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is Jeremiah 31. And here, Jeremiah
speaks of the new covenant that God made with His people, and
he speaks of His great love for His people, even after they had
gone astray, and of His restoring mercies. And of course, in our
New Testament passage today, we see how Jesus tells His disciples
that they are going to stumble, but He also promises that He
will gather them together again because of His mercies. Hear
now, then, as I read to you from God's holy and infallible Word. Jeremiah 31, verse 1. At the same time, says the Lord,
I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they
shall be my people. Thus says the Lord. The people
who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Israel,
when I went to give him rest, The Lord has appeared of old
to me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love.
Therefore, with loving kindness, I have drawn you again. I will
build you and you shall be rebuilt. Oh, Virgin of Israel, you shall
again be adorned with your tambourines and you shall go forth in the
dances of those who rejoice. You shall yet plant vines on
the mountains of Samaria. The planters shall plant and
eat them as ordinary food. For there shall be a day when
the watchman will cry on Mount Ephraim, Arise, and let us go
up to Zion, to the Lord our God. For thus says the Lord, Sing
with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the
nations. Proclaim, give praise, and say, O Lord, save your people,
the remnant of Israel. Behold, I will bring them from
the north country, and gather them from the ends of the earth.
Among them the blind and the lame, the woman with child, and
the one who labors with child together. A great throng shall
return there. They shall come with weeping,
and with supplications I will lead them. I will cause them
to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way in which they
shall not stumble. For I am a father to Israel,
and Ephraim is my firstborn." Hear the word of the Lord, O
nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He who
scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd
does his flock. For the Lord has redeemed Jacob,
and ransomed him from the hand of one stronger than he. Therefore,
they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, streaming to
the goodness of the Lord, for wheat and new wine and oil for
the young of the flock and the herd. Their souls shall be like
a well-watered garden, And they shall sorrow no more at all. Then shall the virgin rejoice
in the dance and the young men and the old together, for I will
turn their mourning to joy, will comfort them and make them rejoice
rather than sorrow. I will satiate the soul of the
priest with abundance and my people shall be satisfied with
my goodness, says the Lord. Thus says the Lord, a voice was
heard in Rama lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping
for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children
because they are no more. Thus says the Lord, refrain your
voice from weeping in your eyes from tears for your work shall
be rewarded, says the Lord, and they shall come back from the
land of the enemy. There is hope in your future,
says the Lord, that your children shall come back to their own
border. I've surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself. You have chastened
me and I was chastened like an untrained bull. Restore me and
I will return for you are the Lord my God. Surely after my
turning I repented, and after I was instructed, I struck myself
on the thigh. I was ashamed, yes, even humiliated,
because I bore the reproach of my youth. As Ephraim, my dear
son, is he a pleasant child? For though I spoke against him,
I earnestly remember him still. Therefore, my heart yearns for
him. I will surely have mercy on him,
says the Lord. Set up signposts, make landmarks,
set your heart toward the highway, the way in which you went. Turn
back, O Virgin of Israel, turn back to these your cities. How
long will you gad about, O you backsliding daughter? For the
Lord has created a new thing in the earth. A woman shall encompass
a man. Thus says the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel. They shall again use this speech
in the land of Judah and in its cities when I bring back their
captivity. The Lord bless you, O home of justice and mountain
of holiness. And there shall dwell in Judah
itself and in all the cities together farmers and those going
out with flocks. For I have satiated the weary
soul and I have replenished every sorrowful soul. After this, I
awoke and looked around and my sleep was sweet to me. Behold,
the days are coming, says the Lord, that I will sow the house
of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the
seed of beast. And it shall come to pass that
as I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to throw
down, to destroy and to afflict, so I will watch over them to
build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days, they shall
say no more. The fathers have eaten sour grapes
and the children's teeth are set on edge. But everyone shall
die for his own iniquity. Every man who eats the sour grapes,
his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days are coming,
says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel and with the house of Jacob. Not according to the
covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took
them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my
covenant, which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says
the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house
of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in
their minds and write it on their hearts and I will be their God
and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach
his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord,
for they all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest
of them, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their
sin. I will remember no more. Thus
says the Lord, who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances
of the moon and the stars for a light by night, who disturbs
the sea and its waves roar. The Lord of hosts is his name.
If those ordinances depart from before me, says the Lord, the
seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me
forever. Thus says the Lord, if heaven above can be measured
and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will
also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have
done, says the Lord. Behold, the days are coming,
says the Lord, that the city shall be built for the Lord from
the tower of Haniel to the corner gate. The surveyor's line shall
again extend straight forward over the hill. Then it shall
turn toward Goethe and the whole valley of the dead bodies and
of the ashes and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron to
the corner of the horse gate toward the east shall be holy
to the Lord. It shall not be plucked up or
thrown down anymore forever. Amen. May God bless the reading
of his very encouraging word to us. Let's turn to our New
Testament reading, Matthew 26. And this is the portion I'll
be preaching from today, Matthew 26 and beginning in verse 26. Twenty six, twenty six. You remember that Jesus had gathered
his disciples together to celebrate the Passover, and we saw that
he had announced to them that one of them would betray him.
And now we pick up in that supper in verse 26, and it says, As
they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed, and broke it,
and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is
my body. Then he took the cup and gave
thanks and gave it to them saying, Drink from it, all of you, for
this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the
remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not
drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when
I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom." When they
had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then
Jesus said to them, all of you will be made to stumble because
of me this night. For it is written, I will strike
the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.
But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.
Peter answered and said to him, Even if all are made to stumble
because of you, I will never be made to stumble. Jesus said
to him, Assuredly, I say to you that this night before the rooster
crows, you will deny me three times. Peter said to him, Even
if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And so said all
the disciples. And there we'll end the reading
of God's Word. May He bless it to our hearing
this morning. Now let's unite. A component
of our worship at Covenant Reform Presbyterian Church. It was about
three years ago that I presented a series to you, a four-part
series on the Lord's Supper from Luke's Gospel, chapter 22. And
that was when we began having communion on a weekly basis.
I don't intend to go into all the detail that I went into three
years ago. If you're interested, you can
find those messages on our website to provide you with more details. But as some of you were not with
us at that time, we now come to Matthew's account of the Lord's
Supper in our morning sermon series. And I'm going to be,
as I am expounding Matthew, I want to focus in particular on what
Matthew focuses on in his account. While Luke mentions the command
of our Lord Jesus to do this in remembrance of me, which if
we translate, if we bring out the tense in our translation,
we could say Jesus said, keep doing this in remembrance of
me. In other words, he was instituting it as an ongoing thing that was
to be done in the church. Luke brings that out, but Matthew
omits that. His omission tends to put the
focus on the disciples and on the moment and what the Lord's
Supper at the moment that it was instituted meant to them. what Jesus was saying to them.
Now, this has a way of drawing our attention to what the Lord's
Supper meant to the disciples on the night He was instituted
to lead us to consider what it means to us in the context in
which we live, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. So
in Matthew, you can see how Jesus was preparing His disciples for
His soon to come suffering and death. He was showing them before
the fact, right before the fact, precisely what the horrendous
events that they were going to witness over the next few hours
would entail. Because it is recorded for us
in God's Word, we know that it is there not only for the disciples,
but it is there for us. God has preserved it for us.
It's therefore my intent this morning to bring this marvelous
instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ on the night that He was
betrayed to bear upon all of you, to show you how it pertains
to you. My prayer is that God will speak
into your life so that you will benefit from what Jesus said
to His disciples with reference to the Lord's Supper. So, first
of all, I want you to see that the Lord's Supper is an aid to
your faith. It is given as a help to your
faith. And that in two ways. First,
it is an aid to your faith because it points you to Christ crucified
as the object of your faith. It's that which your faith is
to rest upon. The very fact that Jesus took
bread and said, this is my body, and that He then took the cup
and said, this is my blood of the new covenant which is shed
for many, showed His disciples that the death that He was preparing
to die was to be a sacrificial death, that it was an offering
for sin. Now, the disciples were quite
familiar with the Old Testament sacrifices, with sacrificial
offerings that were offered regularly in their day. On that very night,
they were celebrating the Passover with the Lord Jesus. The Passover
was that great event in the history of Israel when God had delivered
His people out of Egypt and had passed over their children rather
than bringing His judgment upon their firstborn sons. And He
had placed that curse and that judgment upon a lamb in place
of the sons of Israel. The Passover then was commemorated
every year thereafter as God had commanded, or at least it
was supposed to be. They didn't always keep it. But at the time
when Jesus met with his disciples, Josephus tells us that there
is something like two hundred and fifty thousand lambs that
were slain within a two hour period at the time of the Passover
every year. It was an amazing time. In these
offerings, the body and blood of a sacrificial victim were
separated. The blood was poured out. Before
they were offered to God, the blood was poured out to show
the pouring out of life in the place of those for whom the sacrifice
was made. And if each of these animals
had a gallon of blood, This would have been enough to fill three
30 by 60 foot swimming pools with a regular deep end in them
and the whole thing. The blood would flow and fill
up from the temple down to the Brook Kidron and fill it up so
that it flowed red for several days at this time of year. All
that blood was to show Israel that the wages of sin is death. and that there must be a substitutionary
death in order to take away sin. What death that would be was
still not revealed fully to them. They did not understand that
God's Son was the one that would come and would bear their iniquities
as a substitute in their place. And so it was that when Jesus
took this bread now on this event with his disciples and said,
this is my body, and then he took the cup and said of the
wine, this is my blood of the new covenant shed for the remission
of sins. He was doing the same thing that was done in those
Old Testament sacrifices. He was separating the body and
the blood because it was a sacrifice. He was showing His disciples
in a crystal clear way that He was being offered as a sacrifice
to atone for sin. He was declaring plainly that
His death has a purpose. That it was not just the result
of His enemies finally catching up to Him. It was a deliberate
offering to atone for sin. It was God the Father striking
His Son with His dreadful curse so that we, the human race, might
be set free. It was an act of marvelous mercy
and condescending love. This teaches you a very important
lesson. Namely, that not just the person of Jesus Christ, but
Jesus Christ crucified is the object of your faith. If you
would be reconciled to God, you must not only believe in Jesus
Christ, but you must believe in Jesus Christ crucified for
sinners. You ought to believe that He
is kind, and that He is powerful, and that He is full of love and
mercy, and that He is an example to us. This is all well and good,
but you cannot be saved unless you look to Him as the One who
offered Himself as a sacrifice to take away your sin. You must
look to Him as the One who bore the wrath and curse of God. You
need to ask yourself this this morning. Is Christ crucified? the object of my faith. Am I
simply trusting in the general benevolence of God as I understand
it? Or am I depending on the Lamb
of God who was slain to take away the sins of the world? As
a minister of the Gospel, I would declare to you in the name of
the Lord that if you are only trusting in the general benevolence
of God, you are still under God's condemnation and will remain
so. until you repent and believe on Christ crucified. I wrote
a letter to my great aunt shortly after I became a Christian and
told her what God had done in my life. And she wrote back and
said, I don't worry about any of those things of judgment,
because I believe that God is a God of love. She refused to
look to Christ crucified. She thought He was a good man.
Someone to follow, but not one who had to be crucified for her
sins. But you see, there's nothing
else to trust in. Nothing else can take away your sin. The Lord's
Supper teaches you to put your trust in Christ as the one sacrifice. My body. My blood, He says to
you. So then you see that the Lord's
Supper is an aid to your faith because it sets Him before you
in this way. It shows you to trust in Him. Secondly, the Lord's
Supper is an aid to your faith because it makes visible his
ongoing invisible work in you as a Christian. There is action
in the Lord's Supper on your part. Baptism is passive. We
receive it. But with the Lord's Supper, we
are told to take and to eat, to drink. In this way, Jesus
makes visible to you something that's invisible. the fact that
He is the source of our spiritual nourishment to whom we must continually
resort. We must draw from Him life and
salvation. He gives us something that we
understand quite well in our daily lives, eating and drinking. We all know that without food
that we would soon die. Jesus is showing us that without
receiving the life and the cleansing that comes from His sacrifices,
we'll spiritually die. Our life in communion with God
will terminate. He is showing us that He is our
very food and drink. Again, Christ sacrificed is our
very food and drink. You need this visual reminder
because you can't see His life-giving power strengthening you. And
you can't see His cleansing blood cleansing you. By making it visible
to us through these signs and symbols of spiritual food and
drink, it encourages you to keep looking to Him, to make sure
that you are feeding on Him. With these visual signs that
are connected to His promise that His body and blood are given
for you, He gives you confidence that He really does provide you.
with the essential nourishment and cleansing through His sacrifice. I want you to take a moment to
think about the bread and the wine separately. The bread, first
of all, represents Christ crucified to nourish us. Nourishment is
not something that just happens all at once. God sometimes brings
radical changes. into our lives. Some of us have
had marvelous conversion experiences. We can tell about how I was in
the darkness and God brought me into the light, just like
it was with the Apostle Paul. Some of us have that. Not all.
Sometimes we have those times when God has really taken hold
of us in our Christian experience. When we've been wandering and
kind of going this way and that, and everything comes together
and He brings everything in a marvelous way so that we're radically changed
in a very short time. But this is not what we are to
look to as His regular manner of working. The Lord's Supper
shows us this visually. The bread teaches you to look
to the Lord Jesus crucified as that which you ingest over time. It teaches you that growth comes
for you in the same way that it comes to your physical bodies.
Just as you eat every day, so you must feed upon Christ every
day. You must come to His Word. You must pray. You must sit under
the regular preaching of the Word. You can't see such growth
occurring through these means with your physical eyes. You can't actually see Christ
putting nourishment into you the way that we see ourselves
putting food into ourselves. The Lord's Supper puts it before
you symbolically. with God's promise attached to
the symbol to say, I give you my body for nourishment. This is so important to understand.
So often I see people living to be zapped with new life. They're looking for that great
moment when they'll get stirred up at some meeting or some spiritual
event and it will happen to them. They want their children to go
to the summer camp and have an experience, or to have some encounter
at some point where all of a sudden there is that experience. Well,
we can pray that God will work in our lives in those dramatic
ways. But the Lord's Supper teaches you to rely on Christ day after
day, to feed on Him. And week after week, the same
way that you rely on food. That's how real growth occurs. No one would think of sending
a child to some great feast a couple of times a year to provide for
his physical nourishment and giving him nothing the rest of
the year. No. You feed them a little each day. And that's what makes
them grow in a solid way. In creation, God called oak trees
into being all at once. He's able to do that. He could
still do that. But in the ordinary workings
of His providence, He raises oak trees up from acorns. He
does it all the time. It's marvelous. It's a miracle.
A little acorn grows into an oak tree. He changes them. Day after day and week after
week, just a little at a time. And how great the change is over
time. You can actually see the growth,
or you cannot actually see the growth. If you set an oak tree,
a little sapling in front of you, and you stare at it all
day, you won't be able to see any growth. But you see, God
is telling you at the Lord's Supper, that He's giving you
what makes you grow, so that in 20 years you can see the growth
that has occurred. He is saying to you at His table,
keep on looking to Christ to feed you. Keep on looking to
Him to nourish you. Do not despair if you don't see
immediate growth. Keep on feeding and He will change
you. The change will come. You will grow. You are being
fed. You know, one of the reasons
why the early church had the Lord's Supper on a weekly basis
and why we've started doing it now as well is because we so
easily forget that our nourishment comes from Jesus Christ, unless
it is set before us in this visible way. What happens when you hear
a convicting sermon about your duty? Is it not common that you
think, oh, I'm such a failure? I've got to try harder. I suppose
that's true enough. You are a failure and you do
need to try harder. OK, we'll grant that. But there's something
so much more important. You must remember that Christ
crucified is there to nourish you in your time of need in the
Lord's table. He calls to you and he says,
take this is my body given for you. You can try harder. But
what you need for real and lasting change is to feed on the Lord
Jesus Christ crucified. He is the bread that came down
from heaven to give life to the world. You can try all you want,
but you cannot make yourself grow and be nourished. He, by virtue of His death, gives
the Holy Spirit to all who ask Him and strengthens us that we
may live for God's glory. Now let's look at the wine. The
wine, of course, represents the blood of Jesus Christ. The blood
that was shed for the remission of our sins. By giving us this
symbol week after week, the Lord reminds us that we must continually
look to Him for forgiveness as we do for nourishment. Justification
is complete at conversion. From the moment that you put
your trust in the Lord, justification is complete. But those who are
justified still sin. And because we still sin, we
need to continually look to Jesus Christ for forgiveness. Not only do we commit actual
sin, but we find that there's sin that still remains in us
just as a part of us. The corruption is still there
within us, the nature. And we need to seek Him for forgiveness. The wine that we drink at the
table teaches us then to look to Christ alone for this forgiveness.
Christ crucified. In giving it to us, there is
a pledge that the blood that He shed is there for us, accessible
to us, to cleanse us, that it is available for all who are
trusting in Him. It's a visual reminder that we
need Christ crucified and Him alone to be cleansed. When you drink the wine at the
Lord's Supper, you hear the words, This is my blood of the new covenant. Shed for the remission of the
forgiveness of the sins of many." When you hear that, it calls
you back to put your confidence in Him. The blood of Christ. Shed for me. It's your response. Surely the death of God's very
own Son is sufficient to take away all of my sins. I'll look
to Him for my cleansing. Now, how good it is to be brought
back to Christ in this way, to be reminded. Too often, you try
to deal with your sin by avoiding God, trying to hide from Him. We looked at that a little bit
last week, the way Adam did. But at the table, you're told,
stop that, you fool. You can't hide from God. You
can't hide and you don't need to hide. Here is the blood of
the covenant that Jesus shed to atone for your sins. Why are
you hiding? Come to Him. He's got what you
need to cleanse you so that you can stand before God with a clear
conscience. Forgiven. Rejoicing. Trusting. And then there are
those times You sin and you beat yourself up. You feel that you
must do penance. Your service to God is done out
of guilt rather than gratitude. I must do this or God will be
angry with me. And so much worse, I must do
this because God is angry. I've got to go do something for
Him to make up for what I've done. Well, the Lord is angry
with sin. But at the Lord's table, He reminds
you that Christ is crucified for you. That His blood has been
shed. This is My blood of the new covenant,
He says. Shed for the remission of your
sins. This blood is well able to cleanse you from all defilement
so that you can render cheerful service to God out of gratitude
instead of the bondage of guilt. And so you see that the Lord's
Supper is an aid to your faith. Because first, it points you
to the object of faith, which is Christ crucified. And secondly,
because it makes visible to you the ongoing work of God to nourish
you and cleanse you by the crucified Christ. Having seen then the
Lord's Supper is an aid to faith, I now want you to see the Lord's
Supper as an assurance of hope, an assurance to your hope. is
all too easy for us to lose hope as we go along in the Christian
life. And one of the reasons for this is because we have misplaced
expectations. And so, for our well-being, Christ
teaches you at His table to expect the cross before glory comes. You know how the disciples were.
All along, they kept thinking that Christ was going to set
up His kingdom of glory at any moment. They thought that He
would destroy the Romans. And that they would be seated
on thrones ruling over the twelve tribes of Israel. And that Israel
would be ruling the whole world. They certainly had high hopes. But their hopes were false hopes.
And those hopes kept being disappointed. They were not hoping for what
God promised. It was rather their misguided
interpretation of what God had promised, rather than His promise. And now as Jesus was moving toward
the cross, He knew that the disciples were headed for a time of very
great disappointment. The greatest disappointment that
they had had yet. In their minds, it would seem
like the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to establish had completely
failed. But when Jesus instituted the
Lord's Supper, He called them to reality about their false
hopes, as He calls you to reality whenever you come to the Lord's
Supper. We have seen that He told them plainly that He was
going to be offered up as a sacrifice. This is My body. This is My blood
shed. He told them that His blood was
going to be poured out. Then in v. 29, He goes on to
tell them that this is going to cause a physical separation
between Jesus and His disciples. He tells them that He will no
longer eat with them, as He was doing on this night, that He
won't drink wine with them until the Kingdom of God is fully come. Consider now, up until now, the
disciples had been with Jesus. He had been physically present
with them. He had revealed Himself all along the way as the One
who abolishes the misery that comes through sin. The miseries
of this world. While He was with them, sick
people came and they were no longer sick. He healed all their
diseases. Wherever He was physically present.
When there was shortage of bread, He multiplied the bread. When
there was shortage of wine, He turned the wine into water. He
calmed storms. He even raised the dead. Jesus
showed Himself to be Lord over all of these things, and the
One who brings peace where the curse is. But now at the supper,
Jesus tells them, I'm going to be removed from you, physically. You know that, as it was at this
time, they had to go to Jesus in order to have these things.
They'd bring someone to Jesus, or they would come and tell Him
about them, and then He could heal people far off. But He only
healed those with whom He somehow had contact. Well, now He's going
to go away. He tells them He's going to the
cross to be crucified. He won't sit at the table anymore,
as He has done in the past. As He told them in Matthew 24,
after He's gone, there are going to be years and years of tribulation
and affliction. Remember, He told them that they
would even die in His service. He didn't say it's going to be
great. But He said, these things are going to happen. There's
going to be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes. And the
end is not yet. It's still going to go on and
on for a long time before the end comes. Well, while He was
bodily present, you see, none of that happened. But now He
was to be crucified. And from that day onward, it
would be their lot to suffer in this world for His sake. They
would enter now into the fellowship of his sufferings that he was
getting ready to experience in a very full way. Jesus would
no longer be sitting at the table with them drinking wine. Oh, Christian, do you have false
hopes about what it means to serve Jesus in this world? If
you do, then you will be discouraged and frustrated. Many who come
to follow Christ think that they will have less affliction in
this world. But Jesus promises us persecution,
tribulation in this world if we follow Him. He tells you not
to be surprised if all hate you. Persecution shows that you belong
to Him. Because He says to us, as they
have persecuted me, so they will persecute you. Don't be discouraged
then when it comes. Nothing's gone wrong. You're
having fellowship with Christ and His sufferings. It has been
given to you, the Apostle Paul says, not only to believe, but
also to suffer for His sake. This is not the time to have
physical fellowship with Jesus Christ embodied. It's the time
to enter into the fellowship of His sufferings. To be mocked
because you believe that God made the world in six days. To
be hated because you affirm that sexual immorality is wicked.
To be despised because you believe that Jesus is the only way of
salvation. When you come to the Lord's table,
He guides you away from the false hopes that there will be no cross
to bear in this world. He presents Himself as crucified
at the table. And He calls you to enter into
the fellowship of His sufferings. He teaches you not to expect
His physical presence that abolishes death and sufferings, but to
expect a cross at this present time. In this way, then, He steers
you away from false hope at the table in order that He might
establish you in real, true hope. The true hope that He assures
you is that you will enjoy His physical presence at the end,
at the last day of this world, and then for all eternity in
the world to come. He says, I will not eat I will
not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day
when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." Everything
hinges on that word until. You see, the day is coming when
our gracious Lord will be physically present with us in a fresh, new
way, better than He was when He walked in this world. We will
sit at the table with Him. He will drink wine with us. And
He will abolish death and suffering and tribulation of every kind.
There will be no more sorrows and no more shortages we will
share in His glorious inheritance. While He walked in this world,
He showed us how He chases away the curse and its effects when
He is bodily present. Sickness and death and hunger
could not remain whenever He came on the scene. All who came
to Him were healed. And in His Father's Kingdom,
it will be that way perpetually. It will be that way forever and
ever. These things will be completely
taken away for all eternity and we will have blessed peace. So
what's the point here? The point is, is that when you
come to the Lord's table and Jesus presents to you His body
and blood, himself crucified, rejoice that his sacrifice has
purchased this inheritance for you in his father's kingdom.
Set your hope on the promise that you who believe will one
day sit down with Christ in that kingdom where there is no sorrow. But know that before you get
to that kingdom, there will be much tribulation. You must take
up your cross now and follow the Lord. You will not have to
bear the full weight of God's wrath the way Jesus did. Only
He could do that. It would take you all eternity
to bear that wrath and that curse that He bore for you. But you
are called to suffer with Him and to tread the path that He
trod. This world does not look kindly
on our Lord. And so, if you are like Him,
you will suffer with Him. But know that those sufferings
are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be
revealed in us at the last day. Jesus' disciples did not think
He should have to suffer. Neither did they think they should
have to suffer, but they were wrong. Jesus told them that they
were wrong, but they didn't believe Him. They didn't receive His
words. Don't make the same mistake.
Your Lord has told you that now is the time of the cross and
that glory comes later. He tells you that every time
you come to the Lord's table. Believe Him or you will stumble. This leads to our third point
this morning. I want you to see the Lord's Supper. I want you
to see the Lord's Supper as a test of your allegiance to the Lord. Jesus knew good and well that
though he had spoken very plainly and had told his disciples that
he was going to be offered up as a sacrifice, that his disciples
had not received this. And so he tells them that they're
going to stumble. As soon as they come away from
that table, he says, you're going to stumble tonight because of
me. He tells them that they're going to be offended. Look at
verse 31. All of you will be made to stumble
because of Me this night. For it is written, I will strike
the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.
God the Father was going to strike His Son. He was going to make
His soul an offering for sin. His wrath and judgment were going
to fall on Him. He was going to be wounded for
our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. He would be stricken
for the transgression of God's people. Jesus had told His disciples
that He was going to be offered in this way, but His words had
gone past them. He had told them what ought to
have prepared them for His death, but they were not at all prepared
for His death. Because they were not prepared,
they were going to stumble. as soon as these things began
to happen. What is it that made them stumble? Was it merely that
they were cowards? That they were afraid of the
chief priests and their armies and their courts? I don't think
so. The disciples insisted beforehand
that they were prepared to die for Him. And they meant that
they were ready to fight. even to the point of death. They
would have gone to battle for Jesus Christ that night if there
had been 10,000 troops that had come against the Lord to arrest
Him. It was true. You know Peter.
He drew his sword out. And he cut off the ear of the
servant of the high priest. Jesus said, put away your sword.
And He healed the man's ear. He stumbled. Because Jesus did
not fight. Even though He told them, even
though Jesus had told them that He was going to offer Himself
up willingly as a sacrifice for sins, for the remission of many.
When He set out to do it, when He went to that cross without
a fight, when they knew that He had power to fight, It made
them stumble. In their minds, it wasn't supposed
to happen that way. So just as Jesus predicted, they
all stumbled. Even Peter. The boldest one. Things often don't go the way
we think they should in our service to God. The cross surprises us. We're not ready for it. And we
struggle. Because God doesn't seem to be
doing anything about all the problems. He's just letting it
go on. We don't realize that the cross
is what He's doing. We think He's not doing anything
about the cross. The cross is what He's doing. The cross is what He brings. Now let's go a little deeper.
What made these disciples stumble? It's the same thing that makes
every sinner stumble. The very idea that there needs
to be suffering. The very idea that it is necessary
for the Son of God to die. The very idea that He would have
to die. You see, none of us, coming from
Adam as we do, are naturally disposed to think that our sin
is a very big deal. Oh yes, it's there. But God ought
to surely be big enough to overlook it. It's a little thing. It can make Peter fall down and
say, Lord, depart from me for I'm a sinful man when he first
encounters Christ. It can make you say that. It
can make you see your sin. But to say that our sin is so
serious that the only way it can be pardoned is through the
death of God's only begotten Son is quite another matter. You mean to tell me that God
can do nothing with us but send us to hell unless God's Son offers
Himself to die in our place? Do you mean to say that this
is true of my dear, sweet grandmother? My dear, sweet, loving grandmother
who is kind to everyone, do you mean to tell me that this is
true of my little baby that was just born? Do you mean to say..."
This is the real question. Do you mean to say that that's
true of me? "...that God can have nothing to do with me but
curse me unless the Son of God Himself shed His very blood to
atone for my sin. Do you mean to say that I am
that corrupt in your eyes?" This is what the disciples had not
yet come to fully accept. This was the glorious truth that
was yet to be revealed to them under the New Covenant after
Jesus had suffered and risen again. the glory of God's perfect
justice, the glory of God's awesome vengeance, the glory of His great
grace to provide His Son for wicked sinners. All of these
glorious truths were yet to be revealed to the disciples and
to the whole church. They had been revealed in a shadowy
way, don't misunderstand, through the Old Testament worship. But
now, by the cross, they were to be revealed like they had
never been revealed before in all the fullness of the glory
of God. And now these glorious truths
have been revealed, brothers and sisters. Jesus has risen.
The disciples saw it. And they worshipped. And they
went forth gladly to preach the cross. and to suffer for the
name of Jesus. And now, you must also believe
the glory of God that has been revealed in the face of Jesus
Christ through Jesus' suffering. You must also be reconciled to
God now in these New Testament times through this that He has
presented. You must believe in the glory
of the cross, the glory of God that is revealed in the cross,
or you cannot be saved. Now that Jesus has actually offered
Himself and been raised up again, there is no place for the ignorance
that the disciples had before He had been crucified and raised
again. Those who are yet ignorant today
are yet to be reconciled with God. So you see, the test of
your allegiance is right here at the Lord's table. You must
not come away from this table the way the disciples came away
from the table. Now, what were they thinking? They should have
been thinking, our gracious Lord is willingly offering Himself
up as a sacrifice for our sins. But it seems that instead, they
were thinking about how they would boldly fight for Him even
to the point of death. They were thinking about what
they would do instead of what He had just told them that He
was going to do. You know, there are many baptized
Christians who do exactly the same kind of thing. Today, nominal
Christians, they come from the table where Christ has just been
revealed as crucified, and they see nothing more than a moral
example to be followed. They see a man so committed to
a cause, the cause of goodness and justice, that he's willing
to die. And they are inspired to do likewise. Lord, they say,
we are willing to die for you. And they are. They're willing.
They mean it. But these persons have not grasped
what Christ has done. He's not just an example. He's an offering to take away
your sins. It's not, first of all, what
you are willing to do for Him. It's about what He has done for
you. And until you start trusting
in Him as crucified for you, you're going to stumble at the
cross. You're offended. with God's way
of salvation. You change the meaning of the
cross to suit yourself. And as long as you remain offended
at God's way of salvation, you have no salvation. And then there
are others who come from the table. Christ has just been revealed
as crucified. Instead of being excited about
what they're going to do, as this first group we looked at,
they're excited about what they've just done. Of course, I don't
mean to say that you shouldn't be excited about having come
to the Lord's table. But that's not all that you should
be concerned about. For them, the mere act of coming
to the table is something they have done for salvation. They
suppose that by ingesting bread and drinking wine, everything
will be taken care of. You know, they have faith in
the sign. rather than in the thing that
is signified. Faith in the bread and wine,
rather than faith in Christ crucified. Faith in the priest at the altar,
rather than faith in Christ, the only High Priest who offered
Himself on the cross 2,000 years ago. These persons also stumble
at the cross. They are trusting in their act
of coming to church, in their act of eating at the table, instead
of in Christ who is presented to them at the table. If this
is the case with you, then you need to repent. You too are offended
with God's way of salvation. And as long as you remain so,
there is no salvation. But look at what our Lord does.
For persons like His disciples. For persons who have stumbled
at His cross. And as I say, that's the first
reaction of most human beings when they hear the Gospel. When
they understand it. That God's Son had to die? For
my grandmother? For my baby? He gathers you People
like you. And He makes you allegiant to
Him if you are His chosen ones. This is His gracious promise
to His eleven disciples. And in principle, it applies
to you also. Look at verse 32. He says, But after I have been
raised... In verse 31, He said, you're
going to stumble. In verse 32, He says, But after I have been
raised, I will go before you to Galilee. They're all going
to stumble. Jesus knows they're going to
stumble. But He schedules a meeting with them after they stumble,
after He is raised in Galilee. Of course, He makes some surprise
appearances to them before He met them in Galilee after His
resurrection. But here is a scheduled appointment.
I'm going to meet you in Galilee, He says. A meeting after His
resurrection. which resurrection he speaks
of as a certainty here. He says, you see, then they will
understand that His offering was made for them. And they will accept it, even
as the Father accepted the offering of Christ for their sake. Then
they will believe and will put their trust in Him alone as the
one from heaven who was crucified. Then they will go forth not to
obtain salvation, but rather in the power of His saving grace
which they have received by faith. They will go forward as those
who are nourished by Christ, crucified, and cleansed by the
shedding of His blood. They will have communion in the
body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ when they meet Him in
Galilee. That is what Jesus does for you
also. He gathers you to Himself. He
awakens you He shows you that God the Father accepted His sacrifice
and raised Him from the dead. He shows you that He has conquered
sin and death. That He has defeated Satan. That
He has broken the bonds of the curse for you. He opens your
eyes to see the glorious things that He has done. And instead
of stumbling at the cross, you believe in the cross. Instead
of relying on what you have done or what you're going to do, you
rely on what He has done for you. And so, He feeds you His
flesh, cleanses you with His blood, and you move forward with
Him and for Him in joyful fellowship of His sufferings until the day
that He at last brings you to heavenly glory. Brothers and
sisters, this is the One who is presented to you every time
you come to this table. He calls you to look to Him as
the One who was crucified for you, and so is the only source
of life and salvation. It is in Him that we ought to
glory, joyfully rest in Him. And if we do, in Christ crucified,
then we will never stumble. Please stand. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we
come before You with joyful thanksgiving because You have gathered people
like us who stumble when we hear that You are such a God that
would demand nothing less than the blood of Your Son to atone
for our sins. Father, we come to You with thanksgiving
because even though we are such a people, You gather us to Yourself. And You present Christ to us,
crucified, and our acceptance in Him as the One who laid down
His life for us. And Father, I pray that we would
live in Christ. That we would live continually
resting in Him, continually resorting to Him for the nourishment that
we need, for the cleansing that we need. Father, we pray that
You would guard us from going astray. For we see how common
it is that there is apostasy in the church. That those who
have been shown the way of salvation drift away from it. And that
church leaders rise up who no longer teach the cross. Who tell
people how to be good. who tell them how to do good
things in their own flesh, but do not lead them to Messiah,
our only hope. Father, we thank You so much
for what our Lord Jesus has done. And Father, we pray that our
hearts would be filled with gratitude and faith as we contemplate it. Father, give us strength and
wisdom to carry this message to the nations. It is a glorious
message. It shows us your character in
a way that we would never have seen it. Shows us what you are
like, reveals your glory to us. Glory of your holiness that requires
so great a sacrifice and the glory of your love, mercy that
provides such a great sacrifice. Father, what marvelous things
you have done, what a great God you are. May we go forth. Proclaiming that glory. Father,
we pray for our own city too. There are so many here that are
in the darkness. We pray, O Lord, that You would open their eyes.
That You would gather them to this glorious fellowship at the
table of the Lord Jesus Christ where we behold the Lamb that
was slain from before the foundation of the world in order that we
might be saved. Father, we pray that You would
bless us wherever we go and that we would adorn the doctrine of
the Gospel with holy and godly lives. That we would show that
Jesus does nourish us in the way that we live. That we would
show that we are free and have been cleansed by the way we love
you and the way we respond to you. Father, we need these things. We need them to be continually
set before us. We need to be continually reminded
because we so soon forget Father, renew our faith and strengthen
us, we pray. Keep us in the way everlasting. For we pray these things in the
glorious name of Jesus our Savior. Amen.
Jesus Prepares His Disciples for His Death
Series Matthew
| Sermon ID | 419202354533395 |
| Duration | 59:08 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 26:26-35 |
| Language | English |
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