Continuing our series in Matthew, we've come to chapter 26 and we'll be looking at verses 17 through 29 of chapter 26. Very familiar passage, at least in its final four verses, but also one that we need to look at more carefully. Sometimes when passages are so familiar, it's easy not to understand them because they're so familiar to us. We don't look at them in an in-depth way. They don't surprise us as to what they say. So this might be helpful for us to look at it in a more in-depth way here. together with it, verses 17 through 29, which contribute a lot to the context here. So verses 17 through 29 of Matthew chapter 26, the word of the Lord. Now on the first day of the feast of the unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying to him, where do you want us to 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 the Passover at your house with my disciples. So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. When evening had come, he sat down with the twelve, and as they were eating, he said, Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to him, Lord, is it I? He answered and said, he who dipped his hand with me in the dish will betray me. The son of man indeed goes just as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. Then Judas, who was betraying him, answered and said, Rabbi, is it I? He said to him, you have said it. And 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." It's the reading of God's word, and we pray that he would bless it to our hearts. Amen. I think in general, the general thinking of our country at this time is that we need to keep religion and politics separated. That's what people say all the time. Religion is something that you do up here, and politics is right here among us. If you want to be religious, go ahead, go in your corner. But religion and politics don't mix well. And you can look at holidays, and you can kind of see that type of dichotomy. A lot of holidays in the US are religious holidays. Other ones are not necessarily political holidays, but national or civic holidays. In the former category, you have Christmas, Easter, and the latter category you have holidays such as the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Memorial Day. It seems to be pretty easy to separate holidays into religious and political categories. And of course, all those holidays which defy categories like Valentine's Day, which began as a religious holiday, but now is just nothing more than a retailer's dream or something that people made up for people to spend money. I shouldn't say that. It's a very lovely holiday. I don't want to get in too much trouble here. But anyway, in general, we can make distinctions between religious and political types of festivals or holidays. However, when you look at the Passover, it would be easy for us to think, well, that's a religious type of holiday or commemoration. But it's both religious and political. Think about it this way. The Jews were liberated from slavery and oppression, and they were given their own land. God made a covenant with them, which served as sort of like a constitution for them. And he gave them a certain land to rule in it. And this was the beginning of the Israelite nation. So if you're going to think of a very important political holiday in Jewish history, it would also be the Passover. And of course, this is greatly religious as well, because God is the one who's doing these things. God is the one who's delivering the people. God is the one who brings them out into safety and into a new land. So of course it's both religious and political, and they're both together. So we don't really have too much of a paradigm for understanding the Passover, and therefore it's difficult for us to get into the minds of what might be going on here for first century Jews celebrating the Passover. So, what I want to do here this morning is first go over Christ and the Passover and trying to understand that Christ here is deliberately setting up his institution of the Lord's Supper and basically accomplishing his mission at this time and it's for a particular reason. We're going to go over that first to try to understand that. What we're going to talk about is what I'm going to call now, for reasons which I hope will become clear, Christ and the suffering psalmist. And we don't usually talk about the suffering servant, not the suffering psalmist. But I think Christ here, when he's dealing with Judas, he's identifying with one of the psalmists who suffers. And I think that's very important for understanding the context here, as I hope will become clear. And finally, Christ in the New Covenant, how the Lord's Supper fulfills the Passover and is the meal, the ceremony which initiates the New Covenant. Beginning with Christ in the Passover. Jesus and his disciples here in verses 17 through 19 prepare for the Passover. Let me read them again to you. In the first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying to him, where do you want us to 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 the Passover at your house with my disciples. So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. Now, just to clear up some confusion here, the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, technically, is separate from the Passover as you read the Old Testament. The Passover is 14 Nisan. Nisan is a name of a month. It's the first month in the Jewish calendar. And the Passover happens on the 14th day of that month, as we just read from Exodus chapter 12. And days 15 through 21 is what's called the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. However, since the Passover meal was to be eaten at night, and since, according to the Jewish reckoning, day began not at daybreak, but at night, the two holidays often were seen as one, and rightly so. They go right together with them. Disciples here are preparing for the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This is the same day as the day of Passover, okay, because the two holidays had come together so much so that they were considered one. And so Jesus here is telling his disciples to go prepare for Passover. And he goes and says, go to this one guy here and tell him that we're going to celebrate Passover at his house. And this seems really rude and interesting for us here in the 21st century. But back then, it was very common for it to happen. Remember, there really weren't too many hotels and there weren't any restaurants. And if you were traveling, you had to basically be you were absolutely susceptible. You couldn't do anything. And you had to lean upon the hospitality of others. And so it was a rule during the Passover time that if you had an extra room, you must give it to travelers. Jesus and his disciples are all travelers. They're coming from the northern regions. And so they were entitled to this room to celebrate the Passover. And this probably was a disciple of theirs. Speculations are rife about who this person might be. Commentators always say, oh, it's Mark. Oh, it's Mark's father. But I mean, it's probably a disciple of Christ with whom they were going to celebrate the Passover here. But what I really want to get at here is the fact that Jesus chooses the Passover as the time for instituting the Lord's Supper and beginning his final journey to the cross. It's the Passover time. He does this, I would wager, deliberately. This is not something that just happened to happen at that point. He does it deliberately. He sets it up with the Passover. Why? Well, the Passover, as you know, commemorates the Egyptians being judged and the Israelites being saved from them. And Jesus here is somehow saying that his death and his resurrection, which he's already predicted and which he's about to symbolically portray in the Lord's Supper, somehow corresponds with Passover. At Passover, you remember, and as we read, there was a lamb. And every Jewish household was told to slaughter the lamb and put the blood on the lentils and on the top. And by that blood, the angel of death would see it and would pass over the Israelite houses and they would not be judged by God or by the angel of death. This was the means through which God saved, liberated, set from slavery, his people. Whereas the Egyptians, had no Passover lamb, and therefore were judged by God, and the firstborns were then slaughtered or put to death. And God used the Passover lamb to liberate his people and, interestingly, to vindicate himself as the true God. We read at the very end there of Exodus, chapter 12, verse 12. It was that God not only set free his people, not only judge the Egyptians through the Passover, he judged Egypt's gods. What does this mean? Well, if you look at the ten flags and this is really interesting, if you do this, it's an exercise here. Each one of the ten flags corresponds with one of the gods. of Egypt. An easy example of this would be when darkness came. Ra was the sun god of Egypt. And when darkness came, God was there showing that he had sovereignty over the Egyptian gods, that he was stronger than them, and that he basically was showing that they weren't gods at all, that they were really just demonic powers or just made up. They are not gods at all. God is showing sovereignty and power over them. And in liberating the people from Egypt, God is showing himself to be the true God, the God who is stronger than all, and the God who is able to save his people, and thus judging the other gods, the pagan gods there. The people of Israel at that time were waiting for this to happen again. They had been under the power of another foreign ruler. It wasn't Egypt this time. This time it was Rome. And while they had returned to their land, while they lived there, they still felt as slaves. Ezra and Nehemiah say as much. Nehemiah says, we are slaves in our own land. All the yield that we get from our crops, we have to give it to the king of Persia. They still felt as though they were in exile, as though the foreign power were there. And they cried out day and night. for God to come, send his Messiah, and liberate them from these pagan rulers. And so at every time, every year at Passover time, revolutionary fervor began to grow. You might expect that because Passover time is when people remembered what God had done then. And when people prayed hardest that God would do now what he had already did back then and liberate the people of Israel, vindicate them as the true world power and have them, the King of Israel, the Messiah, rule in Jerusalem over all nations. This is what they were praying for. And this is what they believed would happen. And so by Jesus doing this at Passover, he was saying that all these things would happen through him. He is the Messiah, and he is the one through whom Israel is then liberated, set free from bondage. So this is the reason why Jesus does this at the Passover. What the people of God need is really like a second Exodus. Being enslaved, being set free again, being given a new covenant and being set in their own land. So the Passover is a great time to do this. Jesus sees what he's doing here as a fulfillment of the Passover. But it's not just a mere fulfillment of or a repetition of. Jesus not only fulfills Passover, he transforms the meaning of it. And we get that transformation here by understanding how he deals with Judas, who betrayed him. And the second part of the sermon is going to be called Christ and the Suffering Psalmist, Judas identified as Christ's betrayer. Here, verses 20 through 25. When evening had come, he sat down with the twelve, Jesus sat down with them. Now, as they were eating, he said, Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to him, Lord, is it I? He answered and said, he who dipped his hand with me in the dish will betray me." Now this is an important verse here, pay attention. The son of man indeed goes just as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. Jesus says the son of man goes as it is written of him. Before we try to understand, I think this is a great example here of how we are to understand human responsibility on the one hand and God's sovereignty on the other, God's control of all things. In one sense here, it's been written about it, God knows what's going to happen and Jesus says, the Son of Man, Jesus, it's his way of referring to himself. Is going to go as it is written. There's a certain Inevitability about that Jesus is going to go no matter what there's a certain the prophets say it the Old Testament said that so it's going to happen yet at the same time Judas is still responsible for what he did whoa to the man who betrays the Son of Man, it would be better for him if he had not yet been born. You have here human responsibility and God's sovereign control, all in one verse, perfectly balanced. Not solved in the sense that all the intricacies in the philosophical sense is not solved, but here they have it right here, a great balance. Now more concretely as to what the passage is talking about, Jesus says, the son of man goes as it is written of him. And I think it's important to ask ourselves, where is it written that the son of man is going to go this way? He's talking about his suffering. He's talking about his betrayal. I think the most obvious part to go at first of the Old Testament would be Isaiah chapter fifty-three. Isaiah chapter fifty-three is a passage commonly called the Suffering Servant passage. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. If you've never read that passage, I encourage you to read it. It's a clear and vivid portrayal of the crucifixion of Christ seven hundred years before it happened. So that would be the most obvious point. But I think there's something more here. It's not just that Jesus will suffer, which is clear from Isaiah 53. It's also that Jesus will be betrayed. And there are many songs which speak about Jesus. David is speaking as himself, but clearly speaking more than that, where he would be betrayed. The focus here is on This focus is in Psalm 41, we'll read that a little later, Psalm 55, and Psalm 69, which we read, or we sang a little bit earlier. Psalm 69 is really quoted many times in the New Testament speaking of Christ. And in those Psalms, David is talking about how bad it is even for people around to be slandering God, but how much worse it is for people from within his own fold, people who are Israelites, people who know him and say they love him when they betray him, how much worse it is. And David talks about how difficult this is. And yet he ends all three of the Psalms praising God and trying to understand how God will work out his his plans, his purposes, his promises, even though there is betrayal from within Israel. And these types of songs identify not only David's life. But also the life of Christ, Christ's life would be one characterized by being betrayed, not by the Romans, but by people from his own race, by people who are considered his brothers. by one even of his closest disciples. In Psalm 41, it talks about the one who breaks bread with me, this one will betray me. Christ's life would be one of suffering and betrayal until finally he is exalted after he dies and is resurrected. And so Christ here is identifying the betrayer as Judas. Judas says in verse twenty five, who is betraying him, answered and he said, Rabbi, it is I. And he said to him, you have said it. In other words, it's come from your own mouth. You are the one about whom the psalms spoke who would come and betray the Christ, the one from among the brothers, the one from from whom I even broke bread, this one. would betray me. And it's interesting here, I want us to notice something. In verse 23, it says, he who dipped his hand with me in the dish will betray me. What does that mean? Of course, if you imagine yourself lounging at a Mediterranean dinner here at this time, everyone has bread and everyone's dipping their hand in the dish with the bread to the dip, whatever it might be. So Jesus isn't necessarily identifying Judas as when he says the one who dips his hand there. What he's doing is saying, that the one with whom I have close fellowship here, even this one, will betray me. Yesterday we were talking about, this morning I was talking about Cyprus and how people there were very hospitable to me. And in that culture, as well as in many Mediterranean cultures, if you go to someone's house and you eat with them, that is a great honor they're bestowing upon you. When you break bread with them, that is saying that you are close friends. It's not just having a meal and that be that. This is close friends that now are, there's a certain level of trust. Once you've been to someone's house and once you've broken bread with them, once you've dipped your bread into that bowl, there is a certain amount of trust there, a certain amount of friendship and fellowship there that wouldn't have been there before. And Jesus is saying here, even this one who with whom I have had this close fellowship with, even one who has dipped. his hand with me into the dish, this one will betray me." Jesus is identifying himself as the one who is suffering and the one who is going to be betrayed. But before we see how this all fits in together with Christ in the Passover and how this makes sense here, I think it will do us well to think about why Judas betrayed Jesus there in the end. What would motivate him to do such a terrible thing after Jesus has hosted this meal and given him the essentially the right hand of fellowship? Why would Judas do this? Well, we don't know for sure. The scripture doesn't say except that Satan was behind it. But I think we can gather based upon the climate, based upon other things, why Jesus or Judas would do this. I think it was because Judas had become disillusioned with what Christ was doing and the type of Messiah that Christ was. He had thought, like many people of his day, that Christ was going to come and liberate Israel, like God did for the Exodus, and that the only ones that would have to suffer would be the pagan Gentiles, and that maybe after a time of struggle, God would vindicate Israel, and the Messiah would sit on the right hand of God there in Jerusalem. He had figured that Jesus was going to fight with the sword. We know this is the case, that the disciples were thinking this way, because even at the end there, Peter pulls out the sword. He had done this. He had thought this way. And when he noticed that Jesus was not going to do it this way or the way he expected, He probably became disillusioned with it and realized that Jesus was not the type of Messiah that he was looking for. How often does this happen today? Our views of who Jesus is are wrong, and when we find out who he really is, we are tempted to turn away. There are many lies out there these days which talk about what Jesus can do for you. Oftentimes, people talk about how Jesus, if you believe in him hard enough, he'll give you everything you want. He'll give you the comforts of money. He'll give you a nice house. If you just believe hard enough, Jesus will make your life comfortable. He'll give you A husband will give you a wife, will give you children. Now, these are all blessings from God. Don't don't mistake me. But he has not promised them. What has Jesus promised to his followers? That they must suffer as he suffered. And so many, when they come to Jesus, hoping to find what they will get. Have not yet considered what it will cost. And so they turn away and they become disillusioned with who Jesus is. Jesus comes to offer his people, yes, the forgiveness of sins. Yes, he does give us inner peace. And they're all great benefits of the gospel. Yet he comes to us and bids us to die. He who follows me must take up his cross and follow Christ every day. And so I think many people turn away from Christ and it's a temptation for us all when they realize what it will cost us. And this might have been the motivation behind what Judas is doing. He didn't know, he didn't understand what type of Messiah Jesus was and when he did he couldn't handle that. This brings me to the final point here. Christ and the New Covenant. Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper here in verses 26 through 29. We'll see how it all fits together here. First, I'm going to read it here again. And 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. And then he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them. 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 we look at the two previous sections and we synthesize and we put them together, we can see a lot of what the new covenant is about. On the one hand, it's a new Passover. It's a new Exodus. It's a new covenant. That's what the Lord's Supper is all about. Instead of being brought out from the wicked rule of Pharaoh, we're brought out from the wicked rule of sin and death. Instead of serving now, Pharaoh, we serve God. And we are slaves, as Paul says in Romans chapter six, to righteousness now. And we walk in newness of life. This is the new exodus. We pass through, as we just saw, the waters of baptism. We come to the other side and we have new life in Christ. And this new life is like an exodus, liberation from bondage. We were in bondage to our sinful nature and we are now brought forth into new life, able to serve God, able to do what is right through the power of the Holy Spirit who has given us new life. It is a new It is also a new covenant, just as in the old covenant a lamb was slaughtered and that blood purified the people so that the covenant could be made and their sins were forgiven. The blood of Christ is shed and it purifies the people and enables a new covenant and it is a new inheritance. Instead of God's people inheriting a piece of land in Palestine, they inherit the whole earth. the new heavens and the new earth. We are heirs with Christ according to the promises that God gave to Abraham. The Lord's Supper is the ceremony which points to, which is symbolic of, the new covenant, which is a new exodus, a new covenant, and a new inheritance. However, the meal also demonstrates the type of suffering which characterizes the new covenant. Jesus Christ is not only the new Moses of the new covenant, he is the Passover lamb. And this is what people missed. They were waiting for a new Moses to liberate them. They weren't waiting for someone to become the Passover lamb. When John the Baptist pointed out the Christ and said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that must have shocked people. The Messiah was not to be someone who was slaughtered. He was to be someone who would slaughter others, they thought. but not Christ. Christ is both the new Moses and the sacrifice, the final sacrifice, the last sacrifice, the one whose blood purified the people. He is the sufferer, as we saw here in the Psalms and as we see here in instituting the new covenant. Jesus says so himself in verse twenty eight, for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Now, he's not saying that somehow miraculously the blood, the juice or the wine becomes. Blood in some weird and mystical sense, he's saying this is symbolic of it. And when you take it, it's as if I myself am here giving that to you saying this was for you. So when we gather together to have communion, Christ says to each one of us, this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me, this is my blood shed for you. Do this as often as you do it in remembrance of me. It required suffering. The conquest which Christ had over sin and death required his own death. And in doing so, paradoxically, in dying, he killed the death. And he rose from the dead never to die again. And so the new covenant is different. It's transformed in this way. It means that the head of the covenant, Jesus Christ, suffers, suffers even to the point of death and betrayal, but then is exalted. And then the gods, the pagan gods are judged. And then Christ is declared the victor and ascends to the right hand of God where he rules and reigns over all. This is the head of the covenant, and it also means for us that when we partake when we eat the bread and drink the wine. We are saying that this is for us is Christ saying that to us as well. This is for us. But we're also saying that Christ is my head. He is my Lord and I'm going to follow him. And therefore, our lives will also be that of suffering and perhaps betrayal. And we need to follow Christ as our example and as our Lord. When these things happen, we are never to the same extent. We'll never suffer as Christ did, thankfully. He is the Lord. We are just his subjects. And our suffering will not save us as Christ's suffering saved us. However, in so much as we are identified with Christ, in so much as we are united to Christ, we will follow his footsteps and his footsteps are first suffering and then glory. First, hardships and trials and then exaltation, first betrayal, and dealing with that in a way that Christ did and then finally being receiving our inheritance in Christ. And so we are called to live as Christ did. We may not have to be betrayed by our closest friends. Thankfully, many of us are not, but that does happen. But we do are often let down by people who love us, We are often called names by people we love us, even Christians. We often have to deal with immaturity around us. And how do we deal with this? We can talk about and demand our rights. We can say you were wrong to me, and so I'm going to be wrong to you. It's simple justice. Or we can behave as Christ did. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. This is something that the church needs to hear because If you're in a church long enough, you know there's always going to be squabbles, always people at each other's throats. We're humans, we're sinful. This is what we do, sadly. We need to learn to forgive as Christ forgave. It causes suffering. It causes hardship. It causes difficulty. But it's the way that Christ has blazed for his people to live. And the end of that way is glory. The end of that way is exaltation. Verse 29, 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. Christ can suffer in vain. And he calls all of his people when they come together for the Lord's Supper to remember not only what happened in the past, to be blessed not only by what's happening right now, but to think about what will happen in the future. There will be a great supper, a great feast there at the end in God's kingdom. And we are all invited to it. Feast with Christ himself and we will drink the fruit of the vine. And we will have great fellowship with him. Christ will renew us, he will wipe away the tears from our eyes and this world will be renewed. So the path begins with suffering. But it ends in glory, just as Christ's path did. So I encourage you as we take communion together, we won't do it today, but we do it often once a month. And as we think about these things and as we reflect on them to remember, yes, we are suffering now. But Christ, through his suffering, has enabled us to go through a new exodus and we will receive our inheritance and we have a place at the table, at Christ's table. when he comes in his glory. So let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you for these words here. We thank you that Christ endured the sufferings of the cross, scorning his shame for the glory and the joy set before him. And so we pray that we would live our lives as he did. forgiving others, even when it requires suffering, knowing that the pathway is through suffering, but does not end there. It ends in glory. In this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.