It has been a long journey, a good journey, and last week we hit that 26th chapter and one of the things we observed is the snapshot that was being given by the Apostle Matthew was the difference between the friends and the foes of Jesus. I mean, you had the foes like Annas and Caiaphas and the elders and the scribes and the chief priests and religion is a great hater of Jesus and Judas. But then you also had the friends like Lazarus and Mary and Martha and then the disciples in v. 17 when He got together with them and brought them together for the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover meal. Sadly, when He was making ready the Passover at verse 20, when He even came, He sat down with the Twelve, and as they did eat, He said verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me. And they were exceeding sorrowful and began everyone to say, Lord, is it I? And then He answered, He that dibbeth his hand with Me in the dish, the same shall betray Me. And of course, it was Judas that put his hand into the dish. Of course, the Son of Man goeth as it is written of Him, because He came for the purpose to deliver us from sin and He had to die, but woe unto the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. One of the things He's showing you in this verse, because it's misunderstood often, is the fact that we have a free will. We have a free will. I mean, we can choose to love the Lord, or we can choose to betray the Lord. It's our choice. He didn't make that choice for us. There is no such thing as Calvinism. There was a comic strip with somebody named Calvin in it. There's nothing theological about Calvinism. I understand John Calvin, he got his crazy ideas from Augustine, who was a philosopher that perverted the first Bibles, you know, back in the 4th century. Misunderstanding. No, you have a free will. And the sad thing is the man that betrayed Him in v. 24 gets a woe, gets a curse. And those that befriend Him get a blessing. And it's your choice. And God would like you to make the right choice. Well, v. 26, what happens here is as they were eating, Jesus took the bread of the Passover meal and He blessed it and break it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat. This is My body. And he took the cup, and he gave thanks, and he gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it. For this is My blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you that I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom." Now, what's happening here is Jesus is celebrating again the Passover with His disciples. The Passover was instituted back in the book of Exodus. When the death angel passed over the people of Israel, God said, I want you to have a feast. You read the book of Leviticus, and God lays out the important feasts in the 23rd chapter, and there are three big main feasts. There's the Passover in the spring. There is the a Pentecost, I think it's the very last days of the spring, just before summer, and then there is the tabernacles in the fall. And those were the three great feasts that the Jewish males were commanded to attend. That would be Deuteronomy 16, 16, three times a year shall your males appear before me. And they were to go to the temple and to worship the Lord and to celebrate these feasts of the Lord. Here's an interesting thing, because God wants to celebrate with his people. God wants to bless his people. God wants to feast with his people, not fast with his people. He wants to take care and feed his people, and so they did that. And here's Jesus, and it's probably the third Passover that he's done with these men. Now, he had done it his whole life. Thankfully, his mother Mary was a faithful woman. The stepfather that adopted him, Joseph, was a faithful man. We read in the book of Luke it was their custom to go to Jerusalem at the time of the feasts and Jesus was there. Remember him at 12 years old? They went one day and he stayed behind after his bar mitzvah and after the Passover wanting to get involved. in his father's business. And we remember learning how God the Father, if you will, said, well, that's good, son, but I've got some prior work for you to do before I start you in ministry. You need to go back and obey Mary and Joseph for the next 18 years and be subject to them. And learn what it's like to be subject to someone above you so that I can teach your disciples through you how to learn to be subject to someone. And so he did that for 18 years and then God inaugurated the ministry. And during that ministry when He called these men, they went and they celebrated every feast of the Lord. And here they are celebrating the Passover of the Mosaic Law. This is the final legal Passover as far as God's concerned. Not to say Passover has not been celebrated since then, but God finds it illegal like an umpire. It's out of bounds. This is it. What Jesus is going to do here, He's going to perfect and complete the Old Testament and then transition and pass into the New Testament. He's sitting at the table there as an individual within the Jewish nation required to go like the Jewish males were. He's participating of it just as you are sitting here in church today. It was Jesus' custom to go to the temple and go to the tabernacle. And he would go and he would sit in the audience, and the rabbi would read, and sometimes they'd let Jesus read. It was his custom to do the things his father wanted him to do, which is to learn how to properly worship God, which is what we're doing. And he's there, and he's at the table. But the Passover meal, as he partook of it, he understood that it foreshadowed his coming. And it pointed toward his ultimate fulfillment of that meal. And he's going to transition that day, the Passover meal, into the Lord's Supper. And he's going to pass from the old to the new. Now, I don't think his disciples were aware of it. We're aware of it after the fact, and we look back and go, oh, that's what he did. But at the time, they're participating in it without being aware. By the way, there's lots of times God works something in your life, and you're participating, you're not even aware of it. And then afterwards, you go, but that was the Lord back there. I didn't see it at the time. Often that will happen, and this is how the Lord works. So we don't have perfect understanding. He's not asking us to. What He's asking for is trust and faith and obedience. And then maybe later we'll understand. We might get the understanding later. And so, He's sitting there. He's about to complete that of which the Exodus story had merely been a preparation. Because the Exodus took them from Egypt and led them out of physical bondage. Egypt in the typology is a picture of the fallen nature. Egypt was the place of the dead. And our fallen nature by nature is bent toward dead works, dead activities, dead lusts, dead projects, that when God finally wipes out and shakes the heaven and the earth, the only things that will remain are souls. None of the works that we did will remain, except they were spiritual. Egypt is a picture of the fallen world of the flesh, and the exodus led them out of physical bondage, but what Christ is about to do in the next 24 hours is He's going to, on the cross, as the Lamb of God, lead them out of spiritual bondage. Jesus is the final and the eternal Exodus. That's what He is. And so we were reading, remember back there in Exodus 6, we saw the seven eye wills of God. And one of the things that's often missed, go back to Exodus 6, we read it before we sang our songs. I miss this too. You know, it's so easy to miss things when you read in the Bible, then maybe the third, fourth, fifth, or 34th or 50th time, you get it and you go, how did I miss? I mean, God's been showing me some things this week in the Psalms. I've probably read the Psalms 400, 500 times. And I'm going, how did I miss this? Well, I think what it is is, you know, I'm kind of dirty, sort of, so I've got to take a lot of showers, but not just physically, spiritually. And what happens is every time you read the Bible, the Lord takes a little bit of dirt off and you begin to see the light better than you've ever seen it before. And you see these new things. Exodus 6, in that great thematic section, verses 6-8, tell the children of Israel, I am the Lord. I will bring you out from the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rid you out of their bondage. I will redeem you, watch it, with a, look at this, a stretched out arm. Look at that. Here, look at me. There it is with a stretched out arm. The cross of Calvary. That's the first coming. And with great judgments. That's the second coming of the tribulation. Right there in that verse, you've got the first coming at the cross and the second coming at the trib when he brings forth the judgments of the seals and the trumpets and the vials and gets rid of all the Egyptians on planet earth and starts a new kingdom wherein those who are born again, children of God and the blessed and holy first resurrection. and He's showing it there. But the interesting thing is you go through all these I wills. Verse 7, I will take you to Me for a people, first at the cross and then in the kingdom. I will be to you a God. Amen. You shall know that I am the Lord, your God. You know, the world needs a Lord, but needs the Lord. But it needs to make the Lord personally theirs. That's why the pronoun yours is there. They didn't just say, the Lord is a shepherd in Psalm 23. They didn't say, the Lord is the shepherd, although He is. They said, the Lord is my shepherd. And as a Catholic for all those years, he wasn't my shepherd. That psalm meant nothing at every funeral I went to. Big deal. What are you reading that for? When he became my shepherd, oh, I get it. I'm walking through the valley of the shadow of death. I'm not really dying. It's just a shadow. My body's going up to the side. That calmness... Have you ever been to a funeral in this church? We're celebrating and jumping for joy that someone has graduated and gone to heaven. We're not mourning and weeping over it like others that have no hope. Because we know that He's redeemed us with the stretched out arm. That He's the Lord our God. And then he promises to bring us into the land in verse 8 and one day we'll be there. But the book ends. Look at how verse 6 begins after he says, say to the children of Israel, it'd be like open quotes, I am the Lord. And then it closes with I am the Lord at the end of verse 8. And everything done in the midst there is God. It's the Lord. What a deal. See, with religion, it's part the Lord and part us. Or maybe a little bit the Lord and a lot of us. Or maybe part the Lord, somewhat the priests, and a little bit of us. Or a little bit of Lord, maybe a lot of saints. A little bit of Lord, some of Mary, and us. But here it's the Lord and the Lord, beginning, the end, the Alpha, the Omega, it's all the Lord. And I'm not sure His disciples were seeing all that yet, but this is what He's doing up there when He's breaking that bread and speaking to them. That night, He's turning the Old Testament Passover meal into the Lord's Supper. Now, I've got another sheet for you on page 2. And I got this from a booklet written by a converted Jew J.R. Lippis. Purple Pomegranate Production is a production company of saved Jews. And not lost Jews, saved Jews that know who the Messiah is. And we did this last year on April the 8th. We celebrated the last Passover, the Seder meal, they call it, the traditional feast that marks the start of the Passover. And I gave you the feasts right there. You can study them on your own. And they have a text called the Haggadah that gives the order of the Passover meal. And you can see the 14 steps that go on in that meal. They start out with a call to worship after they search for the leaven and make sure all the leaven is gone because there can be no leaven there. Leaven is a picture of sin. And in order to properly partake of the Passover meal, the sin needs to be dealt with. Now, thankfully, the Lord deals with it. And then there's the call to worship. And one of the things that is traditional is they sing through what's known as the Hallel Psalms. And back in the psalm book when we were studying them years ago, they're on one of our sites. I think it's on the Good Preaching site. Psalms 113-118 are the psalms that they sing here. They're psalms of an exhortation to praise God, is the 113th psalm. Oh, praise the Lord. Praise, O ye servants of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same. The Lord's name is to be praised. Amen. There's none other name under heaven. This is the name that God has exalted above every name. At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess." And so they began the singing of that psalm, and at that time, they're singing to Jehovah. Now, one of the things Matthew does not include, but very quickly you know that John includes it in his rendering of the Last Supper, which, by the way, you need to read. You need to read on your own, John 14-17. And that's one of the greatest passages in all the Bible. If you're ever not feeling well, just to read those chapters alone. And Jesus is up there in the upper room with them, and He says in John 14, 1, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God? You believe in Jehovah? Believe also in Me. And He's beginning to draw their trust toward Him and their faith toward Him, which to a Jew would seem like blasphemy to worship a man. But this is no mere man. This is the God-man. This is God manifest in the flesh. This is the great mystery. And of course, later on, Thomas would say, my Lord and my God. And they understand it. And so they open with the praising Psalms and Jesus is trying to take their soul and their spirit through the transition from the old to the new. That had to be a tough time to live in, a transition period. Transition periods are difficult. They're difficult to live through. They're difficult to understand. We're living in a transition period. We are at the end of the dispensation in the economy of the church age. This decade, like I told you in January 2020, this decade, the trumpet will sound whether you like it or not. I hope you do like it. I hope you're excited about the coming of the Lord. But there are many Christians that aren't. They think they're going to live a better life here and now. Are you kidding me? Really, you think the Lord's going to make you get vaccinated with a phony vaccine? You think the Lord's going to make you stay six feet apart? He's going to have you hugging people and kissing each other. You think He's going to cover your face? He thinks the most important part is your face. He wants the rest of you covered up, not your face. That's not going to be happening when He's here. There's going to be a much better time when He's here. And so they open with Psalm 113. They open with Psalm 114, which is an exhortation not just to praise God, but to fear God and to follow God. Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord. Verse 7. And they're singing these hymns. And they're preparing themselves for the meal. Just like we sang and we prepared ourselves for this spiritual meal. And then they have a blessing of the candles. And then, and I didn't know this, and we wouldn't know this. We're not Jews. We're just Gentile dogs. What do we know? Woof woof. They have four cups that they drink during the meal. The first cup that they drink, and I was learning this, you know, is the cup of sanctification as they're getting ready to bless the meal. And the sanctification is the part that they are a separate people unto God. And those of us celebrating, and the Jews celebrating that meal, were a separated people. Philistines weren't celebrating the Passover, as we as Americans didn't celebrate the Passover. The Jews celebrated the Passover. And that was the first cup. Then they go through more of the ritual. They have the washing of the hands, the eating of the greens, the breaking of the matzah. And then one of the people there, the head of the table, will recount the Exodus story. Because after all, this is something that we're looking back to when God delivered our people and made a nation of our people. We were nothing more than bond servants and slaves in Egypt, and now we have our own nation. And God gave us that land. And they recount the story. And they would now drink the second cup, which is the cup of deliverance. which follows the Exodus story. Then the table was spread and enjoyed. They would receive the afikomen, which I'm not sure that is something. I'd have to read the book again. And then at the blessing of the meal is when they would have cup three. And this is what we're getting here in Matthew's story. In Matthew's story, getting to the third cup. as they were, verse 26, eating, Jesus then took the bread. And at that time, He blessed it. And blessing, it means He thanked His Father for the blessing from heaven. By the way, when you thank God, you're blessing your meal. That's why you say a prayer before you eat and you thank, thank you Lord for this food. And the Lord's blessing, the food now is sanctified and set apart and you ask God to bless it to your health. Now make sure it's a decent meal for goodness sakes. I mean, don't eat a bunch of slop and ask him to bless it. But if you were to, if you were, in a bond situation where you couldn't choose what you were eating, and somebody put slop before you, and you prayed, God would be able to bless it for you. But if you want to eat pork and you want to eat fat your whole life, and not expect to getting the follow, God told you what to eat in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. And by the way, if you eat the meals God told you to eat, they may not change you spiritually, but they'll make your body healthier. Jews lived to 70 to 80 while Gentiles were dying at 30 and 40 for all those centuries. It makes a difference following God's dietary laws. But the point is the blessing. And He blessed. And then He broke and He gave it to the disciples and He said, take, eat. This is My body. And by His Word, And with his hands, he's now transforming the Old Feast into the New Feast. See, the Old Feast, which they didn't understand and they're learning as the transition is being made, is something Paul came to understand later and wrote in the book of Hebrews. Go to Hebrews 7. And Paul writes this great book to the Hebrews. And we can learn a lot in this book even if we're not Hebrews. Although we understand the first book God wants us to read after John is Romans, Because we are Gentiles and we need that doctrine, but to the Hebrews Paul was trying to explain to them. In verse. Chapter 7 verse 18. There is verily truly a disannulling of the commandment going before. These are the Mosaic laws for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof. For the law made nothing perfect. And the law wasn't given to perfect the people. And that's why the church I grew up in, which was very big on the Ten Commandments, keep the Ten Commandments. Even if I kept them, it couldn't perfect me. The law can't... Think of it like this. The law is like a thermometer. It can record your temperature. It doesn't make you better. It can just tell you you're sick. It can't fix the illness. And the law in and of itself had to be disannulled because of the weakness of it. And he's taking the weak, old, failing dispensation and transforming that old feast into a new one called the Lord's Supper and the Lord's Table. And that's what he's doing here. And of course, He's going to finish the work in the next 24 hours the same day on the cross. He's just beginning it that evening. He'll finish it the next morning and the next day on the cross. The remnants of the Old Feast were one of anticipation. And now He's shining forth to these men, although I don't think they understand it, the glory of the new dawn and the new dispensation and the new age and the new birth. And they're not getting it, but we are. We're looking back and beginning to understand it. Now, what he's instituting there, go back to Matthew 26. I'm not trying to make this too deep, am I? We're making some sense. Anyways, we'll go back and look at it. We get what we can. We're thankful. He says at the end of verse 26, take, eat, this is my body. And then he took the cup. This is the third cup. This is the cup after the blessing of the meal. That's called the cup of redemption is how it's spoken of by the Jews. That's what they call it. The first was the cup of sanctification, the cup of deliverance, now the cup of redemption. And he takes this cup of redemption and he says, he gives it to them, verse 27, he says, drink ye all of it, for this is, it's my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. For how many? For as many as will come. What if all came? Then it'd be shed for all of the many. the payment is sufficient for everything and he's doing this and what it is is it's the New Testament the thing he wants us to understand let me see if I get this right for you gotta go back to Hebrews because Paul helps us in Hebrews. Paul was a lawyer of the law of God. Not one of those ambulance-chasing lawyers. I don't think he made a lot of six-figure settlements and stuff like that. He couldn't work for Selina or Barnes, but he could save both of them if they'd listen, which I've tried once and gave them tracks. I don't know if it got anywhere. Hebrews 9. The New Testament. This is a phrase that's found six times in the Bible. The New Testament. And it comes from the Latin word, testor, which is to make a will. This is God's will. God is making His will known in this New Testament. God's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who will have all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. There's one God and there's one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And it's God's will in this New Testament that people would learn that. Hebrews 9, verse 15, And for this cause He, that's Christ, back in verse 14, the blood of Christ, through the eternal Spirit, who offered Himself without spot to God, for this cause He is the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, For the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance." The first testament was weak. The first testament could only cover sin. It could not take away sin. I think of it like when they were doing some work at my home years ago. Pastor Pete was helping out in the good old days. Pete was a worker. He was a great pastor. Visited his church, Charity Baptist Church on Austin Street, 350 Austin Street. They preached the gospel in the inner city. He preaches on the streets. He does a good work there. He's always been a good laborer. He was a roofer years ago, and he came to help do some work at my house, and he rented a dumpster, and they were clearing the old roof out, and they would throw that stuff in the dumpster. And it took a couple of days to get it all done. And you know what he would do at the end of the day? He'd cover it up. And that's like the Old Testament would take the sin annually at Yom Kippur on the Day of Atonement, and they would take the sin of the nation, and they'd throw it in a dumpster and cover it up. But the sin was still there. It couldn't be remitted and taken away. And then every year they would do that, and they'd cover it up. But now, This New Testament is going to once and for all remove and take away the sin and cast it into the sea of God's forgetfulness and make it as far as the east is from the west. And there will be sin no more. Though your sin be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. I'm going to get rid of them and take them away. And this is what Jesus is getting ready to do here. And it's called a testament. It's also called a covenant back in Hebrews 8, verse 8. And there's a slight difference between testament and covenant. You don't need to know it. Just like there's a difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven. The testament would be like kingdom of God stuff. The covenant would be like kingdom of heaven stuff. The testament is God's will. The covenant is a coming together between two parties. And in order for that to happen, the second party has to agree. Now God's instituting the covenant, but He wants people to come to it. And Hebrews 8.8, for finding fault with them, that's verse 7, the first covenant. If only it had been faultless, there'd be no place sought for a second covenant or a New Testament. But finding fault with them, the people, they didn't do good at coming to that first covenant. He saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. This is kingdom of heaven stuff. And yet, we get grafted in through the New Testament. The cross-reference for that verse, Hebrews 8.8, right next to it, you should have Jeremiah 31.31. You can see God numbered your Bible to make it easy. 31, 31, 8, 8. God did it that way. 3 plus 1 is 4. 3 plus 1 is 4. Get to the New Testament, double it up, it's 8, 8. It's God making the Bible easy to find things in. God inspired this King James Bible, every word of it, and the chapter, and the verse markings. Amen and amen. And you can thank Him for it. And if you don't now, you get to thank Him in the Millennium, and you'll thank Him in heaven. And I know the bad teachers will talk you out of it with all the stupid heresies and confusion they stir up. Right, Brother Kevin? We know about those guys. They're something, aren't they? Evil men that creep in unawares, trying to steal our faith and deceive. But it's that new covenant, the bringing together of the two parties. You're still in Hebrews 8. Look at verse 13. In that He saith, A new covenant He hath made the first old. Go to chapter 12 of Hebrews, verse 25. See that ye refuse him not that speaketh, for if they escape not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth. But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this Word, yet once more signifying the removing of those things that are shaken, has of those things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." You know what can't be shaken? Our faith, our soul, that covenant, that testament. And God made that. So going back to what's happening here is Jesus is now turning one into the other. What He wants us to understand about this after He drinks that third cup, that cup of redemption with them, and then they're going to begin singing more Psalms in a minute, Psalm 115, 16, 17, and 18. He wants us to understand three things about the Lord's Supper. Number one, it is a covenant. It's a new covenant. It was promised by God back in Jeremiah 31. Back at the time when the nation was in great disobedience and God could easily have given them up for the way they had transgressed against the Lord and they had walked away from the Lord, and they had forsaken the fountain of living waters. God promised in Jeremiah 31, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. That was just a physical one which My covenant they break. But this is the covenant, verse 33, and there's a 33-year-old man doing it right now in his hands, that I will make with the house of Israel. I will put My law in their inward parts and I will write in their hearts and they shall be My people and I will be their God. And that's the new covenant. And the first thing he wants us to understand, the Lord's Supper is a covenant promised by the Lord. The next thing he wants us to understand is it's a commemoration of what Christ did at Calvary. It's not a sacrifice. It's not a sacrament. Okay? You don't need to do it once in your life. And let me show you. Go to 1 Corinthians 11. Now, we have done it. Commemorating, but not as a sacrament, not as a requirement, not as an ongoing sacrifice. And Paul explained to the church at Corinth, a very confused church that needed a lot of correction. How many chapters did he write to them? Like 29 chapters or something? They needed so much correction. And he's trying to correct them. And he says in v. 23 of the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians 11-23, I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you. The first thing he received was the Gospel and the new birth. And then he delivered the Gospel and the new birth to them. And he's also now delivering this fact that there's a commemoration that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, He took the bread, and when He had given thanks, He'd break it, and He said, take, eat. This is My body. This bread, this unleavened bread is a picture of My sinless life. The body of the life that I've lived for 33 years was entirely unleavened and sinless. And it's broken for you. This do in remembrance of Me." And after the same manner, he took the cup, and when he had supped, he said, this cup, this third cup here, the one you call the cup of redemption, is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye, and as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me. And my blood was shed in my work on the cross. Once for all. And it's a commemoration of everything He did. Verse 26, as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death. You're looking back to what He did. And He also looking forward till He come. And you understand He's returning for you. And then He goes on to say, look, it's a commemoration. It's not a sacrament. It's not a sacrifice. Verse 27, Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. That's the Roman Catholic Mass. That's some knucklehead who's never had a child and wants to be called father, unless he had one with a nun or some woman illegitimately. He's got no right to be called father. He didn't birth anyone physically, and he couldn't birth anyone spiritually. Standing before you with a little wafer and saying, the body of Christ, and you're supposed to say, Amen, like that's the body of Christ. That's not the body of Christ. It's a little white wafer. And when you say amen and do that, you're partaking unworthily. That's turning that into a sacrifice through some crazy thing called transubstantiation, which is 18 letters long. Spell it out. 6 plus 6 plus 6. That's the spirit of the Antichrist. And Paul's warning you right here not to do that. You've heard this before, haven't you? Have you not heard this stuff before? Well, you should have. Every pastor should have been telling you this for the last hundred years. They had enough common sense to say it in the 1600s when this book was written. You know, the people that wrote this book said the Pope was the spirit of Antichrist. He is, you know. I'm sorry you grew up with a puss generation of pastors that can't tell the truth. And this is all new stuff. It shouldn't be. You should be familiar with this. And you're drinking unworthily. Verse 28, let a man examine himself. And so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup, for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself. Where do you think Catholics go when they die? I don't care if they go with a mouthful of wafers. Where do they go? They go to hell. Why? I was a Catholic. It's another Gospel. What happens to people that believe another Gospel? They go to hell. There's only one Gospel. There's not another. So he wants us to understand these things. Someone's got to tell you the truth. So, number one, you understand, it's a covenant. Number two, it's a commemoration. Number three, it's a similitude. As I showed you last week in Hosea 12, verse 10, the Lord uses similitudes. That's the word like a simile, where something is like something else, something is as something else. Go to John chapter 6. John 6, that long chapter where Jesus feeds the 5,000 and then they come to Him afterwards and then He begins to explain to them in verse 51, I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." And the Jews and the Catholics and the Episcopals and everyone else started to strive among themselves, saying, how can this man give us flesh to eat? I've got the answer. Transubstantiation. No. Jesus said, verse 61, when Jesus knew that the disciples were murmuring, does this offend you what I said? What if you see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before? What if I take off and go back to heaven? How are you going to eat my flesh then? Transubstantiation, verse 63, it's the spirit that quickeneth. The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. But there's some of you that believe not. And it's a commemoration. When we do this, we are remembering spiritually what He did for us. We are remembering spiritually He's returning for us. And more important than eating a wafer, and we do it about once a year here. We usually do it in the spring around the time of Passover. We do it once a year. And we actually do get an unleavened wafer. And we actually do get unfermented grape juice is what you get. Grape juice is what we use. The new wine, that's what Jesus used. And we do it. But you know what? You're doing it right now. This is communion. I'm telling you about Christ's work and the body of His life. You're partaking spiritually through spiritual words. I'm telling you about the blood He shed at Calvary's cross. You're partaking spiritually. You're right now at the Lord's table spiritually. And that's what He's instituting more than anything else. The Lord's table isn't physical. It's spiritual. The spiritual is the greater, the physical is the smaller part. Right now we're breaking the bread of life and we're drinking the cup of eternal glory of the blood of Christ, the wine of joy that brings forth salvation. And that's what he wants us to understand. It's a covenant promised by his Father, it's a commemoration of Calvary, and it's a similitude of the spiritual communion that we now have with Jesus Christ by way of the new birth. So we have communion here every time the doors are open. Because we have a common union as we communicate with our Father through the common union of the words that we have given by Jesus Christ that linked us to God in the first place. Because we've been born again by the Gospel and by the Word of God. Right? Okay, just in case you're not sure, go to the first pope. Peter was not a pope. But go to 1 Peter 1. The pope is a dope. There's no hope in the pope. All popes are running around hell going, what am I doing here? And the devil's laughing going, you listened to me rather than the book. You should have done like Martin Luther and gotten out of that mess. Martin Luther got out of that mess. He was a priest, you know. He went to Rome. In the basement, he found a Bible. He read the book of Romans. He read the first chapter and knew right away, oh my gosh, this church isn't saving anybody. Salvation is by grace through faith. And he got saved. And he left the mess. I left the mess. Anyone else here leave that mess? Amen. Good. Good. Get out of that thing. 1 Peter 1. Verse 23. One, two, three, God makes it easy. being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. Verse 25, the word of the Lord endureth forever, and this is the word by which the gospel is preached to you. And what he's showing his men, and this is why you want to read, John 14, 15, 16, and 17, because Matthew is just giving us a snapshot of what he did at that table that day, but John opens the whole thing up and pours out to you all those words are read from the lips of Jesus Christ about how He is the vine, about how He has taken the glory of the Father, how He has given the Word to us, how He will send the Comforter, all in those chapters about the real communion through His Word that brought those men close. Amen. So that evening, Jesus led His disciples through the shadows of the darkness of the cross, which was coming the next day, into the sunlight of the new and the eternal day through taking that last Passover and turning it into the Lord's Supper. How He did it? Simply, He took the old bread and He broke it into an infinite supply for all. through the bread of life. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. He put his hand on the old cup, and out came the wine of the kingdom of God, through not the blood of bulls and goats and lambs, but the blood of the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." And the Passover meal is for the past and the Lord's Supper is for now to eternity. And that's what happened there that night. Now back to where we are in Matthew 26. And when they sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And they went back to singing those great Psalms, and you can read them. Psalm 118 is one that Jesus used many, many times in His teachings. It's a great psalm. Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His mercy endureth forever. Let Israel now say, His mercy endureth forever. Let the house of Aaron now say, His mercy endureth forever. Let them that now fear the Lord through the new birth say that His mercy endureth forever. I called upon the Lord in distress and the Lord answered me. Amen. Did you call on Him in the day of salvation? Did He save you? What a deal. And they read that together. The Lord is on my side. Verse 6, I will not fear. What can man do to me? Stick a cheap non-vaccine in my arm? I'm going to be afraid of that? Seriously. Even if the thing worked the way they want it to work, which is to kill you. They're not trying to cure you of coronavirus. There's no real way to build up immunity to coronavirus with that vaccine. They do want to kill you. But even if they did, so what? You scaring me with heaven? Ooh. Ooh. You're getting me out of this mess down here to go live in heaven? The Lord taketh my part with them that help me. You know who helps you? The authors of the book, the prophets. You know who helps you? Your brothers and sisters in the Lord. You know who helps you? The fellow saints. What a deal. Your local church. Verse 8, it's better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It's better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. or popes or presidents or anything else that begins with a P. Or pushers or whatever else is out there. I mean, it's a great one. Verse 21, "...I will praise Thee, for Thou hast heard Me, and art become My salvation." The stone which the builders refused. He said that to the religious leaders. They didn't want the Lord Jesus Christ as the headstone of their church. And the average church today in the Yellow Pages, under C for Christian churches, doesn't want the Lord Jesus Christ or His book in there. They've refused Him and His book. It's become the headstone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing. It's marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made. By the way, He's there with them in the evening. Do you know how they did the days in Jewish time? Evening, morning. It was the same day. That was the evening of the day He went to the cross. The same 24-hour period. This is the day that the Lord hath made as we're going from the Passover to the Lord's Supper. And I'm going to do the work on the cross tomorrow. It's marvelous in our eyes. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Save now, I beseech Thee, O Lord. That's what He was doing on that cross. He saved others, but himself he could not save, because if he did, he couldn't have saved others. So he stayed up there. O Lord, I beseech Thee, send now prosperity. The first part of the verse is the first coming. The second part is the second coming. Right within that verse there. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Amen. Verse 27, God is the Lord which hath showed us light. Bind the sacrifice with cords even to the horns of the altar. Thou art my God and I will praise Thee. Thou art my God, I will exalt Thee. O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good and His mercy endureth forever. And he's singing that song. He's leading them in that psalm as they're walking out to the Mount of Olives. What a day. That's the eternal day. That's the day on which all of humanity, the hinge, hinges. That's the fulcrum of all of time as far as God's concerned, right there at that cross. God wants to know, on what side of that cross are you? Are you one of the thieves on the cross of rejection, mocking and denying? Are you on the cross of reception going, Lord, Jesus, remember me. And the Lord turns the last Passover into the Lord's table. Next week we'll look at the other verses. Any thoughts? Yes, brother.