Scripture is Mark 14, verses 10-25. This is God’s holy word. Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray Him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money and he sought an opportunity to betray him. And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover? And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.
Follow him. And wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. There, prepare for us. And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them. And they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening, He came with the twelve.
And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray Me, one who is eating with Me. They began to be sorrowful and to say to Him one after another, Is it I? He said to them, It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with Me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.
And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to them and said, Take, this is my body. And he took a cup, And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible word. We’ll please the Lord to take his word, transform it in our lives into service for himself. Thanks be to God. Heavenly Father, we pray now your blessing upon our study. We are thankful that we can sing your praise and hear the word. And now, Lord, we want to understand it and even be able to communicate it to others. Grant us that, Lord, for your glory and honor, and we do ask all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Over the years here, we have wondered how can we make it possible for those who would like to take the Lord’s Supper, and we never have quite found an adequate way to do that. We believe that the Lord’s Supper is something that should be taken in the context of the church of God’s people. We’re still working on that idea.
But I hope as we read today about the institution of the Lord’s Supper that you’ll see that it is a blessing from the Lord and something that would be good if we could do it. Now you may say, well what do I need to do to take the Lord’s Supper? Well first of all you need to be a believer in Christ. to have Him as your own personal Savior. And then you need to be a part of His people because the Lord’s Supper takes place within the church. I don’t mean within a building, but within the grouping of God’s people.
So if that’s of interest to you and you’d like to pursue that with me and see what we might be able in the future to work out, let me know. But just in case it crosses your mind today, well, I’m not sure how I can take the Lord’s Supper. We’ll talk to you about that. And of course, you’re certainly perfectly free to go to your own church if it’s within driving distance here and to have fellowship there. But I just wanted to make that clear before we really got started here. The coming events described by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, in other words, most of that was sort of looking toward either the short term or the long term, but future, nevertheless, Most of it was scary to the people. They didn’t know about these wars and earthquakes and things like that.
And at the same time, it was exciting and hopeful, which I think the Lord intended it should be. Hardly any place or people in the world would go unaffected by things associated with Jesus’ grand final appearance. And I’m talking now about His second coming, not His first coming, but this great coming again of the Lord. That’s something to excite us, really it should.
The earth, in the meantime, would be shaken. Mighty nations would be humbled before the coming of King Jesus, surrounded by and engulfed in heavenly glory and His angels. But the Lord makes it clear that other more critical events indeed will occur long before the parousia. You say, what’s that? Well, it’s a Greek word that means the appearing, the second coming of the Lord, if you will. Long before that, some of these earth-shaking events would take place. There would be, in connection with the Lord personally, His betrayal.
That’s what we’re going to be looking at this morning. And then His brutal crucifixion, His resurrection, and His ascension to the Father. These things are made clear at what will be the last Passover meal. That is where we’re headed today. call it the last supper, or we call it the last Passover for Jesus and the disciples anyway, although some of them may have continued to celebrate the Passover for some time after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. But here are the main points for us this morning.
We’ll first think about the real Judas Iscariot. You know, the TV shows, will the real John Doe please stand up? Well, we want to look at the real Judas Iscariot for a few minutes. And then we have a tale of two lambs, a tale of two lambs. Then third, a solemn occasion made more solemn. And finally, the transformation of Passover And by that we simply mean that instead of our celebrating an annual Passover, we celebrate regularly the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, however you want to describe it. Well, let’s go back to the real Judas Iscariot.
Judas was at the Passover meal. He was there. But he was not at the sacrament, that is, the Lord’s Supper, when Jesus instituted it. It’s very important to see. He was there up to a point, and then he said, I’ve got to leave, I’ve got to go out. And Jesus said, well, go ahead and do what you have to do.
Of course, this is all part of the betrayal of Jesus in his arrest and so forth. this time and this event does show us the real Judas Iscariot. What do we know about Judas as over against the other disciples? Do you know Judas’ father’s name? Simon or Simeon. We only have, I think, one place that tells us that, but that’s something you might not know unless you really study the Scriptures. That’s a good Jewish name. and one would hope that it meant something to the people that had it concerning their commitment to the Lord and to his word.
But Judas, how did he compare with or relate to the other disciples? Now these other 11, though they weren’t perfect men by any means, Peter being maybe the most outstanding one that proved his imperfections, but they were sincere. And yet Judas, it appears, was not sincere. He was a hypocrite.
I think we touched on that earlier. What character traits become evident as the end approaches? And by the end, we mean the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry and His arrest and so forth. What character traits become evident as this end to His life on earth, anyway, approaches?
Well, we can say of Judas, he was a liar. He lied. He pretended a lot. He pretended to be very dedicated. And he did a good job, by the way. All the rest of them thought, well, Judas, boy, he’s a number one here in our group. And as we said, he was a hypocrite. He didn’t believe some of the things that he said he believed, and he acted out things that he really did not hold in his heart.
What did Judas have in common with the chief priests? Because that’s where he went. He went to the chief priests. got money from them, as we know, 30 pieces of silver and so forth. And when the time came for Jesus to be arrested, He showed up and said, I’ll take you to where He is. What did He have in common with the chief priests?
Well, basically, we can say He had in common with them that He was a rejecter of Jesus and a very sinful man. Jesus said it would be good if He had never been born. You know, in some of the Old Testament things, especially Job, people say, I wish I had never been born. Well, I think this is the only place in the Bible where Jesus kind of says, yeah, that would have been a good idea.
He did have in common with the chief priests, and I think this kind of hits it right on the target there. that he wanted to be rid of Jesus. He’d followed Him for some three years and had never gotten what he really wanted. And because he was a thief and he helped himself to the treasury and so forth, I think we have to say he wanted to get rich. He wanted to get position and powerful and have people do all kinds of favors for him and so forth. And I think the chief priests were probably of the same vein. They wanted to be important. They liked to dress up and have the finest robes and have people a courtesy to them and so forth. Well, this was the comparison, you might say, or what he had in common with the chief priests. He and they wanted to be rid of Jesus because he sort of messed up their plans.
Well, what purpose does Judas serve in the story of redemption? Now, by the story of redemption, we mean God’s eternal plan that culminated in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, of course, it went on to see many people come to faith in Christ. But what purpose does Judas serve in all this?
And I think all we can say is that he served the devil’s purpose. You may not think it so, but the devil has a purpose. He wants to unseat Jesus. He wants to take God’s place. He wants to have all the power and the might and the changeable powers that go with being in control, in charge. And someone has said, well, if he knows what’s going to happen, if he knows that God is going to win, why does he keep on? And the fact is, he may know it, but he doesn’t believe it.
What purpose does Judas serve? The same purpose that the devil served. Whatever the devil wanted to do, Jesus said at one point, he wasn’t talking directly to Judas, but he said to the group of people who opposed him, he said, you are of your father, the devil. And I think that’s exactly where Judas was. And we’re told in the narrative, and maybe not so much in this particular one in Mark, but we’re told that Satan entered into him. Satan entered into him. wasn’t already in control of him a great deal of the time, but he wanted Judas to take his earthly place, as it were, and carry out certain nefarious, diabolical things that were going on. Well, when it came to the place where Jesus said, one of you is going to betray Me, one of you is eating with Me, then all the disciples, including Judas, all of them asked the same question.
Is it I? Is it I? Now, in Judas’s case, he knew full well it was he. But others, and we all kind of have to think along this line, they all said, you know, I fear I have it in me. I’m a sinful man. I can do some unspeakable things. I wonder if it will turn out that I am the one that sin takes over, that the devil takes over or not. As we say, only one of these twelve knew that it was he. And that was Judas Iscariot. That’s the correct answer. But the problem is that he didn’t have the correct solution.
Even though Jesus said it would have been better if he’d never been born, it would have been better if he had repented of his sins, if he’d gone to the Lord and said, Lord, I’ve done the most terrible thing imaginable. Like the, uh, in the parable of the prodigal son, the young man comes and says, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you. And you wonder if Judas had only said, Lord, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I’m not worthy of anything of your care.
And how would the Lord have responded in that? We can only think that he would have responded as the father did in the parable. Bring the best and put it on him. I accept your repentance. What you did was terrible, but I’m able to forgive you and to cleanse you. and to restore you. Unfortunately, of course, Judas never got to that point. Well, that ends our consideration of Judas Iscariot for the moment, but we’ll see that it’s related here.
Well, we have a tale of two lambs, not a tale of two cities, like Dickens’ book, but a tale of two lambs here. There was a lamb that was sacrificed always at the Passover celebration, and then the people ate that lamb. And if it was too much for one family, they shared it with another family. But they ate a lamb there. The lamb was slain. And in this case, there is one lamb who is to be slain shortly.
We call it the second lamb, if you will, and that’s the important lamb. The other lamb is not unimportant because it teaches and points us to the second lamb, but the second lamb is the Lord Jesus Christ. And you say, how do you know for sure that he’s the second lamb? Because John the Baptist said, as Jesus came by, behold, the what? The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Jesus and the disciples were going to, and did, as far as we know, eat of that first lamb, the Passover lamb, that was slain on every occasion that they celebrated the Passover. So they did, at this point, enter into what the Passover meant. And the Passover, of course, meant deliverance. It meant redemption. And they were going to be brought out of Egypt and eventually ensconced in their own country. And it was to that situation, to that nation, that Jesus came. But just understand that they all sat down and ate the Passover meal up to a certain point. And Judas was among them, you see. Judas was one of them. It says he’s a participant in what they did.
But then he left, and he never partook of the second lamb. And nobody partook of him literally, that is, they didn’t somehow bite him or something like that. But they did receive him as the source of nourishment, the source of life that they needed, which Jesus tried to explain to them. And he is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And go back again, what would have happened if Judas had repented? Well, his sin would have been taken away too. Blood was drained from the original Passover lamb, or the one that was eaten there by everybody, because they didn’t eat meat that still had the blood in it.
But you’ll notice the contrast. When Jesus says, now, it’s easy to sort of put the blood aside and say, we can’t have that because we’re eating in the proper way here. But Jesus says, you know you will drink of my blood. And there might have been somebody that sort of gasped and said, what? But Jesus said, no, you’ll not drink of it by swallowing it.
You’ll drink of it by believing that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, will cleanse you from all sin. We see the change, you see, from the Passover, where the blood is separated, Last Supper, the Eucharist, if you will. And there the blood comes to the fore again. And it’s the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses. It’s the blood that we need to take to ourselves in faith. Lord, how can my sins be forgiven? How can they be washed away? They can be washed away in the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ It’s very prominent, you see, from this point on. People talk about the blood. Before they said, let’s just get it out of the way. We’re not supposed to have it.
Now, Jesus says, this is my blood of the covenant. This is the blood that fulfills all God’s promises. Everything that God has promised to you comes to you if you have my blood as the detergent, as the washing element that will take away your sins. Well, we come then to how solemn this occasion is.
The Passover was not a time for singing and dancing. I don’t think you’ll ever find that the Jewish people, then or now, ever danced around and sang at the Passover. It was very solemn. You can say, well, later they did. Later, they celebrate it and so forth, but not the Passover. The Passover is very solemn.
Now Jesus says, I’m going to make it even more solemn. And how does he do that? He says, you’re going to be very sorrowful before I get through talking here. There was a gladness to be had, but Jesus says we’re going to postpone that for a while. And once you know your sins are gone, and once you know that you have me on your side forever and to plead for you before the throne of God, then you will rejoice and be glad. Now Jesus, you see, had ordered that these two disciples go and they find the place and they tell the man they want to prepare for the Passover, which means they also went out and bought the lamb and so forth to be slain and got the other elements of the supper ready. And it looked like this was going to be, quote, a normal Passover, quote, unquote, but it was not going to be normal. In fact, Jesus is saying here, this is going to be the most abnormal Passover that you have ever celebrated. Abnormal in the sense that you didn’t really know all the details and where the emphasis was to lie and what importance of the blood was. You didn’t know that until right now. And now I’m making it clear to you.
These two unnamed I’ve always wondered, who were these two? It never tells us who they were. But the two unnamed men, they followed Jesus’ instructions to the letter, and of course everything went just as Jesus had said it would. But it was then when the meal then got going, when they got to the third cup in the meal, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but at that point things changed, And at that point, Jesus infused His death and resurrection, and even His coming again, if you will, He infused that into the meal that was to be eaten by His disciples. It wasn’t infused. It wasn’t made an integral part of it until now.
There were these signs and these pointings and remembrance of the exodus and all these things. But now, Jesus says, while you don’t forget the exodus, now you turn your attention to Me. You look upon Me. You’ll see My blood shed. You partake of Me as if you were eating bread because this now is the main thing. Are you going to heaven or are you not going to heaven? And the only way you’ll get there is by trusting Me.
Now we come to that third cup, you see, the third cup of the Passover meal. And that’s called the cup of redemption. And it wasn’t drunk until everything else had been done. It was the last thing that was done there, the third cup. And it’s called, again, the cup of redemption. Let me just read you a little definition that I found recently. The third cup of Passover is the cup of redemption, traditionally drunk after the meal to commemorate God’s deliverance. He was saying, my cup, my cup of the covenant, my cup is the third cup, my cup which is the shedding of my blood, this is what will save you if you trust in me and in what I am about to accomplish.”
Things then, you see, become deadly serious. It was a solemn meal. There was no singing and dancing, but now even less so. They were all very sad. They were all very oppressed. They were all saying, is it I, Lord, is it I? Jesus says, look to the third cup. Look at what it means. It is the cup of redemption. It contains wine, but it points to the blood that was shed. They didn’t drink Jesus’ blood out of the cup. They drank the wine. But in the drinking of that wine, they put themselves in that place of receiving the blood of Christ that takes away sins.
Well, we have one other thing to cover here, and that is the transformation of the Passover. It is a proclamation of the Lord’s death until He comes. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Paul writes to the Corinthians and he says that those who take the Lord’s Supper proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Now, I doubt there was much said at this time. As we have noted, it was a very solemn occasion. Things were quiet. They were pensive and wondering, is it I? And so forth. But the point here is that this great change takes place and now They have a reason to be happy, but they need to have this impressed upon them again and again.
And that’s why when the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, it is often celebrated, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup. You proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. The followers of Jesus today, through the Eucharist, not the Passover, but through the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, This is a matter of deliverance, of deliverance. We’re told that before the disciples left the upper room there, they sang a hymn. I didn’t have a recorder there, so I can’t tell you what it sounded like, but I just have the feeling that for everyone upon whom the Holy Spirit pressed this truth, that there was joy in their singing, there was happiness, in knowing that indeed the cup of the deliverance was their cup, and that it wasn’t something that happened long ago and might in some way come along their way at some time, but it was deliverance. in Jesus’ death on the cross. And that’s how we need to think now. Whether we are able to partake of the Lord’s Supper, we at least can enter in to the meaning of it here.
The unbeliever Judas is banished. He goes out. Jesus says, go ahead and go. It’s better if you’ve never been born. Of course, He didn’t say it directly to him like that. But He said, you don’t belong here. But the rest of them, the other 11 that were there, they did belong. Even old Peter, he belonged there.
Because the blood of Jesus was sufficient for him. Take and eat, Jesus said, but when you eat the bread, think of me as your nourishment. When you are thirsty for life, think of me and my blood shed for you on the cross. Now the bread and the wine there you see are not transformed. but consecrated. That’s a good word, consecrated. When we do take the Lord’s Supper, the bread and the wine are not changed, but they are consecrated. They are made holy for our sakes so that we get the message and the assurance as we partake. They call us to nourishment in Jesus.
The bread and the wine will not nourish you but little, but Jesus will nourish you unto eternity, unto everlasting life. He was shortly to suffer in the place of all believers, those eleven in the upper room, and all who afterward would partake. He was shortly to suffer for their sakes, so that their sins are paid for. And we don’t have to pay for them ourselves. And we await His coming.
For what? Another solemn occasion? Well, maybe there’s a solemnity to it, but I think it’s a great celebration. We hear sometimes, we’re going to celebrate the Lord’s Supper today. But it’s not really a celebration, is it? Celebration is when you sing and dance and rejoice, and that’s what’s coming, a kingdom celebration, if you will.
So now we solemnly eat and drink, but we do so in hope that as those disciples sang a hymn, a psalm, there as they left that upper room, that we may sing to the Lord ourselves with all our hearts in great gladness and confidence. And if we’re to learn anything from these things here, it’s not to stomp out like Judas and miss the whole matter, but to get the fullness of everything that Jesus has for us. Even if we’re not in church and sitting with others, and I commend that and say it must happen, the Lord commanded it for us, but nevertheless, we can still be glad just as we joined them by faith, by looking at this passage and sitting with them in there, we can rejoice with them as well in hope and in confidence of what the Lord is going to do.
Let’s pray. Lord, our hearts now are not so solemn as they should be and perhaps not as focused as they should be, but you can make us, Lord, to look upon you who died for sinners that we might not perish but have eternal life. Lord, We drink of thee, as the hymn says, the fountainhead and thirst our souls for thee to fill. Thank you, Lord, for the blood of Jesus. Thank you for his body broken for us. And we do pray in his name. Amen. Let us sing a final hymn, which you’ll find on the back of your book. Now blessed be the Lord our God, the God of Israel For He alone doth wondrous works in glory that excel, And blessed be His glory evermore.