

Now, if our most fundamental relationship as creatures, made with this purpose, is to relate to our God, if that's what we were made for, then that means that the way that we relate to God would have boundaries.

And we would be able to say, you know, when you relate to God, if you relate to him like this, then you're actually breaking the covenant with God.

Because that's the way all relationships are structured.

And if our most fundamental relationship is this relationship with God, and that means that we relate to him, how we would relate to him is from who he made us to be.

And we were made to be worshipers, worshipers of God, because that is a rightly ordered relationship.

You know, when you're in a rightly ordered marriage and there's fidelity on both sides, and you know, what would what would make it, what would be the most wonderful marriage to be a part of?

It would be the one where the husband treats his wife like she's his wife, and where the wife treats her husband like he's her husband.

Well, that would be that would be the most wonderful marriage to be a part of.

But what would be the most wonderful person to be?

Well, it would be the human who who treats their God like he's God.

And then it would be to receive that God would treat you, his creature, like you were his people.

And that would be the most wonderful thing that we could ever imagine.

And we would worship him as God, and we would enjoy all of the provision and the glory of his presence with us.

And so this is the way that God explicitly structures his relationship with humanity.

He structures it as a covenantal relationship where he says, I will be your God and you will be my people.

And within that, of course, there are requirements.

Now, the requirements of marriage are one thing, but what would be the requirement of a creature made by God to their God?

Well, he is a person.

God reveals himself to us personally, and we are persons.

And so we we would have the types of relationships that persons have where we enjoy one another's presence and we receive love from one another and we give love to one another.

These are the types of things that we get to do.

And he is an absolute, because he's not like us, you know.

We're persons, but we're not absolute.

We are, it's not necessary that we exist.

We change and we uh our preferences shift and we have all sorts of things that are shifty and changey about us.

But God is absolute.

So the way that we would relate to him is with absolute fidelity.

The maintenance of that relationship would require absolute obedience.

Because what would be the most joyful experience we could have as a person?

It would be if we treated God as God.

If we treated him as though he were our God.

And so with Adam in the garden, he enters into this covenant.

And he says in Genesis 2, 16, and the Lord commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

So, what would a covenant with the Lord look like?

Well, the Lord would provide all of our needs as God, give us life itself, and then what would be the requirement?

That would be him treating us like we're his people.

You see?

Him giving us all we need, him giving us his very presence, him satisfying all of the desires of our hearts by his presence.

That's him being like, I'm your God.

You know, you're my people.

I'm treating you like you're my people.

And then what would be the structure of that covenantal relationship in return?

Well, we would treat him with absolute obedience in return.

And so the Lord offers one prohibition: do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for if you eat from it, you will surely die.

Life for obedience.

Within the confines of the covenant, there is fullness of life.

For disobedience, there is death.

And of course, this is true.

Because when that friend who tr who uh acts like a tyrant over you, when you realize this is what's happening, you must kill the friendship.

In order for any otherwise, that's that's what comes of it.

When a husband does not treat a wife as though she is his wife, then we see the marriage is dead.

There's no life in it.

And so with God, the author of life, the giver of life, when that covenant is broken, of course, the result is death.

And this is what happens.

So God enters into this covenantal relationship with us as people, which I hope now feels like, of course.

Of course.

And when he enters into this covenantal relationship with us, we do not treat him as God.

The covenant is broken.

And so, in order, there's one, there's so what happens next?

Well, uh, of course, Adam eats from the fruit, the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as he is tempted by Satan.

And Satan, do you remember why he comes into the story?

No, you don't.

It's just one of it's just he was there.

And uh do you remember why there was a fall in the heavens that caused Satan and the other angels to fall?

Do you remember the explanation for that?

No.

You don't.

Isn't that weird?

That's a weird part of our faith.

Here's what I think.

I'll give just a little answer to that.

Uh I I think that uh the reason that the presence of Satan is so absurd is because I think absurdity is of the essence of sin.

I think that he is inexplicable because to explain him would mean that there was some there was some some Something reasonable about his existence, but there's not.

And that's the nature of sin itself.

What could explain?

How could a person reason to not treating their God as God?

They could not.

But God, right during his curse, after the fall, in Genesis 3.15, he makes when he's cursing the serpent, he says this to the serpent, to that wicked Satan.

He says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

Remember, the promise of sin, the wages of sin, is death.

But then, right in the midst of it, that broken covenant with God, God makes this promise.

And the promise entails offspring from the woman, which means life will continue.

And that that offspring will kill the serpent.

Now, why is it important that the serpent be killed?

Because do you remember what it is that humans were made to do?

What were we made to do?

We were made to worship.

So once we fell into sin, that worship switch didn't get flipped off.

It just got redirected.

And the thing that we worship is the thing that we are we are covenanted with.

It becomes the defining feature of our purpose, whatever it is that we worship.

So when we denied God and instead obeyed, worshiped Satan, we became slaves to Satan.

So our hearts have fallen in sin.

We become slaves to Satan.

But God offers this promise early on to Eve that this that from her offspring, that means life, not death, which is strange in this context, there would come one who would kill the serpent, so that we would no longer be enslaved in this false worship.

This is the seed of a covenant of grace.

Because here's this question.

Here's the question of the scriptures.

How is it that a perfectly holy God could be in relationship with a fallen and sinful people?

How could he be reconciled?

There's one way he could do it.

But if you think about it, it would actually be impossible for God.

Perhaps he could just deny the relationship that he had entered into with us.

He could just deny that we ought to treat him as God.

And he could come in and say, you know, I'm gonna, I'll just pretend to not be God with you.

And maybe me being treated like God by you was just too high of a requirement.

And so then he would enter our lie in order to maintain the relationship with us.

And he would come in and say, you know what, I'll just agree with the lies that you say, and in agreeing with those lies, then we'll be in some sort of relationship.

And then what's happened is we've made God a liar.

This is impossible.

So God must instead allow us to be in relationship with him, create a way to be in relationship with him in truth.

In truth.

Where we would treat him as God and he would treat us as his people.

And so God continues on as the story goes on, and he establishes a covenant with Noah.

Remember, all of the world turned against God.

The thoughts of every man's heart were only evil all the time.

And so God floods the world and he makes a promise to Noah.

And Noah, God preserves this line of Eve so that the offspring is, this offspring of promise is preserved through the flood.

And on the other side of the flood, God says, I'm never going to do that again.

So he says, I'm not going to destroy the world again.

And that means that there's something that he must have another plan in store.

Because how could he be in relationship with us in truth when the truth is we deserve death from him?

And he cannot lie.

And then God continues on, and he chooses one man out of all the people on the earth.

He chooses one man named Abram.

Abraham.

And he enters into a covenant with Abraham.

And he says this to Abraham in Genesis 17, 7, and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

And this covenant is a bloody covenant.

It is one that requires circumcision in order to, as the sign of the covenant.

It's referred to as the covenant of circumcision.

And the promise is an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

Now we should be asking ourselves, how can God do that in truth?

Because it's sort of like saying, like, I'll be married to you whether you like it or not.

Well, that's impossible.

That's not the way a marriage works.

You can't get married, you get married to someone, not at someone.

Some of us are, you know, you get a little tired, a little hungry, and then you start being married at your spouse.

But it denies the very nature of the relationship itself.

And yet God makes this promise of eternal life, an eternal covenant with God, to Abraham and to his offspring after him?

Now, how could he do that with a sinful people?

We should be asking that question the whole time.

Can God tell a lie?

Can he pretend that we have not betrayed him?

Can he just ignore that we worship Satan?

Then this one man he raises up, and after a long time of waiting, he gives Abram a son, a son which he asks him to offer up in sacrifice to him, and then spares.

And then he raises Abram up into a family, and he promises him, just like he promised Adam, I'll give you a place, a garden to live in, and I'll give you offspring to fill the land with, and you will be a people in a place, and I will be your God there.

And he treats Abram as though that, as though he, God treats him as though God was his God, as though Abraham was his people.

But how can he do that?

Because Abraham is just the line of Adam, the same sinner.

So the promise to Abraham goes on, and God is faithful to it.

But then Abraham, this one man who becomes a family, their family is exiled into Egypt.

And as they're exiled into Egypt, God then treats these same people as though they were his people, saying, You are my people, I am your God.

And he rescues them.

He destroys that serpent Pharaoh, and he rescues them.

And the way that he rescues them is he tells them to eat a Passover meal.

And the Passover requires the killing of a lamb, and they would consume the body of the lamb.

Then they would take the blood of the lamb and they would put it on the doorposts of their home.

Then the angel of death would pass over the homes that had the blood of the lamb on it, and everybody else would be treated as though they were not God's people.

And the firstborn sons of those people, those children of promise, would be killed.

Those names would be stamped out.

That's what it means for the firstborn son to be killed.

The name of your people is stamped out.

The lineage is done.

But God's people, under the blood of this lamb, were brought through.

And then they are brought through the waters.

And then Moses goes up to the top of Mount Sinai and he receives the law.

And so these people who were just one man who became a family, who became a tribe, they are now a nation.

And God raised them up to a nation.

And we're seeing there seems like this fulfillment happening all over the place.

There are people that are given the land under God.

And then they are given this law.

And Exodus 24, 8 says, And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.

The blood of the covenant.

And then he takes the blood and he sprinkles it on the people.

But the words that Moses gave them were requirements of perfect obedience.

And when there wasn't perfect obedience, then there was an opportunity for reconciliation, and the opportunity came through the killing of animals in their place, so that some blood would be poured, because the wages of sin is death.

So this priestly sacrifice system is initiated under Moses.

But of course, the people are not able to uphold that law.

Abraham, this great prophet, Moses, this picture of a instituting this priestly office, David receives the covenant next, the king.

David is given this promise from the Lord, right?

He is the king of Israel.

And the promise that he is given is that his throne will be an eternal throne.

So that means, you know, when when you have a king in place, this means that you have an identity as a people.

And he is the king who is chosen by God to rule over them.

So this means that they can know they will be God's people.

And so what does it mean that he promises David an eternal throne?

It means that the promise to God's people is that they will be eternally his, eternal life with God.

This is the promise of the covenant.

But then what happens to David?

Well, he has a son, Solomon, and pretty good, you know, up until the end.

And then that next generation, the kingdom splits in two.

And then it's just a series of the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom seeing who can be the most disobedient to God.

It's a race.

That's the way to, if you think of 1 Kings and Chronicles or Kings and Chronicles, it is a horse race of disobedience.

It's like a boat race.

It's probably more like it.

And eventually the disobedience reaches such a level that God must, in truth, treat them according to their disobedience.

Say, you are not in any way treating me like I'm your God.

And so, out of that, the Lord sends the nation of Israel and the southern kingdom into exile.

And so here are the people that have had the promises of God.

And look at the question that they're forced into by this exile.

They look back and they say, okay, well, what were our patriarchs promised?

What were the men who went before us who received the promises of God?

That great prophet Abraham, what is it that he was promised?

Well, he was promised offspring that would dwell in the promised land.

Well, we are we are outside of the land.

What is Moses promised?

Well, he gives us this pattern of worship where he shows us how it is that we're meant to go in and worship the Lord rightly, go into the tabernacle and offer up these sacrifices for our atonement.

We have no temple or tabernacle to go into.

Where would God meet us?

Well, what about David?

He was promised this eternal throne.

How is it that we could be his people or consider ourselves his people?

Look at the eternal throne that was promised to David.

It sits empty.

And so they are forced into this question.

How is it that any son of Adam or daughter of Eve could be in any relationship with our God?

How could we say, in truth, He is our God?

We are His people?

Aren't we just proving over and over again that the promises of God in all of their glory towards us are impossible for us sinners to receive?

Don't we have no people?

Don't we have no place?

Don't we have no God in the world?

Doesn't this all just end in death and despair?

Isn't life just a series of problems that are irreconcilable?

Of mysteries that you can't see your way out of?

Isn't the story of every family ultimately just a tragedy?

Maybe you get a good two or three generation run.

And then doesn't it all just go away?

These are the questions that they're pressed into in their heart.

And then out of that darkness, from the mouth of the weeping prophet, comes this vision of a new covenant, a new pattern, a new way of organizing the relationship between God and his people.

Some answer to this question of, well, what did the promises of God mean when we have no people, we have no place of worship, we have no king on the throne?

All of those were eternal promises of God.

What does any of this mean?

We couldn't hold them, they're done now.

Could we count on those promises anymore?

If we're faithless, is he is he faithful?

Jeremiah 31, 31 to 32 says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.

So it will be something new.

A way in which we we, as sinners before God, some answer to this question of how is it possible for us who have fallen to be in covenant with the one that we were made to know.

And this brings us to our text today.

For 1,444 years, the Passover had been celebrated in exactly the same way.

But this day with Jesus, it would be different.

For the first time in that long, there is something new.

Jesus, before he eats this meal with his disciples, in Luke, it tells us that he tells his disciples, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

Now, this is the night of his betrayal, the time of his crucifixion, and he tells his disciples, I've earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you.

Now, why is it that Jesus would look forward to entering into a covenant with these people who have only betrayed him?

Well, it's because he's the Son of God.

And so his heart towards us is the same as God's heart towards us.

Why is it that God, for these people who have only broken the pattern of covenants that he has entered into with them, why would he enter a new one?

Well, because of his love.

Mark 14, 22, and as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them.

Take, this is my body.

And in verses 23 through 24 he says, And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank it, and he said to them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

My body, my blood, a new covenant.

What is the sacrifice that is offered on our behalf?

How is it that a sinful humanity could be reconciled to God?

Well, the wages of sin is death.

So somebody would have to come in and pay those wages on our behalf.

But this somebody would have to be a man.

He would have to be someone like the first man, whose lineage comes directly from the Father, like Adam.

And he would have to go back, in a sense, go back and fulfill the requirements of that first covenant, which is perfect obedience.

And in perfect obedience, he would receive life, eternal life.

And so he would have to be perfectly obedient to satisfy the requirements of the covenant, but him doing that doesn't save us, because we were not perfectly obedient.

So what we owe is death.

But he is perfectly obedient.

The one who is perfectly obedient is the one who gets life.

So what the position that we find ourselves in is that the one who is perfectly obedient, who deserves life, would say, I will take their death.

So that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled for them.

And this is what Jesus is saying when he says, This is my body that I give.

This is my blood which is poured out.

This is the new covenant in his blood.

Means that the way that we now come to God as his people is by the blood of Jesus.

Anybody would know when they heard him say it, the body and the blood, the Lamb who is conceived.

The blood that covers us.

This is the pattern of atonement throughout all of Scripture.

And Jesus shows us here in the Lord's Supper, He is the one who satisfies all of the requirements of the covenants on our behalf, so that what He purchased for us we might receive freely by faith, because God is satisfied to look on the sacrifice of Jesus and say, on the grounds of his death, you are forgiven and have peace with me.

Because the requirement of the law, the requirement of our relationship, could not be fulfilled by you.

So God took it upon himself to fulfill the requirement on our behalf.

He did it.

So what we receive is the freedom of his grace.

So Jesus is the second Adam, who is perfectly obedient and passes the test in the garden.

But him passing the test meant he went when he passed the test, he didn't get life like Adam got.

He got death even though he passed the test.

Why?

Because of the depth of his love towards his people, that he would lay his life down so that in him we might be saved.

He is the offspring, the promised offspring of Abraham, who, like Abraham's son Isaac, is carried up the mountain to be sacrificed out of faithfulness to God.

But when he's carried up the mountain, which by the way, same mountain, same mountain, it's insane.

He's carried up the mountain to be sacrificed to God.

Isaac is spared.

Jesus is not spared.

Because his death did it.

His death was the true sacrifice.

Nothing but the blood saves us.

He's the true Moses.

Who doesn't just create this institution of patterns of sacrifices that we might be saved, but he is the one who is the sacrifice himself.

He doesn't just give us the law, which teaches us that we cannot fulfill it.

So that in him we are truly saved.

He is the true David, who is given the eternal throne in the heavens, so that in him we might always know.

He is the one who took on our enemies and treated them as his enemies and conquered them on our behalf.

In him we have the fullness of our identity before God.

We are the people who worship Jesus.

We are the ones who are under his care and government.

He is the true David.

And at the Lord's Supper, Jesus tells us that his offering is the offer which satisfies on our behalf all of the requirements of the covenant.

So that because of what he did, we have peace with God.

That's why Jesus' death all those years ago is not just an example.

He actually did it.

Before he dies, he can say, it's finished.

It's finished.

And because he died, you can say before God, all of the requirements of the covenants have been satisfied in him.

It is finished.

And so as we partake of this meal this morning and we are reminded of the death of our Lord, Jesus says, He says, 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.

So just as all those Passover meals were showing us not just what happened, not just meals of remembrance, but showing us what is to come as it's fulfilled in Christ, so too our Lord's Supper that we partake in is not just telling us what happened, but we look forward to the day where we will eat with Christ in the new heavens and the new earth, when we will join him there, fully redeemed, because of what he has done.

That's what the Lord's Supper means.

It means that Jesus saves us.

Paul Actually, I guess I can just read my text for the day, can't I?

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.

So he took the bread and he broke it.

And he said, This is my body.

And he took the cup and he said, This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood.

The new covenant in his blood.

Why are we righteous before God?

We're in a new covenant now.

All that we lost in our sin against the covenant of works has been undone by Jesus.

And in a new covenant with him, we have a promise of eternal life.

So I invite all of you who have been baptized into the name of Jesus, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and who confess that Christ is Lord and that God raised him from the dead to come and partake of this meal with us this morning.

A meal of remembrance, that all that was required of us is satisfied in him before the Lord.

That because of what he did, he is our God.

We are his people.

He'll treat us as such because of Jesus.

So let's treat him as such and worship him.

Holy Father, I pray that you would work in our hearts these truths that we might receive them in your glorious grace, Lord.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.