Amen. At the very heart of the new covenant worship. is that of the celebration of the Lord's Supper. And the Lord's Supper has been known variously over the years. On the one hand, the early church used to speak of the Lord's Supper as the agape feast or as a love feast in which they celebrated the love of God and the love that they had for one another as fellow believers in this holy meal together. And then the ordinance was called the Lord's Supper in 1st Corinthians 11 and verse 20. or rather in a negative way, you have not come together to partake of the Lord's Supper, but there it is nonetheless as a meal that in a special way belongs to the Lord. It was the Lord's Supper and that it was this last supper that Jesus had with his disciples and one that he sanctified to point in the direction of this memorial meal. And then in the early church and later the Lord's Supper was called the Eucharist because there is a Greek term that speaks of Eucharisto, which is to thank, and so it is a meal of Thanksgiving. So this aspect of the Lord's Supper, one aspect is for the people of God to gather and to give thanks as they memorialize the Lord Jesus Christ's death in their behalf. Now, what I'm doing this evening is pulling together some material from an author by the name of McLean and Phillips and Sproul. And what belongs to Phillips and what belongs to Sproul and what belongs to McLean, it's not exactly clear in my mind. And I'm not particularly concerned to give them proper credit. I'll give them blanket credit here up front and then We'll just take the truths as they give them to us. Well, if you're looking at your handout sheet, you'll see Roman numeral 1, the New Testament connection. the New Testament connection of the Lord's Supper to the Passover. That is, our Lord here in Luke 22 and the other synoptic gospel accounts is making a connection between that memorial meal and that of the Passover meal dating all the way back to the time of Moses. First of all, A. the roots of the Lord's Supper in the Passover. The Lord's Supper is an event that has its roots in that upper room experience, but as well it goes much further back into history. You may remember me reading from Luke 22 and verse 15, I deeply desire to celebrate the Passover with you one last time. Let me read from Matthew's parallel, Matthew 26 and verse 17. Now on the first day of the unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, where do you want us to prepare to eat the Passover? And he said, go into the city to a certain man, say to him, the teacher says, my time is near. I am to keep the Passover at your house with my disciples. The disciples did as Jesus directed them, and they prepared the Passover. And as Luke has it, as we have already read, it is particularly Peter and John that are commissioned with getting everything ready for that Passover meal. Benjamin Warfield wrote, nothing can be more certain than that Jesus deliberately chose the Passover meal for the institution of the sacrament of his body and of his blood. Jesus' clear intention was to connect this Last Supper this Lord's Supper with that sacrament that dates all the way back into the Mosaic Covenant. And with this celebration, it's not only through the things that Jesus said, you're going to find such and such a man going into a house, you do this and you go in, and we're going to prepare the Passover there through you. But then to the Corinthian church, Paul writes, 1 Corinthians 5 verse 7, clean out the old leavens so that you may be a new lump just as in fact you are unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. A very sobering verse. If we just focus on it for just even a few seconds. for Christ has been sacrificed. He is our representative there on the cross. His is an atoning death. And Paul feels comfortable calling Him Christ, our Passover. And remember, Jesus is a fulfillment of all of those Old Testament symbols, all of those Old Testament sacrifices. There definitely is a link. between our Lord's Supper and that of the Passover. Then secondly, B, similarities. Similarities between the Lord's Supper and the Passover. And these come particularly from a man by the name of Phillips. There are a number of continuities between the Passover and the Lord's Supper. Both are religious feasts. in which participation takes the form of eating and drinking. Both focus on an atoning death, the one in the past of the death of that little goat, of that little lamb. taking the blood, putting it on the lintel, then on the two doorposts. If that lamb dies and that blood is appropriately applied, then God is just going to pass on over. He is not going to bring any death and judgment into your home. Paul says explicitly that the elements of the Lord's Supper proclaim his death until he comes. So at the very center of the Lord's Supper is an atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we remind ourselves that our Lord made a once-for-all sacrifice. A once-for-all sacrifice that we come along and for us, monthly, We have this memorial service over and over again of that once-for-all sacrificial death on the part of the Lord Jesus. Warfield asserts, the Lord's Supper is the Christian Passover meal. It takes and was intended to take in the Christian church the place which the Passover occupied in the Jewish church. It is the Christian substitute for the Passover. Well, so much then for the connection, that there, I trust that you can see through the words of the Lord Jesus, through the words of the Apostle Paul, that the roots of our Lord's Supper go back to that of the Old Testament, Passover. And now Roman numeral two. Consider with me the historical background, the historical background of the Passover. And we want to remind ourselves of several things here. First of all, A, the extremely difficult circumstances for Israel in Egypt. And for us to get a handle on what they were going through, then we need to remind ourselves that Israel had traveled due to the famine, they had traveled in the days of Joseph down into Egypt, and over the course of time they had become enslaved under the control of a ruthless Pharaoh, someone who no longer knew anything about Joseph. So we recall that these people are suffering there in Egypt and they are crying out to God, let me read from Exodus 2, 23 through 25, that gives you a glimpse into something of their suffering. Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died, and the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out, and their cry for help because of the bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them, the extremely difficult circumstances. Secondly, B, we'll remind ourselves of Moses as God's spokesman in deliverance. And yes, I know that though Moses was spokesman, he had a spokesman by the name of Aaron, but for simplicity's sake, I'm not going to talk much about Aaron. But we understand that in order to take Israel back out of Egypt and to bring them back up into the promised land, that God goes and he taps a mature man on the shoulder, a man by the name of Moses, and the way that he does so is through this burning bush, and God says to him, do not come near, take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. Perhaps you remember that Moses would have lived his first 40 years down in Egypt. Then he lived his next 40 years over here in Midian, and then roughly the next 40 years he lives in a wilderness wandering. And we find that Moses feels inadequate for this task. He's a fugitive. He is wanted by a former pharaoh for having killed an Egyptian. He's not particularly anxious to go back to Egypt, but God commissions him, and he asks the question, why should they follow me? Why should they believe me? And to paraphrase it, God replies, look, you go, you tell them that I've heard the cry of my people, and you tell Pharaoh that I said to let my people go. and that they can come and worship me on the mountain where I will show them. And you tell the people to pack up and leave Pharaoh and Egypt." Now this is, of course, before any of the 10 plagues have been unfolded. So God empowered Moses to be able to travel back into Egypt and to perform miracles that would get the attention of the leaders there of Egypt. Thirdly, C, what do we recall? We recall Pharaoh's opposition to Moses. It very quickly becomes a contest between God and Pharaoh. Very quickly, a contest between Jehovah, his spokesman Moses, and Pharaoh. And on Pharaoh's side are all of the tricks of the magicians where they can imitate some of the miracles. But there were these 10 plagues that God brings, and over the course of time, the magicians aren't even able to imitate something of what they were able to do with the early plagues. And as almost as a typical way, Pharaoh would see the plague and say, all right, I gotta give in. And then he would harden his heart, or perhaps more accurately, the Lord would harden his heart, and he'd decide, no, after all, you can't go, not if you're going to take all of your family, not if you're going to take all of your livestock. And one has pointed out that one of the reasons why God allows this and ordains this for Pharaoh to keep changing his mind is to make it very, very clear to the people of Israel that their redemption comes from Jehovah God. It does not depend on Pharaoh. If it's up to Pharaoh, no, no, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, well, nothing's going to happen. Pharaoh would have just about everything that he could have had, and in the end he says, you know, you go away and you ever see my face again, you're going to die. And Moses responds, you've spoken well, for I will never see your face again. What else do we remind ourselves? Fourthly, D, the tenth Plague is the worst. The 10th plague, which leads into the Passover, is the worst of the plagues. This 10th plague comes, and it's where there will be the death of the firstborn of every family. And every home is going to have someone who is dead. We read of this in Exodus 11 as it's instituted. In the beginning of the 12th chapter, we have God bringing Moses to himself and talking not so much about this stuff that Pharaoh's going to see, but more of this Passover meal in connection with the death of the firstborn, that is this 10th plague. And then let me give you just something of a summary of the events of what takes place in this Passover meal. It was a meal to memorialize Israel's exodus deliverance. God has come, he's finally delivered us from our taskmasters here in Egypt, and we are free, we are free, we are out of Egypt. Passover lambs were to be spotless lambs, to be that kind of sacrifice acceptable before God. The lambs were slaughtered. And the blood was spread on the sides of the doorframe and on the top of the doorframe. And God says, in some of the accounts there's mention of the angel of death. But I've done a search. There's no angel of death that appears in the text. It's Jehovah himself. And Jehovah says, when I see the blood, I will pass over. There to eat the meal, the roasted lamb, the bitter herbs, and the unleavened bread. And the unleavened bread is a symbol of haste. It's what you would do if you're trying to travel. And you're in a hurry, you don't have time for the bread to be leavened, and so that seems to be why it was there. There's also the picture that the leaven can sometimes be the picture of sin. So the Passover feast was to be observed by all of the covenant community. but only the covenant community. Slaves and resident aliens were just coming in and identified if they had not yet been circumcised, they were not to partake of this meal. And then three times in the book of Exodus, fathers are commanded to tell their children the story of deliverance by means of the Passover celebration. And if you think of just the number of times you meet with the exodus in the book of Psalms, I think we can get a sense of just how big the exodus is. It is the exodus is this once for all unrepeated act on the part of God where he reaches into Egypt and he pulls his people out after they have been there for 430 years. And then finally, E, God's message in the Passover. Take this animal, this one without a blemish, and kill it. There is to be this sacrificial death. And the high point of all of this is the blood on the sides and on the top. And God saying that as I come and I see that you have an atoning sacrifice, then I will not judge you, I will pass over you. And so we see that there is some degree in which the Passover is suitable for us. There is an atoning sacrifice. There is the shedding of blood. Of course, it's not the right kind of blood, it's not the kind of sacrifice that is actually going to take away sin, but the symbolism, some of the symbolism is there. Well, the New Testament connection, the historical background, and now Roman numeral three, Jesus fulfilling the centuries-old Passover. And here I want us to think, first of all, A, for a moment on the abiding wrath of God on unrepentant sinners. It is indeed sobering to think of what God does there in the nation of Egypt. On any home that does not have an atoning sacrifice, on any home where there is no blood on the lentil, where there is no blood on this doorpost or on this doorpost, then God goes in, so to speak, and he strikes down a firstborn in this home, this home, this home, and throughout all of the land of that vast nation. It is indeed sobering. God is God of the whole universe. God is the one who holds all of those Egyptians and all of those Israelites and everyone who is alive in the world today. God holds us all accountable before him. And there was judgment on the part of God at that time, and there remains an abiding wrath on the part of God even today. There is an abiding wrath against every unrepentant sinner. Let me read to you a few words from the Lord Jesus. Sometimes we like to think in our minds that the Lord Jesus is the one who is just the kindest and the most loving and the last person in the world that would be involved in manifesting wrath and divine anger to someone. Well, listen to these words. But when he saw The Baptist saw many of the Pharisees who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. and then he warns of that judgment that is going to come, and there is going to be that winnowing, the separation of the chaff from the wheat, and the unquenchable fire is going to consume that chaff. There is that wrath that comes by John the Baptist, by the Lord Jesus Christ as well, in communicating that there is this accountability before God. Jesus Christ saves his people from the wrath of our Holy Father. Not only are we saved by God, one says, but we are saved from God. He is the one who holds this kind of wrath against us, and it's not that he's being an ogre. He's God. We've been bad. All of us have been very bad. The sign on the doorpost, the sign of the blood, was that plea that God would look on atoning sacrifice and forgive. So if we think of the sad situation of God passing through Egypt and firstborn after firstborn after firstborn, all of these individuals dying and there being such grief in the land, if that troubles you, if that bothers you, Well, realize we've got the same sort of circumstance today. Not that God is going to pass through land, there's going to be an actual Passover, but there is going to be a day of judgment when everyone is going to be held accountable for what they have done with the Lord Jesus Christ in their lives. So we have it there, A, first of all, the abiding wrath on unrepentant sinners, but secondly, B, think with me of Jesus' righteous adapting, his righteous adapting of the Passover. I mean, really, is that right? Can Jesus be born and live to his mature years and then just tell the disciples, yeah, we're gonna have this Passover. And then as a part of this last supper that he has with the disciples, he says, all right, I'm gonna take this thing that has been here for hundreds of years and I'm just going to adapt it as I want to adapt it. Well, yes, it is absolutely right for Jesus to do that. Jesus is, after all, the Son of God. Jesus would know that all of those sacrifices in the Old Testament point to Him as the only sacrifice that does anything against sin. Jesus would know that it was the will not only of himself, but the Holy Spirit and the Father for them as a Trinity to move this Passover meal from what it was in the old economy to what it needed to be here in the simplicity of the new economy. Like all the sacrifices, that Passover meal was to point to the Lord Jesus Christ. What the Baptist said in John 1 29 is fitting for the Passover meal. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So when Jesus celebrated his final Passover with his disciples, He's going through this Passover meal and he departs at one point from the standard liturgy. And it's like Jesus says, now we're not gonna take blood here and put it on a doorpost. We're not gonna reflect on that. But what I'm going to do is to take the bread, the unleavened bread that is a part of this Passover meal, and I'm going to add new meaning to it. This unleavened bread, I want from this point forward to stand for my broken body. And then he's gonna take the wine of the Passover meal and say, You know, I'm going to attach new meaning to this, a new significance to it. This is my blood. It symbolizes my blood. Instead of us thinking about a literal ram or a literal lamb, and they're shedding the blood, we're going to think, from this point on, we are going to think of me as the Son of God who is truly God and truly man and think of my body and think of my blood that is shed. In essence, Jesus is standing before his disciples and saying, The real Passover lamb has finally come. Here I am. All of these annual Passover celebrations have prefigured me and pointed towards me. I am the Passover lamb. I am the one who will be sacrificed for you tomorrow. And it is my blood, my blood that will be applied to your account. And because my blood is applied to your account, you will be delivered. You will be saved. So a once-for-all sacrifice becomes the hallmark of biblical Christianity. Like the Passover, the Lord's Supper is something that is to happen over and over again. The Passover, as you know, is once a year. This Lord's Supper, for many churches, is weekly. For some, it's monthly. For some, it's quarterly. And for some, it's annually. But the point is, there is that once-for-all sacrificial death on the part of the Lord Jesus, and this meal is not a re-sacrificing, but it is a memorializing of that definitive sacrifice. Listen to how Jesus said this. Luke 22, we've read it before, I'll read it. Luke 22 and verse 19, I'll read it again. And when he had taken some bread and given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. I want it done today. I'm going to want it done again. And as it's done off in the future, let's always have this memorial service to exactly fit in and represent what is done in that once for all sacrificial death. And then we have it in, Jesus goes on, according to Luke, in verse 20, and in the same way took the cup after the supper, after they had eaten, saying, This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. I didn't check all of the synoptics, but at least here it's the bread, and do this in remembrance of me. But when we come to 1 Corinthians 11 and to Paul's institution, we've got the bread and then it's do this in remembrance of me. And we've got the cup and do this in remembrance of me. 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 24, having given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he took the cup also after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. And so what the Lord Jesus is doing in taking over the Passover meal and adapting it and turning it into the Lord's supper, the agape feast, the Eucharist, the thanks meal, what he is doing is taking an atoning death. his atoning death in behalf of others, and he's putting that right there front and center of biblical Christianity, and he is saying, now you've got this memorial service of this once for all sacrifice, and the thing that you've got to keep straight is that you've got to do the bread part of the service, and you've got to do the wine part of the service. You've got to do it as you are thinking of me, in remembrance of me. It's interesting, isn't it, that a sacrificial death is front and center. Now, as sinners, we understand that. It makes perfect sense to us. But if you don't believe that you have sinned, then you're likely to get offended at it. Charles Hodge comments, redemption therefore is not by power, or by teaching, or by moral influence, but by expiation. What he means by expiation is the extinguishing of guilt by means of atonement. It is this truth which the Lord's Supper exhibits and authenticates. God has an anger. There is this once-for-all sacrifice on the part of the Lord Jesus that takes away divine anger against sin, and God wants it to stick, so we're to do this over and over and over again in remembrance of the Lord Jesus. Another points out some of the words that relate to the death of the Lord Jesus, even words that we find in the memorial service, broken for you, shed for many. These point to how the death of the Lord Jesus is a sacrificial death on behalf of and in the place of Christ's people. Let me just close with some significant changes. Well, maybe I'm not quite ready to close here. Significant changes to the Passover rite. So why did Jesus install a new sacrament? If the old Passover had the atoning death there, then why didn't he just leave that there? Well, I trust that we see that it's a step ahead. It's a step forward. Warfield writes, he to whom all the Passover lambs from the beginning had been pointing was about to be offered up. The old things were passing away behold all things were to become new. The fulfillment of the type having come the type could no longer be fitting to set forth the reality that is now made new. You got what he's saying? That in the Old Testament, you have this type, and then you've got the anti-type that is the fulfillment of that. So Jesus has got a service where there is this Passover lamb, this Passover ram, And that's something of the type it's pointing to him, but it's like Jesus and God are saying, we need to change this because reality is on the scene. A number of changes, Warfield notes. were linked to this great fulfillment and transition. The Jewish state was to be dissolved along with the Mosaic law and its ceremonial sacrifices. In keeping with the finished work of Christ's atoning work, this new sacrament required no altar. Further in line with the universal character of Christ's salvation, no central location was prescribed. So here, there is a once-for-all sacrifice that is to be remembered over and over again. And the symbols of Christ's body and blood are eaten, not as a physical family, like they would have each of their little homes as families, but we come together as a spiritual family of the people of God and eat our memorial sacrifice. So I trust that as we come to these simple elements, that we will have occasion to think back to the once for all sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ and to see that there is kindness on the part of God in saying, all right, this represents the broken body of the Lord Jesus. This represents the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was that definitive sacrifice. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. And this memorial service is just to remind us that that sacrifice has already been offered. And as we pass to the left, to the right, we're mindful that we're not in our own home. We're in our spiritual family with the people of God, partaking of this ordinance that proclaims the Lord's death until he comes. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, help us to love you and to appreciate you as the one who is in the absolute center, the focal point of all history, the most important thing that has happened since the fall is you, Lord Jesus, going to the cross in behalf of sinners. And we thank you for the effectiveness of that once-for-all sacrifice of yourself. We pray that you would give to us the grace to, from the depths of our being, see that it's okay, it's even right, for the Passover lamb, the Passover meal, to be redirected into the Lord's Supper, that there is that great reality of your sacrificial death that is offered, and you want us to have this reminder periodically of broken body and of shed blood And you want us as believers to imbibe that. You want us to take it in. You want us to eat it. You want us to drink it. to symbolize that your death, your sacrificial death, does no good for us if it is not applied to our accounts. So Father, we pray that you would be pleased to take the truths that we've looked at this evening And we pray particularly for those of younger years who may not yet be believers or who are not yet baptized believers. We pray that you would speak to them and that they would see a beauty in the death of you, O Lord Jesus Christ, and that they would long for the day when they can righteously take of that unleavened bread and of that wine and partake of it symbolically because they have partaken of it by means of faith. And Father, we do thank you for your kindness in thinking of us. We thank you for your condescension that not only do you save us through the coming and through the obedience of your son and through his sacrificial death, but you condescend to give us this Lord's Supper. to speak to us by means of that which is in the two trays, and that which comes to our hand, and that which goes to our mouth. And we pray, Lord, that as we partake of the elements together, that you would minister grace to all of our hearts, that you would increase our godliness, that you would deepen our commitment to the things of your kingdom, and we pray, Lord, that your hand would be on us for good. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.