So please stand with me as we read the word of God, as we hear that word in the gospel of Matthew chapter 26, and we're reading from the 17th verse. Now on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover? He said, go into the city to a certain man and say to him, the teacher says, my time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. When it was evening, he reclined at table with the 12. And as they were eating, he said, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, is it I, Lord? He answered, he who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. The son of man goes as it has been written of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born. Judas, who would betray him, answered, is it I, rabbi? He said to him, you have said so. Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom.' And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, you will all fall away because of me this night, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.' Peter answered him, though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away. Jesus said to him, truly I tell you this very night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. Peter said to him, even if I must die with you, I will not deny you. And all the disciples said the same. Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray. And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. And he said to them, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch with me. And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, so, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again for the second time he went away and prayed, my father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, sleep, and take your rest later on. Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. Behold, my betrayer is at hand. Please be seated. I'd like to begin this morning with a confession and an observation. The confession is this. In my early years as a young Christian gospel minister, I failed to allow the distinctive genres or types of literature in God's word to speak out of their own character. What I mean is, wherever I was preaching, whether it was Deuteronomy, I preached through the whole of Deuteronomy, the Psalms, the Minor Prophets, I preached through the whole Minor Prophets. I preached them as if I was preaching Romans chapter three. I look back and I'm somewhat ashamed that I imposed a foreign character on the literature, the divinely inspired literature of Holy Scripture. I was squeezing the different literary genres, the poetry, the narrative, and all the other kinds into some kind of formula. I didn't allow the genre to dictate the nature of the message. And I think that was actually shameful. Hopefully, the older I got, the more I realized how wrong-headed that was. And so in these five addresses, my hope is that the gospel narrative will be allowed to speak to us out of its own character. It was often said, and I remember it being said to me, that we read the Gospels to get the story of Jesus, and then we read the letters of Paul to get the theology of Jesus. Well, that again is completely wrongheaded, because the Gospels are rich in theology, but the theology is embedded in the narrative. In a sense, it's very Hebraic. That's the way Hebrew texts would be written. Within the narrative, there is rich, profound theology. And my hope is that we will see that as we walk our way through these concluding chapters in the Gospel of Matthew. So that's my confession that in my earlier days I failed abysmally, I think, to help people appreciate the divinely inspired variety the Holy Spirit has embedded in the Word of God and to appreciate how the Lord God Almighty weaves through the different genres of Holy Scripture the rich revelation of His truth concerning Himself and supremely His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's my confession. Secondly, an observation. I've often wondered why in Reformed conferences, We rarely, or so it seems to me, focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ. We seem more comfortable focusing on the benefits of Christ than on Christ himself. We have conferences on justification, sanctification, glorification, redemption, much else besides, all good and right in themselves, but we often focus on the benefits of Christ, but not on the Savior himself, in whom are to be found all the benefits. You see, you cannot really grasp the grace and richness of the benefits of Christ if you separate them from the person of Christ. He is the gospel. One of my favorite verses in the whole Bible is towards the end of Luke chapter two where you remember Mary and Joseph bring the infant Christ into the temple and Simeon who has been waiting for the consolation of Israel. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, this aged man has been waiting longingly for God to bring the redemption of his grace as he has promised to his people. And he takes this little bundle of humanity in his arms. And you remember how he says, Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation. He understood that salvation wasn't something that God blesses his people with. Salvation is God giving himself to his people. Jesus Christ is the salvation of God. He doesn't, as it were, dispense salvation from a heavenly treasury. That's a kind of Roman Catholic understanding. He gives himself because he is the gospel. In him we have redemption by his blood. He is our wisdom from God, our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And so Paul writes to the Colossians, him we proclaim. You've probably heard me say this before, but I don't think we should ever be hearing sermons on justification. Now that might seem an odd thing to say. What I mean is this. We should be hearing sermons about Jesus Christ, our justifying righteousness, whom we receive by faith. We don't dislocate the blessings of the gospel from him who is himself the gospel. We don't preach justification, we preach Christ and him crucified. I think it was Philip Melanchthon, Luther's confederate and successor, who was the first to say this so succinctly. Beware of separating the benefits of Christ from Christ himself. Over the past few years, maybe five, six years in particular, I've pondered reasonably regularly a paragraph in the works of John Owen, the great English Puritan. When I first read them, which must be many, many, many years ago now, I don't think I really grasped what Owen was actually saying. It's in volume one, The Glory of Christ, which you may not have read, but if you haven't, it's a great starting point in reading the works of Owen. Listen to these words of Owen. He's coming to the conclusion, he's almost at the end of his remarkable exposition of the glory of Christ. And he writes these words, let us live in constant contemplation of the glory of Christ, why? Virtue will then proceed from Him to repair all our decays, to renew a right spirit within us, and cause us to abound in all the duties of obedience. People are struggling with obedience. Life is hard. Trials and troubles and disappointments and much worse can come to us. Life can be very, very hard. How do you minister to God's people who are going through dark and deep and distressing trials and traumas? How do you minister to them? Well, Sirs Owen, you minister by proclaiming to them the glory of Jesus Christ. You don't talk to them about disappointments, difficulties, trials and troubles, there's a place for that. But principally, and principally, you remind them of the glory of Jesus Christ. That's their greatest need. And virtue will proceed from him. to repair all our decays and cause us to abound in all duties of obedience. You know, many congregations, understandably, often will say, I wish our minister was more into practical application. I wish he would spend more time applying the word to us practically. And I understand that. Sermons without practical application are hardly sermons at all. But I wonder if we really appreciate that the greatest application is to be confronted by the glory of Jesus Christ. To be reminded of who he is and what he has done. To be reconfronted with his heavenly excellence. with his splendor at the right hand of the Father, with him carrying us upon his heart into the presence of the Father. I wonder if we really understand that Jesus Christ himself is the great gospel application. Some years ago, a very fine, very fine young man in our congregation in Cambridge contacted me. He said, I really need your help, Ian. I've been struggling with internet pornography. Can you please help me? And I had no experience of this. In God's mercy and kindness, it's not a sin that has troubled me. Other sins have troubled me. deeply, and I wondered, well, what can I do? And I decided to do this, that every time we met, we would look at what the scriptures taught concerning the grace and glory of Jesus Christ. That's all we did. Now, I'm not saying that's all you should do. There are other, you might say, practical things to do and necessary things, but I believe this was the great issue, because every sin of whatever kind is because we have defected from the love of the Savior, as we'll see with Peter. So with that introduction, let me pick up the narrative in Matthew 26, looking especially at verses 17 to 46. You'll see that Judas, verses 14 and 15, has gone out to do what the Old Testament scripture said he would do. He who has ate with me has raised his heel against me. Jesus quotes it from Psalm 41. And when you read the narrative, it almost seems as if Jesus is a helpless pawn in an unfolding drama. The Jewish leaders are conspiring to kill him. Judas is in the process of betraying him. Peter will soon deny him, and all the other disciples will abandon him. And yet, what do we see as we thoughtfully read through the narrative? We see a majestic Jesus Christ. No man takes my life from me. Jonte, I lay it down of my own accord. No man takes my life from me. Now there is a truly human dimension to all that's happening. The narrative does not try to soft play the human dimension, the wicked conspiring of the Jewish leaders, the evil heartedness, the satanic heartedness of Judas' betrayal. Peter's weakness and failure and tragedy, it's all highlighted there. The humanity is writ large in the pages of the narrative. But there is a deeper dimension operating throughout the narrative. What C.S. Lewis in his Narnia Chronicles calls a deeper magic. Jesus is where he is. not because wicked men have conspired against him and cornered him and have him in their power. He is where he is by the predeterminate counsel and will of Almighty God. Acts 2.23. He was delivered up, says Peter, according to the foreknowledge, the good pleasure, the predeterminate counsel and will of God. And you see this, do you notice in verse 24, the Son of Man goes as it is written of Him. Verses 53 and 54. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels? But then how should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so? And you're remembering John 19, isn't it? Where Jesus says to Pilate, you would have no power over me. if it were not given to you from above. Jesus is no helpless pawn. He's submitting in love, as Calvin puts it, cheerfully. I was struck reading that this morning. Cheerfully, through the agony of his soul, cheerfully submitting to the will of the heavenly Father. You see, our Lord is aware that there's a divine drama being orchestrated. And you see that, for example, in verses 31 and 32. Then Jesus said to them, you will all fall away because of me this night, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd. He's quoting Zechariah 13. And the flock will be scattered, but after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. You see, it's a majestic, calm, collected, purposeful Jesus Christ who dominates the landscape of the drama. He's not cowering in fearful terror, he's orchestrating the drama. He's marching in believing obedience. Now notice, notice the qualifier. He is marching in believing obedience. He is the man of faith. He's the prototypical man of faith. He lives out his obedience in trustful, believing obedience to the Heavenly Father. I've come from heaven, John 6, you remember. not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And so as we begin to look a little more at the passage, you'll notice how verse 17 begins. Now on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover? on the most significant day of the Jewish year. The most significant day. And Matthew is expecting us, and this is very Hebraic, you know, when you read Hebrew narrative, even in the English form in the Old Testament, you're expected all the time to be joining up the dots. Hebrew narrative very rarely pauses to make moral or theological deductions or implications. It's expecting you to see the whole conspectus and to join up the dots. And Matthew is clearly expecting us here to make the connection between my time is at hand and the Passover. You remember the Passover. What was the great significance of the Passover? Well, it was the great event that celebrated and commemorated God's mighty and miraculous deliverance of his people from their centuries of slavery in Egypt. It was an event above all events. And you remember how it was so gloriously and pictorially set before us in the book of Exodus, where God says to his people, take the blood. and daub it, paint it on the lintels of your doors. And those who took refuge under the blood, the shed blood, the sacrifice blood, those who took shelter under the blood provided by God found rescue and redemption. And that's why Paul is able to write in 1 Corinthians 5, Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us. What was pictorially and beautifully set forth in the book of Exodus to dramatize and commemorate the mighty redemption of God by blood comes to its fullest and ultimate and final expression in the shed blood of the Lamb of God and when we take shelter under the blood. and Jesus is setting before his disciples. And for them it must have been bewildering as they're trying to make sense of the types of the old covenant and the reality before their very eyes of Him who is the new covenant. They're trying to join up all the dots in their minds and hearts as the revelation of God, promised in times past and now coming to fulfilment incarnatedly in the person of Jesus. The disciples no doubt are watching and looking and trying to see the connections. because Jesus is himself self-consciously enacting the drama of his approaching death. And so he says in verses 26 following, as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. He took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Now, do you see what Jesus is saying to his disciples here? Do you see what he is pictorializing for them? He's saying to them, you are here not to be admiring spectators, but to be engaged participators. They were to eat the bread. They were to drink the cup. Why is that? That might seem a very basic question to ask. Surely bread is for eating, wine is for drinking. But there is a profound theology that Jesus is teaching his disciples here and teaching his church. And I don't think I've ever read it expressed more simply and more wonderfully than in almost the opening words of book three of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. He wrote, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, We are separated from him and all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value to us. And Jesus is saying to his disciples, do you understand what I'm doing here? You're not here to spectate and admire. You are here to participate. You're here to take me into your life. This is my body broken for you. This is my blood of the covenant shed for you. You know, the Lord's Supper is a glorious, pictorializing of the gospel. Now it's more than that, but it's not less than that. And as our Lord enacts the drama of his approaching death, he's saying to his disciples, you need to take me into your life. You need to receive me into your life. And that's what faith is, isn't it? At its heart, at its most basic, at its most glorious. By faith, we receive the sin-bearing, sin-vanquishing, obedience-fulfilling Savior into our lives. In the Holy Supper, we are saying what we confess with our lips every day of our lives. that our faith in Jesus Christ is not notional or merely confessional. It is real. And so we say that faith is resting on Christ, faith is receiving Christ, and faith Thereafter follows Christ, the three constituent elements of the faith that savingly unites us to Jesus Christ. We rest the weight of all that we are on the sufficiency and grace of all that he is. And we receive him. we receive him as Savior and Lord. That's why when people rightly desire to be publicly united to the fellowship of the people of God, we say to them very simply, if you have a credible profession in Jesus Christ, come and be welcomed. But we want to ask, how credible is your profession? Is Jesus Christ the sovereign Lord before whom you live? Whose word shapes and styles all that you are? Is there credibility to your confession that he is Lord? And so in the Lord's Supper, this first enacting, Jesus is presenting himself as the Passover lamb. But I want to pause for a moment and ask, well, again, maybe a very obvious question. How does his broken body and poured out blood bring to us, as we see in verse 28, the forgiveness of sins? How does his broken body and shed blood do that? Let me ask, first of all, another question. What was the heart of God's covenant with his people? I will be your God and you will be my people. It runs like a golden thread through the whole Bible, doesn't it? I will be your God unilaterally, sovereignly, declaratively, savingly. I will be your God and you will be my people. But that leads us to ask the second question. How can a holy, thrice holy God be my God? And how can I be his? How can that be? Does my sin and rebellion not separate me from him? Does my sin not bring down upon my head his just and righteous condemnation and judgment? How can a holy God say and mean what he says? I will be your God and you will be my people. Well, if you're to make any sense of that, There is one thing amongst a number of things you need to understand. Is that Jesus Christ came into the world not as a private man, but as a public man. He came into the world as the son of man. Now, that's a phrase that we find, I suppose, most strikingly in Daniel chapter seven. We see it in Psalm 2. Jesus comes into the world as the son of man, that is, as the son of Adam. What the word means. Jesus Christ is the son of Adam. And Adam, you will know, Luke's genealogy, chapter three is at verse 38, Adam is called the son of God. Jesus comes into the world as the one who will undo the tragedy of Adam's sin, which is why Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 calls him not the second Adam, but the last Adam. He's the second man and the last Adam. He comes into the world as God's counterweight. to Adam. He comes as the covenant head of a new humanity to stand before God in our place, living for us the life we could never live, and dying for us the death we could never die, and doing so as our covenant appointed head from times eternal. You confront Jesus Christ in the gospel narratives as the divinely appointed last Adam. And before God, he lives the life we could never live. And he dies the sin atoning death we could never die. He came, as he tells us at the end of, is it Mark 10? I've come to seek and to save that which was lost to give my life a ransom for many, Lutron, Antipolon, a ransom instead of the many, He is there and this is the theology that undergirds the gospel narratives. It's the theology of the better than Adam. It's the theology of God's proper man, his better man. It's the theology of covenant headship. How can the sacrifice of one man effect the lives of anyone outside of himself because of who he is. He stands before God representing in himself every single life through the history of humanity that would ever come to him as their only hope. I can't remember how many years ago it was now, but I remember the effect these lines of Horatius Bonner's hymn had upon me at the time. Upon a life I did not live. Upon a death I did not die. Another's life, another's death, I stake my whole eternity. And that's what Jesus is saying to these disciples. Now later, as the Holy Spirit would come at Pentecost, and all the lines of convergence would meet, and all the dots would join up, they would say, wow. But Jesus is setting before them the richness of his covenant headship. And it's this, I think, that alone really explains to us the agony in the garden that Matthew records for us from verse 37. Jesus goes to the garden, and as the shadow of the cross begins to penetrate his human soul, and he never knew that before. This was all new to Jesus in his humanity. There wasn't some kind of pipeline from the deity that would flow into the humanity. That would make him a divinized man who couldn't save anyone. This was all new to Jesus, and so as the darkness began to engulf his human soul, he prays. You'll see it in the verses. Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me. You know, if Jesus couldn't have prayed that, he couldn't have been our savior. He's praying out of his true humanity. Weak, frail, fragile humanity. And holy humanity shrinks back from sin, does it not? Does it not? And yet he says, not my will. but your will be done for he had come from the glory not to do his own will, but the will of the father who sent him. And he's there not for himself, he's there for us. Bearing shame and scoffing rude in my place condemned he stood. And here his holy resolve to be the father's lovingly obedient son that Adam failed to be is being tested to the fullest extent. We may not know, we cannot tell what pains he had. and his obedience has been tested to the uttermost. None of us can begin to enter the unimaginable darkness that was beginning to penetrate his human soul. But he was obedient unto death, even the death of a cross. And so here is a majestic Jesus Christ. He is no prisoner of unforeseen circumstance. He's no helpless pawn amidst the machinations of Jewish religious leaders. He's not someone who has been caught off guard by Judas's defection. He is betrayed. But you know, at the deepest, most elemental level, it's not Judas or the Jews who are orchestrating the events. No man takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord. And so it says God's obedient son, the last Adam, that Jesus majestically walks the road to Calvary's cross. His whole life from womb to tomb, we might say, was a life of holy obedience to the Heavenly Father. As our representative head, every breath he breathed, he breathed for us. Every step he took, he took for us. Every obedience he made, he made for us. I think it was Thomas Goodwin, the 17th century English independent Puritan who said, there are but two men who stand before God. Adam and the last Adam. And every single one of us is either tied to the girdle strings of Adam or to the girdle strings of the last Adam. He came to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. And that's why Christians glory in the cross of Jesus Christ. That surely is the hallmark of every boy or girl, man or woman who has been savingly brought to rest the weight of all that they are upon the finished work of Jesus Christ. The glory in his cross, it's bewildering to the world. How can you glory in a crucified man? Because of who he is and what he was doing. So do you glory in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you glory in the last Adam? Have you been tied to the girdle strings of the last Adam by self-abandoning faith? You know, it's not great faith that saves you. It's faith, however weak. And it's not weak faith that condemns you. It's no faith. Your faith may be trembling. It may be bruised. It may even be battered. But if you've come to rest the weight of all that you are on the grace of Jesus Christ, your faith brings to you a whole Christ with all the benefits that he has won. The Apostle Paul has no more benefits than the weakest, poorest, most trembling believer. Because if we have Christ, we have all things in him. Let us pray. Lord, we can but bow in your presence. We bless you that the Son of God loved us and gave himself for us. We bless you that he came into the world not as a private man, but as a covenant head to represent us, to stand before you for us, to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. to provide us with a righteousness that you can embrace and bring to yourself. Lord, as we continue to reflect on our Savior, we pray the Holy Spirit will draw us inexorably to love him who first loved us, and we ask it in his name.