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Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke chapter 22 this morning. We're gonna talk today about a very memorable meal. A very special meal.
When you think about the most special meals you've ever had, what comes to mind?
I had a very special meal this week. One of my best friends was traveling in for work from California. I haven't seen him in a couple of years, and I got to go out to eat with him and just fellowship for a while.
I've had special meals with heroes of mine. I got to sit around the table with some preacher that I admire and pepper him with questions while he tried to get some bites in.
Probably some of my most special meals have been meals with my family on very special occasions, like the meals we shared after a wedding or even after a funeral.
In our text today we're going to look at the most special meal in history. It was a meal Jesus longed to eat, a meal he was looking forward to. And it's a meal we still remember two thousand years later.
Are you in Luke 22? Let's start reading at verse 7 and we're gonna read down through verse 20.
[7] Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed.
[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.
Luke 22:7-20 (KJV)
I want you to see three things about this meal this morning:
- Jesus' longing for this meal
- What the old meal meant and why it wasn't enough
- The new meal that Jesus made and why it's better
Let's pray and we'll jump into that first point.
1. Jesus longing for the meal.
In these verses Jesus kicks off the celebration of a special Passover meal. Now remember, Jesus and the apostles were all Jewish. They all followed Judaism. One of the key events on the calendar for Jewish people was the Passover meal. It was like our Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter lunch.
But the traditions for the Passover meal were much more detailed. During the Passover meal there was somebody who was called the host. His job was to explain to all of the people what the traditional parts of the meal meant and signified as they ate it. There was something called a Seder, which is almost like an order of service for that Passover meal.
But before they could have a meal, they had to have a place to have it. Jerusalem would have been overwhelmed with people: hundreds of thousands of people in this small city. All of them there for religious reasons, all of them wanting to observe the Passover meal.
The Passover meal was usually eaten in groups of at least ten. Part of the meal was that they had to eat a whole lamb, and that required ten people to get it done. You have to imagine every large room that is available in the entire Jerusalem area has probably been booked for months. If you opened Airbnb on this day trying to find a place where you could meet with your guys and have this meal, you would have seen nothing.
But Jesus had already made arrangements. Jesus told Peter and John exactly what to do. He said, "Go into the city. You're going to see this guy carrying a water pot." Men didn't carry water pots, so that would have stood out like a sore thumb. "Follow him into his house, and then you're going to see the owner of that house and tell him, 'The Master needs your upper room.' He'll lead you there and it's already ready." That's exactly what happened. Peter and John go into the city and they see this guy carrying a water pot. They follow him to his house and, just like Jesus said, the room is ready, prepared for them to have this special feast.
Now why would Jesus do this this way? Why would he have Peter and John go on this little secret mission to find the place for the Passover feast? I think the answer is: if Judas knew they were going to have this feast ahead of time, then the chief priests and their goons would have got Jesus and arrested Him in this room, in this place.
And Jesus really wanted to have this feast. Look at verse 15.
[15] And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:
Luke 22:15 (KJV)
Do you notice that phrase, “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover”? That's a weird phrase in English. I don't talk like that. You don't talk like that, repeating words that way. It wasn't an accident. In their language this was a way of emphasizing something. What Jesus is saying here is, “I really, really want to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” It's really important. This is something that my heart longs for.
Then he says in verse 16, "I'm not going to do this again until the kingdom." Jesus had partaken in 33 Passover feasts. Every year of His life He had partaken in the Passover. Jesus tells His disciples, "This is the last one. I won't do this again until the kingdom comes."
The book of Revelation talks about a coming Passover meal. The marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19:9. This Passover meal that Jesus ate with His disciples was the last one before the coming one, where we'll all eat with Jesus.
This was an important meal that Jesus really was looking forward to. Jesus made sure it happened despite the fact that there were people out there hunting for Him to take Him to the cross.
Think about this - Jesus is hours away from going to the cross. Hours away from being betrayed and beaten, falsely tried and brutally tortured. Hours away from having the sins of the world on His shoulders and having God turn His back on Him - and He still really wants to make sure this special meal happens.
Why is that? Because it’s important for us.
So let's move on to the second point this morning and talk about
2. What the old meal meant.
The Passover meal was instituted by God in the book of Exodus as something that the Jews were supposed to do every single year as they looked back on their redemption.
Remember the Jews were enslaved in Egypt. They were slaves to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. God brought them deliverance through the plagues, particularly the tenth plague, where the angel came through and killed the firstborn of everybody except those who took a lamb and covered the doorpost of their house with the blood of the lamb.
It's not hard to understand what that act was pointing to: Judgment came through. Death came through and it passed over those who were covered by the blood of the lamb. If that's not a clear picture of the salvation that comes through Jesus, nothing is.
That night the Jewish people were supposed to eat the lamb, as well as unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They were to eat ready to go, dressed to leave. This was a meal that marked their redemption and marked the beginning of the old covenant that God made with Israel.
After they went out into the wilderness, God led them to Mount Sinai. Moses came down from the mountain with the commandments and read the covenant to the people. They pledged together, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do." This covenant, this meal, this act of redemption is what made Israel God's people.
And so year after year for over a thousand years, God's people ate this special meal, commemorating and remembering this covenant where they pledged to be God's people.
Year after year the host would stand and explain each part of the meal. He'd explain that the lamb was slain and its blood covered the door. He'd explain what each cup (there were four cups of wine that they drank) stood for. He'd explain that the bitter herbs were to remind them of their hardships in slavery. The whole ceremony was meant to remind them of their covenant with God.
And here Jesus stands in this upper room with His twelve apostles. He's obviously the host. They sit down to eat this special meal and Jesus flips the script. Jesus did not give the traditional explanation of what each of the pieces of this meal meant. Jesus explained that He's taking over the meal, that each piece now has a new meaning centered in Him.
Imagine if I stood up at Christmas during our candlelight service on Christmas Eve and I said, "You know, every year for 2000 years Christmas has been about celebrating the birth of Jesus—but I'm going to change it starting today. From here on out, Christmas is about celebrating my birth."
I wouldn't do that, by the way. That would be terrible, but it would get your attention, wouldn't it? Imagine the attention that this got. Imagine how memorable it was for these apostles when Jesus said, "Forget the old Passover. I’m taking over the Passover meal and it's all about me now."
Jesus says in verse 19 “this do in remembrance of me.” Think about that. Every single Passover that had ever been held was in remembrance of Egypt. Remembrance of Exodus. But moving forward, they would all be in remembrance of Jesus.
Jesus took this thing - the Passover - and expanded it, reinstituted it, and made it about Himself.
So let's look at the third point. The main thing I've been wanting to get to:
3. The new meal that Jesus made and why it's better.
Look again at verses 19-20:
[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.
Luke 22:19-20 (KJV)
Jesus explained to them that the unleavened bread they were about to break apart, about to crush in their mouths, was His body given for them.
Now I imagine that the apostles had no idea what Jesus was talking about, but within 24 hours they would. They would see Jesus' body whipped and beaten, hung up naked on a cross, where He bled and He died for us. They would remember every time they crushed that unleavened bread that our Lord and Savior was crushed for us.
And Jesus said twice - this is “for you” - “given for you”, “shed for you” - the old meal had been for the Fathers in Egypt - this one is for you.
Jesus took the cup. Traditionally this would have been dark red wine. He said, "This is my blood, which was shed for you." Again that couldn't have meant very much to the apostles in the room at that moment, but it would very soon. They'd probably never look again at the juice of the grape without thinking of the blood that Jesus shed for them.
Then Jesus said that this was a new testament, or a new covenant, in His blood. That same word is translated covenant about 20 times in the Bible. Why did we need a new covenant? Why did we need a new Passover?
Remember the old covenant: the children of Israel reading the law together and promising they would keep it, promising they would be God's people.
How did that work out? If you know anything about the Old Testament, you know they failed miserably time and again. They were terrible representatives of God, constant idolaters. Everything they set out to do for God fell flat.
As the Jews were being taken away into captivity, taken away into Babylon, God had one of His prophets, a guy named Jeremiah, write about a new covenant that was coming. I want to read you this because it's important. Jeremiah 31:31-34
[31] Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
[32] Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord:
[33] But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
[34] And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Jeremiah 31:31-34 (KJV)
Jeremiah promised a better covenant. Here's why it's better: God does it.
He writes His law on our hearts, not just on tables of stone. He says, "I will be their God, and they shall be my people"—no ifs, and God is the one talking. His people all know Him. And He forgives their iniquity and remembers their sin no more.
And all of that rests on this: the old covenant was on the shoulders of the people, and the new covenant rests solely on the shoulders of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the old covenant the people made a promise that they would be good, that they wouldn't follow idols, a promise they broke almost immediately and millions of times thereafter.
But in the new covenant, God didn't ask for a promise. The payment for the new covenant, the payment for their sins, was the blood of Jesus. It was all on Him. Given for you. Shed for you.
Conclusion: What does this mean for us?
What does this mean for us? What are we supposed to get from this meal - which by the way - we still celebrate every time we observe the Lord’s supper?
We need to remember. Jesus said “this do in remembrance of me.” The point of the Lord’s Supper is remembering what Jesus did for us when He died on the cross.
We need a reminder. We can get so busy in our life, so busy in our business - that we lose touch with the most important truth - that Jesus paid it all on the cross for us.
We need to remember that He did the work. The old covenant was “we promise to be good.” But the new covenant is “I was good for you, and I died in your place to make you mine.”
Because Jesus did the work, your salvation isn’t dependent on your good works, your church attendance, your bible reading or your ability to seem like an upstanding citizen. Your salvation rests solely on the body and blood of Jesus Christ and it is His free gift to you.
Finally...
We need to remember that He did it for you. Jesus died for you. Have you accepted Him as your savior? Have you entered into His New Covenant?
Why not do that today?
