The Life of Christ
Message 166
Communion

166.wp#text file
Luke 22:8-20
8	And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover, 
	that we may eat.
9	And they said unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare?
10	And he said unto them, Behold, when ye are entered into the city, 
	there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him 
	into the house where he entereth in.
11	And ye shall say unto the goodman of the house, The Master saith 
	unto thee, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the passover 
	with my disciples?
12	And he shall shew you a large upper room furnished: there make ready.
13	And they went, and found as he had said unto them: and they made 
	ready the passover.
14	And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles 
	with him.
15	And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this 
	passover with you before I suffer:
16	For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be 
	fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
17	And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and 
	divide it among yourselves:
18	For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, 
	until the kingdom of God shall 	come.
19	And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto 
	them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in 
	remembrance of me.
20	Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new 
	testament in my blood, which is shed for you. (KJV)

The story of Easter is very much tied to the story of Passover, the 
celebration of Israel's delivereance from slavery in Egypt.

The bondage of the children of Israel in Egypt is a symbol of the bondage 
of man to sin.

Just as every child born to Jewish parents in Egypt was automatically the 
slave of Pharaoh, so every child born to human parents is a slave of sin.
	There was no choice, no decision that any of them could make that 
	would cause them to be free from the bondage of slavery.
	They were completely and hopelessly bound to live out their lives 
	as the servants of a pagan king.
	In the same way, all of the children here today are bound to live 
	out their lives as slaves of the devil.

But the slavery of Egypt was not nearly as terrible as the slavery of sin.  
At least when the day was done and these people went home they could serve 
God with their hearts and minds.  The bondslave of sin is bound by sin all 
of the time, There is not a moment of his life when he is free from the 
awful domination of wickedness.

They did not have the power to free themselves.  If they had all gathered 
together and gathered all of the weapons they had between them and sought 
to fight for their liberty, the army of Pharaoh would have crushed them in 
no time at all and put them back to work, the ones who lived.

In the same way the sinner is helpless under the rule of sin.  When he 
masses all of his will-power, all of his strength, and determines to put sin 
behind him, the best he can ever do is exchange one form of sin for another.

If the children of Israel were ever to be free, someone more powerful than 
the Pharaoh of Egypt would need to cause him to let them go.  The God of 
Heaven, Jehovah, called Moses to be His spokesman to Pharaoh and by a series 
of awful plagues casued him to relent and let them go.

The last plague was the most awful.  God sent a death angel through the land 
and took the life of every firstborn human and animal in the entire nation.  
This was His way of saying, I think, that He had the power to kill them all 
if they would not listen to Him.

The Israelites were given special instructions concerning how to save the 
lives of their firstborn children.  They were to take a small lamb and 
kill it.  They were to take the blood of that lamb and put it on the outside 
posts of the door of their home.  When the death angel saw this blood, he 
would pass over that house and not take anyone's life.  Then they were to 
cook the lamb and eat it with unleavened bread.
	Unleavened bread is bread that has no yeast in it.  Yeast, in the 
	Bible, represents sin.  It is 	what makes bread soft and light.  
	Unleavened bread has little taste, but it is a symbol of putting 
	away sin out of one's life.

So, in order to keep the passover and save the lives of the firstborn, the 
family had to kill a lamb, put its blood on the door, roast it and eat it 
with unleavened bread.

All of these things are a symbol of something that is important to us.  The 
Passover establishes the teaching that in order for us to be freed from the 
slavery of sin someone must die.  And it establishes that we must fully take 
to ourselves the One Who dies for us.  Finally, it teaches that in doing so, 
we must put sin away out of our lives.

Let us talk for a few minutes about sin.  According to the word of God, sin 
is one of two things.  On the one hand it might be the failure to fully obey 
the law of God.  The word that is used for this calls to mind a target at 
which an archer might shoot.  The law of God is the very center of the target, 
the bull's eye.  But our obedience to God is not perfect.  It fails to hit the 
center of the target, and that is sin.  You might ask, "what is the target?"

Gen 17:1
1	And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to 
	Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and 
	be thou perfect. (KJV)

Matt 5:48
48	Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is 
	perfect. (KJV)

Any failure to perfectly obey God is sin.  But there is another word which 
carries the second idea of sin.  This word envisions boundaries that are 
drawn, like in a ball game.  When one steps over that line, it is a foul, 
he is out of bounds, he has gone where he should not go.  This really is 
the idea that we are more familiar with.  God has told us not to do certain 
things, and these things paint a boundary, an ‘out of bounds' line around 
our lives.  When we do what God has forbidden, we step over that line, we 
commit sin.

Now all of this would not be so bad if the penalty for sin was not so 
severe.  You see, the penalty of sin is death and not just the death of the 
body, the eternal separation of the soul from God.

Ezek 18:4
4	Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the 
	soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. (KJV)

Ezek 18:20
20	The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the 
	iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity 
	of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, 
	and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. (KJV)

Jesus warned us not to think only of the death of the body, but the 
consequences of this kind of death on the soul after it has left the body.

Matt 10:28
28	And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill 
	the soul: but rather fear him 	which is able to destroy both 
	soul and body in hell. (KJV)

And, it would not be so bad if a person really could keep the law of God.  
Then he would not need to worry about the penalty of broken law.  There are 
two problems with this kind of thinking.  First of all, someone else has 
already sinned and that sin has been charged to us before we are ever born.

Rom 5:12
12	Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by 
	sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: 
	(KJV)

When Adam sinned against God in the Garden of Eden, that sin was auto-
matically charged to all of his children.  This had two effects.  First, 
it caused all of his children to be considered guilty of his sin.  Secondly, 
it caused them to be born with a nature to sin.  The result of that is that 
no person is able to keep the laws of God perfectly.  Everyone sins and the 
penalty of sin is eternal death.

Rom 3:12
12	They are all gone out of the way, they are together become 
	unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (KJV)

The bondage of the human race to sin is very real and the penalty is just 
as real.  The human is less able to escape his bondage than a Jew might 
have been to escape Egypt.  We might imagine that an Jewish man or woman 
might have slipped away at night and walked into the desert to get away 
from slavery.  But they would still have faced the harsh conditions of the 
Sinai desert and probably would not have survived.  It they had made it to 
the land of promise they would have found it inhabited with very violent 
and wicked people.  There would have been no way to have a peaceful life.

But the human cannot sneak away from his bondage.  Wherever he goes he 
carries himself and his sin nature with him. His bondage is complete, 
absolute.  And just as Israel needed someone stronger than Pharaoh to 
deliver them, every human needs someone stronger than his sin to deliver 
him.

Only one Person has ever shown Himself to be stronger than sin.  Jesus 
Christ fasted for forty days and nights and then faced the best temptations 
that the devil had to offer.  He successfully resisted them as He had 
resisted sin all of His life.  He did not have Adam as His father, so He 
did not inherit the nature to sin.  He never sinned Himself, so He acquired 
no guilt of sin all of His life.  Therefore, Jesus should not have died ever.

Since He had no sentence of death from the court of God, Jesus was free to 
offer His life as an exchange, or a ransom, for someone else.  This is 
exactly what He did.

Jesus Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit agreed that the guilt of all 
of those who would ever believe on Him could be transferred to Jesus and He 
could pay the penalty for that guilt by giving His life in place of those 
who would be saved.  So, althought He never sinned, He became legally 
guilty before God for all of His people.

2 Cor 5:20-21
20	Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech 
	you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.
21	For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we 
	might be made the righteousness of God in him. (KJV)

There was another thing that the Trinity agreed on.  They counselled 
together that if the guilt of the believers could be transferred to Jesus, 
then His righteousness could be transferred to them.  So, those who repent 
of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ are not only declared free from 
guilt, they are established in the court of God as righteous.  That is, 
they are considered as if they had never sinned.  What a marvel redemption 
is!

In the death of Jesus, there is a visual representation of how awful sin is 
in the eyes of God.  Jesus was so disfigured that He was not recognizable, 
according to the scriptures.

Isa 52:14
14	As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than 
	any man, and his form more than the sons of men: (KJV)

Apparently there were places where the flesh had literally been torn from 
His bones by the scourging that preceded the crucifixion.

Ps 22:14-17
14	I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My 
	heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me.
15	My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to 
	the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.
16	Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they 
	have pierced my hands and my feet. 
17	I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. (NIV)

The cross itself was an instrument designed to cause a slow death.  The 
wounds to the hands and feet would not kill a person in themselves.  The 
cross was designed to cause asphixiation through fatigue.  The weight of 
the body on the arms pulls the ribs to the point that one cannot breath.  
As the legs wear out the person is able to get less and less air.  People 
would sometimes spend a week or more on a cross before they died.  Sometimes 
the birds would begin to eat them while they were still alive.

The death of Jesus in just a few hours is a demonstration of the fact that 
He yielded up His life voluntarily.

John 10:14-18
14	I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
15	As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down 
	my life for the sheep.
16	And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must 
	bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, 
	and one shepherd.
17	Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I 
	might take it again.
18	No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to 
	lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have 
	I received of my Father. (KJV)

Yet if Jesus had simply died, there would have been no confirmation to us 
that His death had successfully satisfied the Father concerning the guilt 
of the people.  So, the Trintiy had planned that Jesus would rise from the 
dead after three days and assure all those who believed on Him that the 
sacrifice had been accepted and their guilt had been taken away.

On the Day of Atonement, which followed Passover for the Jews, there High 
Priest would offer a lamb for the sins of the people.  He would take part 
of the blood of the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies in the temple and 
there sprinkle it on the mercy seat.  If God accepted the sacrifice, a 
light would appear in that dark room over the ark of the covenant.  The 
priest had some special code words that He would say to the people when he 
came out to let them know that he had seen evidence of God's acceptance: 
"Peace be unto you."

John 20:19
19	Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when 
	the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of 
	the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, 
	Peace be unto you. (KJV)

So, because of the resurrection we know that the sacrifice was accepted and 
that the pardon was secured for all of those who believe on Jesus Christ.

Before He gave Himself up to the Romans and the Jews, Jesus gave us a special 
way to remember these things.  The Passover meal was the way that the Jews 
remember specially the deliverance from Egypt.  Jesus took part of the 
elements of that meal and gave us one of the most precious things that we 
observe as believers.

Mark 14:22-26
22	And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, 
	and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.
23	And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to 
	them: and they all drank of it.
24	And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which 
	is shed for many.
25	Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, 
	until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.
26	And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of 
	Olives. (KJV)

The bread and wine are both unleavened, speaking to us of the sinless Lamb 
of God that was offered for us.  The bread is broken, speaking of the body 
which would be so cruielly used.  The wine speaks to us of the blood that 
was shed.

There is a reason that this was given in a small room to a small group of 
people rather than to the crowds which had thronged Him.  The sacrifice was 
only for those who had a relationship with Him.  As we come to communion 
today, I greatly desire that you understand why we are here and for whom 
this ceremony is given.

The apostle Paul said that when we do this we show the Lord's death until 
He comes.  What he means by that is that we express our faith that the 
sacrifice offered by Jesus and celebrated here is our hope of eternal life.  We signify by taking the unleavened bread and wine that we have put sin away out of our lives, that we have repented.  In short, we express our faith and our repentance in symbole form.  Of course, no form means anything if the reality which it is to represent does not exist.

I urge you to prepare your hearts as we celebrate communion.