Well, we're going to read from three passages during the course of our sermon this morning. Of course, we will be in Luke 22, verses 14 through 23. And we will read from Exodus chapter 24 and from Hebrews chapter 8. In Hebrews chapter 8, the writer quotes Jeremiah 31, the passage of the new covenant. So you may want to put marks in all four places or in at least three of the four. And we're actually going to begin in Exodus chapter 12. It's important we have an understanding of what the Passover was and what its purpose was. What it commemorated in the days when it was celebrated. And so we're going to read again from Exodus 12 this morning and from a couple other brief passages. In the days leading up to the Passover, Jesus, as we recall, was telling His disciples about the coming judgment of God on the city of Jerusalem and on the nation of Israel because of their disobedience and unbelief. Their rejection of Him was the final straw. And he said this judgment would come before that generation passed away. He said the same things to the Jewish religious leaders. Now it's Passover week. A couple days before Passover as we come to this passage this morning. Remember, Passover was a one-day observance on the fourteenth day of the first month. And the Feast of Unleavened Bread was a seven-day feast, which began on the fifteenth day, the following day of the first month. And both were a memorial of God's deliverance of the sons of Jacob from bondage in Egypt. And the terms, as we saw last week, Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread, came to be used interchangeably by the Bible writers. So looking at Exodus 12.1, The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be the beginning of months for you. It was called Abib in those days. It came to be called Nisan. And this month would be the beginning of months for them. The first month of the year. Around April it would begin. And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves according to their father's households. A lamb for each household. Verse 5, Your lamb shall be an unblemished male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. And He told them, you must keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Four days. And then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel was to kill it at twilight. Moreover, they shall take some of the blood, put it on the doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat. Verse 8, they shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, not boiled, not raw. And they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Now why is the Lord commanding them to do this? Well because He wants them to remember what He's about to do that night. For I will go, verse 12, through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. So each judgment, each judgment plague, represented a judgment on a false god in Egypt. The blood, he says, shall be a sign for you on the house where you live. And when I see the blood, I'll pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." Now what he was going to do was kill the firstborn in every Egyptian house, both men and animals. And so when Moses, in Deuteronomy chapter 16, as they're approaching the Promised Land after 40 years in the wilderness on the east side of the Jordan River. When he gives his final instructions to the sons of Jacob, he said to them, Deuteronomy 16, 1, he reminds them again, Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God. For in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night... By night. ...you shall sacrifice the Passover to the LORD your God from the flock and the herd, in the place where the Lord chooses to establish His name. Now at first that was the tabernacle that He was about to command, that He had commanded Moses to erect and build. It would become the temple in the days of Solomon. So the Passover lamb was only to be offered in Jerusalem at the temple. And the feast was only to be celebrated in Jerusalem at the temple. Verse 3, you shall not eat leavened bread with it. That's why it's called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Why? Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste. Bread didn't have time to rise. So that you may remember all the days of your life, the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. And we're going to see when we look at the Passover meal that there's a point where the son of the man in whose house the Passover is being held is to ask the father, why are we doing this? Why are we eating these bitter herbs? And he's to tell him this story. Numbers 9.13, the man who neglects to observe the Passover, that person shall be then cut off from his people. This is a near capital offense. And maybe it was a capital offense. Certainly someone was to be removed from the nation of the sons of Jacob. Why? Because he didn't present this offering at the appointed time. That man, Moses writes, will bear his sin. So Passover was a mandatory observance. That meant everybody, every Jew from all over. Galilee, Samaria, wherever they might be. Perea and Judea would come to Jerusalem to celebrate this feast. This was one of three feasts that had been ordained by God, where every adult male was required to attend. And so the feast was now approaching, in Luke's narrative here, and pilgrims by the tens of thousands were pouring into Jerusalem. And now, as we saw last week, As the celebration of this feast, commemorating God's miraculous deliverance of their forefathers 1,500 years earlier, was at hand, the chief priests and the scribes, the Jewish religious leaders, were seeking how they might put Jesus to death. And as that's going on, Satan entered into Judas. In the words of Luke, one of the twelve. One of Jesus' twelve disciples. goes to the chief priests and the officers and discusses with them how he might betray Jesus to them and how they might find a way to execute Him. Matthew tells us they paid Judas 30 pieces of silver. And so Judas, Luke tells us, began seeking a good opportunity to betray Him. Apart from the crowd. The Jewish religious leaders had desired for a long time to kill Jesus. But they wanted to do it secretly. They were afraid of the people. They said, not during the festival, otherwise a riot might occur among the people. So this is the situation. They're not going to do this until Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread is over. But God had determined and decreed the sacrifice of the Lamb of God to redeem His people. would occur at Passover. Because the Passover lamb was a symbol, a shadow that pointed to Christ and the true Lamb of God. Now Matthew 26 helps us place the events in time here. Right in the beginning of Matthew 26, we see that when Jesus had finished the words of the Olivet Discourse, He said to His disciples, You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be handed over for crucifixion." So these words were spoken by our Lord on Tuesday. Because we know the Passover was Thursday that week. So this was an announcement by Jesus of the exact day and time of His arrest and crucifixion. And it would all begin with Judas betraying Him with a kiss. So here's Judas now, has gone back to Jesus of the eleven with the blood money in his bag. And he spends a day or two with them, with this money he's carrying around. From his perspective, all that was left was to find the right moment to betray Jesus to the Jewish rulers. And he's still got this money in his bag, and he's still pretending to be a disciple of Jesus as he sits down to eat the Passover with Him. Verse 7, we read this last week. The first day of the unleavened bread came on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. It was now Thursday. Jesus sent Peter and John to go and prepare the Passover meal. They said, where do you want us to do this? He said, go into the city. A man's going to meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house that he enters. And you say to the owner of the house, the teacher says to you, where's the guest room that I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he'll show you a large, furnished upper room. Prepare it there. So we suggested last week, as many have, that Jesus may have concealed the location from the rest of the disciples. as to where they'd eat the Passover so that Judas wouldn't know until the appointed time had come for his betrayal. And that doesn't mean God made him betray the Lord. But God knew He would betray our Lord. But He set the time. He set the time. So Peter and John go into the city. They find everything just as Jesus tells them. They prepared the Passover, we're told. The lamb was to be killed at twilight. the time when the Passover would begin. It would begin at sunset. And then the lambs to be roasted and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread and wine. So our passage this morning is Luke's account of that evening. Luke 22, 14. When the hour had come, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he said, Take this and share it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. And when he had taken some bread and given thanks, he broke it and he gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way, he took the cup. After they had eaten, and said, This cup, which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in my blood. But behold, the hand of the one betraying me is with mine on the table. For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined. But woe to that man by whom he is betrayed. And they began to discuss among themselves which one of them it might be who was going to do this thing. So all four evangelists record accounts of that evening. They're all different. Matthew and Mark are pretty similar. John's is completely different. And Luke's is a little different from Matthew and Mark in a couple of respects. What we need to understand is, as they sat down to begin the Passover, 15 to 18 hours later, Jesus would offer Himself on the cross for our sins. And He knew that. So in order to grasp the magnitude of the great change that occurred that night. It's necessary we have some knowledge and some understanding of the nature of this Jewish Passover feast. And I'm relying on Richard Lenski who tells us, the rabbinical writings show us there was a fixed order of the Passover feast. Now, I don't know that this particular order was followed by everybody. But this is basically what the rabbis taught. There'd be a first cup with a blessing, a benediction, a praise of God. And then there would be this eating of bitter herbs. Horseradish. Horseradish. And they said the stems of romaine lettuce would be among these. And the bitter herbs were to recall the bitter life of slavery in Egypt. And there'd be the eating of unleavened bread, roasted lamb, and other meats. And interestingly, and I don't know why this is or whether it means anything at all, none of the gospel writers makes any mention of the group actually killing and eating a lamb that Passover. Now there's a dish called a haroset, which is made from apples, walnuts, raisins, sweet red wine, honey, lemon zest, ground cinnamon, and a pinch of salt, kosher salt. Now that sounds similar to some of the things that we seem to have here. And so you take the bitter herbs and dip them into this haroset. The father would dip the bitter herbs in and then he would eat. And the others would follow. And there'd be a second cup of wine. This one would be mixed with water. And at that point, the son of the father whose house it was is to ask his father, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? And of course, the father then explains the meaning of the feast and the history of the Passover. And this way it passes on. The remembrance and the knowledge of God's deliverance of the sons of Jacob from bondage in Egypt, generation after generation. And then they sing what is called the Hallel. Now this is Psalms 113 through 118 in our Bible. And they'd sing the first part of the halal, the first two psalms. 113, 114. And there'd be another prayer of praise and they'd drink the second cup. So this is very strict order. Father would wash his hands, take two cakes of bread, break one and set it on top of the other. Dip that in the haroset. and eat that with a piece of one of the meats there. There were other meats besides lamb. A piece of lamb as well. And then the third cup. And then the last part of the Hillel would be Psalms 115 through 118. And they would be sung. And I believe there's a fourth cup. But here's the thing, John's account of that evening doesn't tell us any of this. But it's far longer than the other three Gospels. If you recall, when we went through the Gospel of John, From chapter 13, verse 1, to chapter 19, verse 30, is less than 24 hours. A third of John's Gospel covers less than 24 hours. So early on the evening of the Passover, John tells us, and this is omitted from all of the synoptic Gospels, that Jesus loved them to the end. That He knew His hour had come that He would depart from this world to go to the Father. John tells us Jesus knew His suffering would not be the end. That His suffering would be the means of His return to glory with His Father and of achieving glory for all His people. He knew what lay ahead. And He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands. When he departed from the apostles in Matthew 28, he said, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. He knew why he had come. John also tells us that during supper, Jesus got up, laid aside his garments, girded himself with a towel, and washed his disciples' feet one by one. Remember, Peter argued with him, as he was wont to do. But He was giving them an object lesson in servanthood. He said to them, John 13, 14, If I then, your Teacher and Lord, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I gave you an example that you should also do as I did to you. And Jesus told them one of them would betray Him. Look at all that occurred this night. And he said to them, John 13, 18, I know the ones I have chosen, but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled. He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me. Now these words spoken by David when Ahitophel was betraying him. Verse 19, why did Jesus tell them about this betrayal? He tells them in verse 19, From now on, I'm telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am. So both Matthew and Mark place this announcement of Judah's betrayal before the institution of the Lord's Supper. Mark says, as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you that one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me. And Matthew 26, 21 says pretty much the same thing. But Luke appears to place Jesus' announcement that He would be betrayed by one of the twelve after eating the Passover. After the institution of the Lord's Supper as well. Now that would mean, if that's actually the case, that would mean Judas would have sat and partaken of the Lord's Supper. So how do we resolve that? We're going to see. It wasn't the precise order of the events of that night that was of greatest importance to the gospel writers. And remember, Luke's chronology, as he described it in the first chapter, was not one of order of events, but of order of themes. He wrote thematically. But the other point is this. It wasn't the precise order of events of that night that was of great importance to the gospel writers. but the magnitude of what was going to occur during the eighteen hours that began at sundown that night. And what would occur three days later? Each of the writers framed the events of that night in his own way. So Luke writes, 2214, when the hour had come, Jesus reclined at the table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he said, Take this and share it among yourselves. Now we notice two things here in verse 16. Jesus had earnestly desired to eat that final Passover. He wanted, He desired to get to this final episode in His earthly life. And He knew, He knew that He was about to undergo unspeakable suffering. He knew exactly what lay ahead. And Jesus said here, He's earnestly desired to eat this Passover, and that He would never eat it again until it is fulfilled. When is the day of fulfillment? Why, it's the day of His return when He brings us into the new heavens and the new earth for all eternity. He would never eat it again until it's fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Here's Passover. It looks back to God's deliverance of the sons of Jacob from slavery in Egypt. But more importantly, the Passover looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. That lamb they slaughtered was but a shadow of the reality which is Christ. The Messiah, the lamb who would come and be slaughtered, would by his own death deliver all his people from their bondage to sin. He condemned sin in the flesh. And now he was here. And they did not receive Him. They didn't recognize the day of their visitation. Within the next 72 hours, as they're sitting down to this meal, the two most significant events in all of human history would occur. And God's covenant with the sons of Jacob, made at Mount Sinai through Moses, which they broke and all of its rituals and ceremonies were about to be rendered obsolete and replaced by that to which it pointed, Christ, and the new covenant, and the Lord's Supper, a covenant of grace, a covenant which cannot be broken. Why? Because it depends entirely on God and not on the performance of any work by any man. And so Jesus gathered His disciples to eat the final Passover. And to inaugurate a new remembrance. A supper in which He would call all His people to remember something else. The sacrifice He was about to make and the victory that He was about to win. So as Jesus observed the Passover with the Twelve, He took a cup, verse 17, and when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, Take this and share it among yourselves. This cup, of which we read in verse 17, appears certainly to have been one of the cups of the Passover meal. None of the evangelists, by the way, tells us whether Jesus Himself drank from this cup. But He said, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. But by these words, what was Jesus pointing to? He was pointing to what is called in Revelation 19, the marriage supper of the Lamb. The ultimate fulfillment of His work of redemption. which will only be fully realized in the new heavens and the new earth." That's what he was pointing to. It is there in the new heavens and the new earth that the deliverance of His people, not from Egypt, but from all sin and evil, will be fully realized. Isn't it a joyous thing to know that this day will come? It's there they will at last have been fully redeemed. This is all who are in Christ. Jew, Gentile, whatever. It's there in the new heavens and new earth that the fellowship between Himself and all the redeemed will be perfected. Can't wait. William Hendrickson says, it's as though he was saying to them, though our continued fellowship here is about to end, it will be renewed gloriously in the kingdom to come. A kingdom of light and love, of triumph and praise, and this for all eternity. Hendrickson goes on. He says here, Passover passes over into the Lord's Supper. And that's what's about to happen in the next verse. As the men were eating toward the close of the Passover meal, Jesus instituted a new supper of remembrance to replace the old. Luke's account is only of two sentences. First one is in verse 19. And when he had taken some bread and given thanks, he broke it and he gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. See the simplicity of the first Lord's Supper. You see the gaudy trappings of the Lord's Supper in some places. Jesus took some bread. He gave thanks. He broke it. And He gave it to all of them. There was nothing special about the bread. It was the sharing and the remembrance of Him that mattered. I mean, even in the Passover meal, taking bread and breaking it and distributing it were regular features. So for Jesus to take bread and pass it around was not entirely unexpected. In fact, it was expected. But what He said as He gave it to His disciples, those were words no one had ever heard before. This is My body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me. A new remembrance. So what did Jesus mean here? Well I think we know some have fallen into an error of thinking that Jesus had actually changed the bread into His own flesh. That even as He was holding the bread with His flesh, somehow it had, in some mystical way, transformed. And those people also believe that in some mystical way, Christ has empowered others to do the same thing to this very day. To take a piece of bread and transform it into the actual body of Christ. I trust we know this is to greatly misunderstand the Lord's words here. Christ was speaking symbolically when he said, this is my body. He often spoke in such metaphorical terms. I am the door. Did Christ turn into a door? Of course not. I am the vine. Christ didn't turn into a grapevine. And the bread didn't turn into Christ. As Jesus held up this bread cake and declared, this is my body, none of the men present would have imagined He was claiming that the bread had now become His literal flesh. What Jesus was doing, as He often did, was creating an object lesson that the bread as a symbol of the body He was about to give on the cross. Think about this. When Jesus spoke of Himself metaphorically as the vine in John chapter 15, He didn't turn into a grapevine. He was illustrating the relationship between Himself and all who truly believe in Him by a picture of a vine and its branches. Branches which are dependent on the vine as their source of life. The branches find their life and their fruit-bearing capacity in the vine. And His people find their life and their fruit-bearing capacity in Him. He calls Himself the Morning Star. He's called the Lamb, the Fountain, the Rock, the Cornerstone. He called himself the bread of life. What did he mean by that? Did he mean that he turned into bread as well? No. He means that his people feed on him through the reading and the hearing of the preaching of his word. Jeremiah 15, 16. Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became for me a joy and a delight of my heart. And when Jesus was tempted by Satan, what did he say? It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 3. This bread is a symbol of my body. Well in the same way, verse 20, He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. Now there are four accounts of the Lord's Supper. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul in 1st Corinthians 11. And only Paul records Jesus repeating as to the cup, do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me. But that remains the command, of course. The wine was no more Jesus' actual blood than the bread was His actual body. In fact, Jesus told His disciples the meaning of the cup of wine. He said, it's the new covenant in My blood. Now Mark has it, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Matthew adds, for the forgiveness of sins. And Paul has it, 1st Corinthians 11.25, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Now you notice, in all four accounts of the institution of the Lord's Supper, Christ related His blood to the new covenant. This takes us to Exodus 24. Because we see in Exodus 24 that the old covenant was ratified in blood. Exodus 24, we'll begin in verse 3. Well then Moses came and recounted to all the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances. The ordinances would relate to the ceremony. And all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do. Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. And then he arose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent young men of the sons of Israel, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins. The other half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And then he took the book of the covenant, where he'd written it all down, and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said again, All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient. So Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. And of course, in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 and 30, we read about the terms of this covenant. Earthly blessings for obedience. Earthly punishment for disobedience. And Moses was the mediator of this old covenant. And by the sprinkling of blood, the old covenant was ratified. God would bless them if they followed Him and were obedient to Him. But the blood that Moses sprinkled on the people was a blood that typified and promised the blood of Christ. It pointed to the blood of Christ which ratified the new covenant. The one in which men are saved for eternal life. Promised in Jeremiah 31. By which we inherit all that Christ has won for us. The old covenant could be ratified in animal blood. Because it was just a shadow of the reality which is Christ. The new covenant was ratified in the blood of the Son of God. That cup that we drink, that is what this symbolizes. The blood of Christ guarantees the final and total fulfillment of the promise, the actual purchase of our redemption. Why was blood necessary? Is blood even necessary? Well, the writer of Hebrews looked back to the Old Covenant in chapter 9, and he reminded his readers that without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sins. Reconciliation with God, repair of a relationship with God, requires the shedding of blood. There's no reconciliation with God without blood shed. And it has to be sacrificially shed. The blood of an atoning sacrifice. But what's the problem with those sacrifices that they offered day after day, year after year? The blood of an animal could provide only a covering for sins. It is impossible. Hebrews 10, 4, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. None of those offerings could do that. The Jews in those Old Testament days were saved by believing in the promise of what those blood offerings foreshadowed. And since no mere man, none of us, no man apart from Christ ever could have offered an unblemished sacrifice, because all the seed of Adam are stained with sin, there had to be a substitute, a substitutionary offering. And this is why Christ could not be the seed of Adam. That's why He was conceived of the Holy Spirit. And as He offered Himself on the cross, this pure, unblemished sacrifice, this Son of God, now in human flesh. As He offered Himself and shed His blood, the new covenant of Jeremiah 31 came into being. was ratified in the shedding of His precious blood. And in this covenant is the fulfillment of all the promises of Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31, verse 31. And if you turn to Hebrews 8, you'll see the same words repeated. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it. The desires of the people of Christ, both Jew and Gentile, will be the desires of God. We will know right and wrong. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again each man his neighbor, and each man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more. Hallelujah. And when we come to the New Testament, Hebrews is perhaps the best place we see this new covenant originally given through Israel is for the benefit of all who believe in Christ, Jew and Gentile. When Jesus said, This is my body, which is given for you. He spoke of his substitutionary gift of himself on the cross for all his people. When he spoke of the cup as a symbol of his shed blood, the blood of the new covenant, he declared that by his death and the shedding of his blood, he was inaugurating the new covenant of which Jeremiah had written, I will remember their sins no more. We didn't have that in the old covenant. This was a declaration of significance beyond what we could even describe. of importance to all mankind. What happened those three days? And all who believe in Him, as I said, both Jew and Gentile, partake of the blessings of the new covenant. Jesus was saying that His bloody death would reestablish fellowship with God for all who believe in Him. It would be the means of cleansing people of their sins, of His law being written on our hearts And He will dwell in our midst forever. This is the new covenant. It's one that's entirely dependent on God. We can't even mess it up unless we walk away from Him. It's entirely dependent on the grace of God. And we see in Jesus' words now. that the Lord's Supper not only points back to what Christ has done for us, we remember Him, but it also points forward to what lies ahead in the ultimate fulfillment of the kingdom of God, of all the blessings of the new covenant. We know there's more to come. We're just getting started. Conversion is just the beginning. And notice what Paul adds in his account of the Lord's Supper, which we read virtually every Lord's Day. 1 Corinthians 11, 26. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Until He comes. It was a tragedy that ancient Israel didn't keep its covenant with God. It was a tragedy that it persisted in sin and idolatry and unbelief. And so forfeited the earthly blessings promised for obedience. But the greater tragedy for the sons of Jacob and for that nation was that when the promised Messiah came, the one foreshadowed in the Passover, they didn't receive Him. He came unto His own and His own did not receive Him. That is the tragedy. So as that final Passover came to a close, Jesus instituted this new remembrance, which we're about to celebrate, to replace the old one. In a few more hours, the shadow, the Passover, will have served its purpose, being fulfilled on the cross in the reality it foreshadowed. The offering of the true Lamb of God Himself, the true Passover Lamb, to deliver His people from bondage to sin, Satan, and death. This language of the covenant speaks of a new community. One Paul calls the true Israel of God, comprised of all who believe in Him. Who in their eating and drinking of this new supper, profess and proclaim our belief in the sacrificial offering of the Son of God of Himself. And our belief in the blessings that had come to us by His sacrificial death. and our belief that He will return and drink from the cup again in the kingdom of God, in the new heaven, in the new earth. And while the Passover observance required the shedding of more blood, blood all over Jerusalem, this new remembrance will no longer requires the shedding of blood, but rather a supper of thanksgiving and celebration. Speaking of Christ and of the new covenant, the writer of Hebrews says this, chapter 8, verse 6, But now He, Christ, has obtained a more excellent ministry, byasmuch as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. And then the writer of Hebrews quotes all the words of the new covenant, Jeremiah 31, verses 31 through 34. And then he says this in verse 13. When he said, a new covenant, he's made the first obsolete. Not the moral law, but all the ceremonies, all the feasts. And then the writer continues. But whatever is becoming obsolete is growing old and is ready to disappear. So all the ceremonies of the Mosaic covenant were rendered obsolete and ready to disappear when Christ offered Himself in death on the cross. What all those feasts and offerings pointed to for 1,500 years had now come. God kept His promise. Praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's take a moment and reflect on the words our Lord has spoken into our minds and hearts this morning. And then let each of us examine himself, as Paul has cautioned us. And then let us gather at his table and remember the true Lamb of God.