The book of Mark chapter 14 is where we're at today. Your copy of God's word so you can follow along as I read verses 22 through 26. And here the word of God says, and as they did eat, Jesus took bread, blessed and break it, gave to them and said, take eat, this is my body. And he took the cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and they all drank of it. He said unto them, this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many. Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until the day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. When it sung in him, they went out into the Mount of Olives. Last Lord's Day, we considered the Passover. If you remember the context, for those who may have missed it, you can go back and you can listen to that sermon online. But what we did last Sunday, we covered verses 12 through 21, which sets the stage for this portion of the text. Indeed, today, as we consider the subject of the Lord's Supper, and that's the title, the Lord's Supper is instituted. In its context, it makes so much more sense Because a lot of times we jump right in and we want to talk about and preach about the Lord's Supper, which it is very important, especially in the life of a church. But it makes so much more sense when we consider the full text, especially since verse 22 says, and as they did eat. I've been in Baptist churches for a long, long time. In fact, in fact, I was attending Baptist church when I was still in the womb of my mother. That's how long I've been in Baptist churches. And growing up, mom made sure that we went to church. That was the thing. And I was saved about the age of 10 years old. And I've just been a Baptist for a long, long time. I'm 43 years old now. So I've been a Baptist for a long time. I was saved and baptized, added to the church right there when I was 10 or 11 years old, and here we are. The Lord's Supper is very important. And I always knew that. I always knew that eating was important to a Baptist too. We love to eat, don't we? But I never been where the Lord's Supper was observed and they were eating. It never happened that as they did eat, then the supper took place. And so if you jump right into this and lift this text up out of its context, you'd wonder what in the world were they doing? Were they having a meal? What was going on? And the answer to that is yes, there was a meal going on. It was the Passover meal. And we saw that in verses 12 through 21. In fact, let's reread that just so our minds are fresh on this. And so beginning of verse 12, it says, in the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover, when they sacrificed the lamb, his disciples said unto him, where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the Passover? He sendeth forth two of his disciples and saith unto them, go ye into the city and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water, follow him. And wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the good men of the house, the master saith, where is the guest chamber where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples? He will show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared, there make ready for us. And his disciples went forth and came into the city, found as he had said unto them, and they made ready the Passover. In the evening he cometh with the 12, and as they sat and did eat, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, one of you which eateth with me shall betray me. And they began to be sorrowful and say to him, one by one, is it I? And another said, is it I? And he answered and said unto them, it is one of the 12 that dippeth with me in the dish. The Son of Man indeed goeth, as is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. Good were it for that man if he had never been born. And, verse 22 says, and as they did eat, Jesus took bread and blessed and break it, and gave to them and said, take ye, this is my body. This is the full context of it all. Now, that doesn't mean that we're together and have a fellowship dinner. and then go right into the Lord's Supper. No, no, as a matter of fact, there's something to be said about what was happening at the church at Corinth when they made a feast out of the supper and some were full and others were hungry and some were drunken and so on and so forth. Paul rebuked them for that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But this was different and we went in and we talked about the Passover. Now Mark doesn't tell us what part of the Passover meal they were eating, but it was probably about the time that they had the roasted lamb. I believe, as I mentioned last week, this was no accident that Jesus should be instituting the Lord's Supper right here at the time of the Passover, which pointed to him. and the types and the shadows and the figures, these all pointed straight to Jesus. In the Old Testament, those scriptures spoke of him. As they took that lamb without blemish, they killed it, the blood was applied and so on and so forth. All of that pointed to Christ. And so here in Mark chapter 14, He institutes the Lord's Supper, but also the timing of this is right before he would go on to die on the cross as the spotless lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. How fitting is it that Jesus establishes the truth of the new covenant in this supper here while eating the Passover. It all comes together right here in this text. And we see Jesus as we read on, and as we'll continue in this, we'll see his arrest, and we'll see his trial, and we'll see the crucifixion. And so, here in verse 22, Jesus takes the bread as they did eat. That's important. Jesus took bread and blessed it and break it, gave to them and said, take eat, this is my body. Why do I keep saying this? This is important that Mark, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, tells us that as they did eat, Jesus took bread. Well, the elements of the Lord's Supper are no different than the elements, than the things that were used in the Passover. There's not so much of a controversy about the bread. It is unleavened bread. Back there, verse 12, the first day of unleavened bread. This is unleavened bread that he's using here. These weren't dinner rolls. They weren't crackers. This was unleavened bread. that was used. Not a lot of controversy among the brethren about that, but as we go along and we see that he took the cup, that's where some controversy gets in, and we'll get to that here in just a few moments. In the Passover context, the unleavened bread represented the severing of the Israelites from the old life in Egypt. They represented a new life. But Jesus now in taking this in supper, he took the bread and he blessed it and he break it and he gave it to them and he said, take eat, this is my body. Now understand something, this is not to be taken literally. The Catholics teach transubstantiation. You say, what in the world is that? I never heard of that before. Well, there's a good reason for that. It's an error. It's a heresy. It's a doctrine of the Catholic church. And they teach something like this. They say that the bread and the wine of communion are literally or literally become the body and blood of Christ. That's false. This is not some cannibalistic meal that Jesus is serving. He gave them bread. They ate bread. He said to them, take eat, this is my body. It was meant to be a figure. a picture, that's all. His body was there, they were not eating of his body. The Catholics took this and they did what they did to it, misinterpreted it, made an error out of it, Then the Reformation came along and Luther, Luther had some good ideas, but Luther and the Lutherans, they hold an idea of consubstantiation. Boy, you're throwing around some big words today. Yeah, I don't usually do that, but these are some things you might wanna know sometimes. You have somebody you're talking to and they mention some of this stuff, you know it's not true. But consubstantiation, sometimes called sacramental union, teaches that the fundamental substance of the body and blood of Christ are present. alongside the substance of the bread and wine, which remain present. So it's kind of an in-between what we believe and what the Catholics believe. It's still wrong. The bread and the wine are pictures, symbolic. But now I would say this, in trying to avoid the false doctrine and heresy of the Catholics and the Lutherans, let us not become so cold to the supper, so cold in our worship. that we look at the bread as just bread and the wine as just wine. Jesus did say, take eat, this is my body. It is bread, it is wine, but let us not just go through the motions of eating the bread and drinking the wine without considering what this represents. It is an act of worship. And it is very important that we remember very, very seriously why we're doing what we're doing. He took the cup. Well, There's one more thought about that. It is important that we stay true to the doctrine, true to the text. It's important that we stay orthodox, if you will. But a dead and a cold orthodoxy is no good. We've got to remember what this is all about. Jesus instituted it. There are only two ordinances of the church, baptism and then the Lord's Supper. And it is very important. It's very important. It's important that we approach the table reverently. It's important that we remember why we're doing what we do. Verses 23 and 24. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many. Now, there are a couple of things in this portion of the text that become controversial among even good Baptist brethren. First of all, I know some good brethren who have made much of this passage, particularly, so that when they come together as a church to partake of the Lord's Supper, they literally only use one cup. And so if you can imagine, the wine is in one container and instead of it being poured out into separate cups, kind of the way we do, it is just kind of passed around among the members of the church. I personally have never been a member of a church that's done that. I've only seen it done and heard of it being done. I don't think it's wrong. Certainly, you can do it that way. It works quite well for small churches. I believe where the error comes is whenever they make it into a command and they say, you've got to do it this way. There's some things, even within the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, that there's some liberty involved and room for differences of interpretation. I believe that's one of them. Like I said, it works very well for church that is small in number, as long as everybody cooperates. You know, you can't have the first person who takes of the cup drinking all of it, nor can you have somebody who's really afraid of drinking after another person. That becomes an issue too. But if you get to a church above a couple dozen members or so, it becomes a problem. And that is, how big is the cup? Furthermore, when this subject has come up in different circles, how big do you reckon the cup would have had to have been for Jerusalem? That church grew to be several thousand members before they were scattered. I don't believe that it's a, I don't believe it's a command that we use one cup. And, uh, but what I do find is that every individual church is free to do with this and the dishes of the supper. However, I do believe, like I alluded to a while ago, that there is something to be said about, about this. And sometimes people will make. so much about the cup and missed the point of the supper altogether. This passage isn't about the cup. This passage is about our Lord. And so, let us remember that. The cup was the cup of Passover. And so then you begin to think about, and the big controversy that comes among good brethren is what was in the cup. Well, the answer to that is in the text, in its context, and that is that this was during Passover as they did eat, Jesus took the bread and he blessed it and break it and gave to them and said, take eat, this is my body. And he took the cup, the cup being the cup of Passover. What do the Jews use in Passover? Is it the finest Welch's grape juice that money can buy? And the answer to that is no, it's not grape juice. There's no biblical scholar, no commentator, no preacher, who ever believed that the Jews were using grape juice during the Passover. Not that I've read after. But yet when it gets turned around, into the church capacity for the Lord's Supper, somehow it becomes a big question. And that big question has only come since the time of prohibition in this country. I mean, you go before that and you'll not find it was ever any question. And I know some very elaborate ways of explaining why we use wine and not grape juice. I mean, it's a picture of the Lord's blood and there's impurities in grape juice and all that. But you know, bottom line, reason why we should use wine is right here. That's what Jesus used. Period. End of discussion. All the complexities of it. There's a whole host of other reasons that we can talk about. But yes, the bottom line is here in the text, this is what Jesus used. He used wine. We need to use wine as well. It is a picture of our Lord's blood, precious blood. He is the lamb without blemish, and so we ought not to use anything else besides wine to picture his death there on the cross in the supper. Now might be a good time as well as we kind of go through this text. And a lot of this for most of us is just a review, but it might be a good idea to remind you that here in this text, we see a good reason of why we practice closed communion. At this supper was the apostles minus Judas. Now the question is, weren't there other people who were saved during that time? Yes, there were. There were others as well. But he instituted this with the apostles only. Why? Well, it's a church ordinance. This is why we practice closed communion. Only the members of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church are permitted to partake of the supper when we have it here. It doesn't mean that other people aren't saved. It doesn't mean that we think we're better than anybody else, but this is the Lord's supper, not our supper. And so this is the way that we handle it. This is also made very clear in other passages such as in Paul's letter to the Corinthians and so on and so forth. In verse 24, He said unto them, this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many. Again, this is not to be taken as the literal blood of Christ, but it's a picture. Jesus shed his blood for the redemption of many. Now, as they partook of the first supper, as it was instituted here, Jesus had not yet died, but he was going there. You and I, when we, when we partake, we look backwards to the time when he did die on the cross. The shedding of blood in a sacrifice was always the way that a covenant was made. And so when he says, this is my blood of the New Testament, that's what that word means, the Testament covenant. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many. If you go back to the Old Testament in Exodus chapter 24, We think about the shedding of blood in a sacrifice is the way that a covenant was made. Verses five through eight says, and he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, read in the audience of the people, and they said, all that the Lord has said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words. So we see that the blood was shed there in that covenant, and in the same way, in similar fashion, in this new covenant, Jesus' blood was shed for many. Now, who are the many? Certainly the apostles that were there. Certainly the first century Christians. That many is all who believe, both Jew and Gentile. That many include you and me. That many he died for was even for those who had already died, Old Testament saints, so on and so forth. He shed his blood for many. He didn't die for everybody, but he died for many. In Mark chapter 14 and verse 25, he says, verily, I say unto you, I'll drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. This was the last supper, the last Passover he would have with them, the last time that he would drink with them. He says, I'll drink with you again someday. Oh, beloved, what great joy this would have brought to their hearts. I'll drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day I drink it new in the kingdom of God. He says, I'll drink again with you someday. He's speaking of his return. Jesus is coming, and guess what? He's going to establish an earthly kingdom here, and we know that we as a church, we're to continue this memorial meal, the Lord's Supper, until he comes. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Verse 23, for I have received of the Lord that which I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. When he had given thanks, he break it and said, take ye, this is my body, which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, this cup is the New Testament in my blood, this do ye as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do share the Lord's death till he come." Till he come. And so what's he talking about? We know in this age what we're supposed to do. But what's Jesus talking about there when he says, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine till the day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. Perhaps. Perhaps. You know, and as you look through the scriptures. We know that there was a Passover. in which Jesus was the type, the shadow, the fulfillment there. We know that in this present age, there's the Lord's Supper, which is a memorial to what Jesus did on the cross, the Passover. looking forward, the lamb without blemish, the blood being applied, all that. It was very dim, but he was there. You can see that. And then now we observe the Lord's Supper till he come. But here he tells us, he tells his apostles, his disciples, he says, I'll drink no more of the fruit of the vine till that day I drink it new in the kingdom of God. Will there be some sort of a memorial meal even during the millennial kingdom as a memorial to the cross? Very, very possibly. In the context, we have the Passover, we have the Lord's Supper, and then he says, I'm not gonna drink with you again until that day I drink it new in the kingdom of God. Very, very possibly. One thing's for sure, it's gonna be a great time when we physically are able to drink new with him in that day. Verse 26 of Mark, when they'd sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives. They sung a hymn and they went out into the Mount of Olives. Now, these first century saints, they didn't have a read hymn book like what we've got. They didn't sing amazing grace at the end of the supper. So what did they sing? Well, they would have sung a song, perhaps something like Psalm 118. Maybe they sang that Psalm or another Psalm. whatever it was. As they opened up their Psalter and they sung that hymn, I'm sure it was beautiful. I don't know what that supper was like, what that song was like, but I do know this. Probably was nothing like the painting that's so popular. I know this, that one of these days we will sing with Jesus physically when we're with him. And I look forward to that. The only way that you can look forward to that as well is if Jesus died for you. If you've repented and you've believed and trusted in Jesus Christ, he's the only hope that you have. He, even as the supper points, he willingly gave his life. It was broken, his body. was broken, his blood was shed for sinners. Trust him and you too will be with him one day. May God add the blessing to the preaching of his word.