14) The Feast (Mark 14:12-26)

Chap 1: The Dance (Trinity) (Mark 1:9-11): Do you expect others to dance around you?
Chap 2: The Gospel, The Call (Mark 1:14-20): Is your gospel good news or good advice?
Chap 3: The Healing (Mark 2:1-5): Are your sins against God or people (Ps 51:4)?
Chap 4: The Rest (Mark 2:23-3:6): Why are you desperately seeking significance?
Chap 5: The Power (Mark 4:35-41): Do you have calm in a storm?
Chap 6: The Waiting (Mark 5:21-43): Are you at peace when God delays?
Chap 7: The Stain (Mark 7:1-23): Do you feel unclean, insignificant?
Chap 8: The Approach (Mark 7:24-37): Do you know you’re a dog, yet loved?
Chap 9: The Turn (Mark 8:27-9:1): Why is forgiveness so hard?
Chap 10: The Mountain (Mark 9:2-29): What if you are filled with doubt?
Chap 11: The Trap (Mark 10:17-27): Is money just money to you?
Chap 12: The Ransom (Mark 10:45): Is Jesus all you want and need?
Chap 13: The Temple (Mark 11:1-18): Are you both a lion and a lamb?

Quotes:

"On the cross Jesus got what we deserved: the sin, guilt, and brokenness of the world fell upon him. He loved us so much he took divine justice on himself so that we could be passed over, forever." (168)


Intro: Being saved from the sword of divine justice during the Passover was not on the basis of being a Jew, but only on the basis of faith in a substitutionary sacrifice (lamb). But why in the world would the sacrifice of a woolly little quadruped exempt you from justice?

This is my Body, This is my Blood

The Passover meal had to be prepared in a certain way and had a distinct form. It included 4 points where the presider explained the feast's meaning. The 4 cups of wine represented the 4 promises made by God in Exo 6:6-7:

• rescue from Egypt
• freedom from slavery
• redemption by God's divine power
• renewed relationship with God
  

For the 3rd cup, the presider would use Deut 26:1-19 to bless the elements--the bread (representing their affliction - Deut 26:6), herbs, lamb--by explaining how they were symbolic reminders of their captivity and deliverance. Jesus was the presider at this Passover meal with the disciples who had prepared for it (Mark 14:12-16). But when blessing the elements and explaining their symbolism, Jesus departs from the script that has been reenacted by generation after generation (Mark 14:22-25), which likely astonished the disciples. He shows them the bread and says, "This is my body" (Mark 14:22). What does this mean? Jesus is saying, "This is the bread of my affliction, the bread of my suffering, because I'm going to lead the ultimate exodus and bring you the ultimate deliverance from bondage."

In ancient times, to say, "I will not drink...until..." (Mark 14:25) was to make an oath (Acts 23:14) that was taken very seriously and was literally marked with blood. It was a solemn relationship of obligation, like making a covenant, like signing a contract. But this covenant was established and sealed by killing an animal, cutting it in half, and walking between the pieces as you stated your oath (Gen 15:10,17). It's gory and repulsive. But it was a way of saying, "If I do not fulfill my promise, may my blood be spilled, may I be cut in half." This was akin to what Jesus said when he took the cup (Mark 14:23-25).

Jesus' words mean that as a result of his substitutionary sacrifice there is now a new covenant between God and us, the basis being his own blood (Mark 14:24). Jesus is promising to be unconditionally committed to bring us back to his kingdom (Matt 8:11), that we will be at this kingdom feast with him. With these simple words, "This is my body...this is my blood" (Mark 14:22,24), Jesus is saying that all the earlier deliverances, the earlier sacrifices, the lambs at Passover, were pointing to himself.

Jesus is the Main Course

All Passover meals had bread and wine, which Jesus blessed. But this last meal departed from the script in another way. Not one of the Gospels mentions a main course--there is no mention of a lamb at this Passover meal, which was not a vegetarian meal, but a meal celebrated with a lamb. Why was there no lamb? There was no lamb on the table because the Lamb of God was at the table. Jesus was the main course (John 1:29; Isa 53:6-7,12). In Mark 14:22,24, Jesus meant, "I'm the One that Isaiah and John spoke about. I am the Lamb of God to which all other lambs pointed, the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world." (168)

"All love, all real, life-changing love, is substitutionary sacrifice. You have never loved (anyone) except through substituionary sacrifice." (168) It will always cost you to love a broken person, a guilty person, a hurting person. To gather Jerusalem's children under his wings (Luke 13:34), Jesus had to be completely consumed. All real, life-changing love is costly, substitutionary sacrifice.

Jesus is the Last Course

Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). This practice is called "the Lord's Supper" (1 Cor 11:20), or "the Lord's table" (1 Cor 10:21), or communion, or "cup of thanksgiving" (1 Cor 10:16), and "the breaking of bread" (Acts 2:42). This is to remind Christians of the sacrificial, substiturionary love of Jesus. Just as prior lambs had to be eaten at prior Passover meals, the Lord's Supper is a way of "taking in" the death of Jesus for ourselves and appropriating it personally. Jesus said, "Take it" (Mark 14:22). We have to take what he is doing for us. We have to receive it actively.

No one gets the benefit of food unless we take it in and digest it. To be nourished by a meal, we have to eat it. The only real food we need to take as Christians is Christ's unconditional commitment to me. The Lord's Supper is a reminder that no one can appropriate the benefits of Jesus' death unless he calls them into a personal relationship with him. To share a meal with someone--particularly in Jesus' place and time--is to have a relationship. Thus, the only way to have a personal relationship with Jesus is through his perfect, substitutionary, sacrificial suffering.

The Jews celebrated the Passover with their families. But Jesus pulled his disciples out of their families to have a Passover meal with them, to create a new family (Mark 3:35). This bond is so life-transforming that it creates a basis for unity as strong as if people had been raised together. "(Christians) are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus' sake." D.A. Carson, Love in Hard Places

The Lord's Supper does something more beautiful: It points toward our future with Jesus. At this meal Jesus is saying that this Passover meal makes the ultimate feast possible (Mark 14:25). Some stunning prophesies of the future kingdom concern trees and hills clapping and dancing (Ps 96:12-13; Isa 55:12). If trees and hills will be able to clap and dance in the future kingdom, picture what you and I will be able to do. The Lord's Supper gives us a small, but very real, foretaste of that future.

What would an Israelite say after their 1st Passover in Egypt? "I was a slave, under a sentence of death, but I took shelter under the blood of the lamb and escaped from that bondage, and now God lives in our midst and escaped that bondage, and now God lives in our midst and we are following him to the Promised Land." (172)

Question: Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

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