Mark 14:1-25
Date: June 11th 2023
Speaker: Samuel Crites
Scripture: Mark 14:1-25
Mark 14:1-25
Exegetical Outline
Main Idea of Text: Jesus is prepared to be the true Passover lamb and prepares his disciples for the New Covenant inaugurated by his sacrifice.
1-2: The chief priests and scribes are plotting to kill him, but they delayed because they were afraid of the crowds.
3-9: Jesus is anointed with pure nard by a woman to prepare Jesus for his burial and some people took offense at the cost of the display.
10-11: Judas makes plans to betray Jesus.
12-25: Jesus celebrates the Passover with his disciples, confronting his betrayer and instituting the sign of the New Covenant.
12-16: The disciples follow Jesus’s instructions and prepared the Passover meal.
17-21: Jesus confronts Judas, his betrayer, and condemns him.
22-25: Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper as a sign of the New Covenant.
Homiletical Outline
Main Idea of Sermon: Jesus Christ is the true Passover lamb.
He was prepared beforehand. (1-9)
Timing of the week.
The preparation of
He is offered up by his own people. (10-11)
He is led by the sovereignty of God. (12-21)
Predetermined details. (12-16)
Predetermined word of God. (21)
He is the true sacrifice. (22-25)
Cuts a New Covenant. (24)
Makes atonement for sin. (24)
Promise of the future kingdom of God. (25)
Introduction:
God is the great teacher. He has set up Creation as his classroom, the Scriptures as his textbook, and the goal of our education as seeing his beauty in the splendor of Christ. Like children in his home, he prepares us for adulthood by giving us experiences in life that set up the categories in our minds that we need so that we can understand him better.
This happens to us as individuals. We understand him as our Comforter because we have been comforted by a loving grandparent. We understand the sweetness of his provision because we know what it is like to experience hunger. We hope in the rest that he has promised us because we know how weary we can be after a day of manual labor.
However, this doesn’t just happen to us as individuals, it also happens to all of us as the human race. Throughout history, God has been preparing mankind, through experiences, to better understand who he is. All throughout the Old Testament, God revealed himself in unique ways that set up the categories by which we can receive a deeper and fuller picture of his glory. These old experiences were just shadows and examples of the greater truth that God was planning to reveal in the future.
This week, we are going to spend some time seeing one of those old lessons find its true meaning in Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples. The Passover was a real moment where God rescued his people from their enslavement in the land of Egypt. Every year that they celebrated the Feast of Passover, God was both reminding of his salvation in the past and giving them the categories necessary to see how Jesus is the true Passover lamb. Read Mark 14, 1-25 with me:
Mark 14:1-25
14 It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, 2 for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”
3 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. 4 There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 9 And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
10 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. 11 And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.
12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” 13 And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, 14 and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” 16 And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
17 And when it was evening, he came with the twelve. 18 And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” 19 They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, “Is it I?” 20 He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me. 21 For the Son of Man goes as it is 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.”
22 And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” 23 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. 24 And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 25 Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
For over a millennia, the Jews had been celebrating the Feast of the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of First Fruits in order to give them the idea of atonement through sacrifice. The main idea of our sermon today is this: Jesus Christ is the true Passover lamb. The millions of lambs that had been sacrificed in the past were merely foretastes and symbols pointing to the true Passover lamb that had now come to make one final atonement for sin.
In our sermon text today, we are going to see four things about Jesus as the true Passover lamb. First, he was prepared beforehand. In the same way that Israel prepared the Passover lamb, Jesus was prepared for the sacrifice of the Passion week. Mark has shown us since chapter 8, that Jesus is obediently walking toward Jerusalem where he is going to be sacrificed as the true Passover lamb. Our sermon text begins during the part of the week where Jewish families were preparing their Passover lamb by letting it live in their houses with them. In the same way, this unnamed woman prepares Jesus for his death by anointing him with precious and expensive perfume.
Second, Jesus is the true Passover lamb, because he is offered up by his own people, particularly, by his own disciple. The Passover lamb was an extremely personal and intimate sacrifice. The lamb was to come from your own flock and live with your family. They became attached to the lamb, and then they sacrificed it so that could remember how the blood of the lamb preserved them through the great judgment of God. Death passed over them, because one of their own was offered as a substitute in their place. Judas’s betrayal begins the trial of Jesus that will end with Christ’s own people chanting, “Crucify him!”
Third, Jesus is the true Passover lamb, because he is being led by the sovereignty of God. Everything that is taking place, from the little details of where they will eat the Passover meal to the way that all of history turns on this week, happens because of definite plan and electing purposes of all sovereign God. Even as Jesus is pronouncing his woe upon the one who betrays him in verse 21, he says that everything that is happening to the Son of Man has already been written.
Finally, as the true Passover lamb, Jesus is the true sacrifice that can satisfy the wrath of God against sinners. Every year, sacrifices were made to cover over the sins of the people. The Passover lamb was a reminder that they needed a substitute to stand in their place to avoid the final plague of death in Egypt. They did it every year because the blood of lambs was never sufficient to satisfy the wrath of God against sin. Jesus is the final and true sacrifice that makes all those other sacrifices obsolete. He is the sacrifice that is offered for many to establish the new and better covenant promised in Jeremiah 31.
Jesus is the great and true Passover lamb because there is no sacrifice valuable enough to satisfy the infinite wrath of God against sin and there was no person humble enough to stand in our place. As we go through our sermon text today, we are going to see that only Jesus Christ could be the true Passover lamb.
He was prepared beforehand.
Let’s consider verses 1-9 and see how Jesus was prepared beforehand to be the true Passover lamb.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem in Mark 11, he entered on the first day of the week of Passover. This day was special because it is the day that the Jews chose their Passover lamb. Listen to what Moses recorded for us in Exodus 12 at the first Passover. Beginning in verse 1:
Exodus 12:1-6
12 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.
The choosing of the lamb was the beginning of the Passover week and was something that a family did together. As a family, you selected that lamb and kept it in your house with you. It had to be a male and it had to be without blemish or defect and it came from your own flock. Why do you think that the Israelites had to keep the lamb with them in their homes? If you have ever had children, you know what happens to kids when they find a stray animal. They adopt it. It becomes part of your family. Four days later, when they family had to sacrifice that lamb, they were not just slaughtering an animal that they didn’t care about. They knew this lamb. They had watched it for an entire year and had allowed it to live in their home with them. It had eaten from under their table and slept at the end of their beds. They were slaughtering an animal that they had become emotionally attached to. They felt the pain of loss; it truly cost them something to have the angel of death pass over them.
So, when Jesus enters into Jerusalem in Mark 11, he is received as a gift, the coming of the king. He only grew in popularity throughout the week. They loved how he overthrew the harsh money changers in the temple and how he called out the religious leaders that were so harsh with the people. In those four short days between the Triumphal Entry and the day of Passover, the crowd fell in love with Jesus to the point that when we open Mark 14, the religious leaders have resigned themselves to kill Jesus, but they have decided to wait until after the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread because they were afraid of how popular he had become with the crowds. As the Passover lamb, Jesus was among the Jewish people, growing in popularity and affection in preparation for his ultimate sacrifice.
This period of preparation culminates with the episode that takes place in verses 3-9. As Jesus is in the house of a leper named Simon, an unnamed woman approaches him and anoints him with a vile of very expensive, pure nard. The Scriptures says that it is approximately the value of one person’s earnings for an entire year. Now, other Gospels give us more detail about this woman, but Mark purposefully leaves her unnamed. My thought is that leaving the woman unnamed puts a greater emphasis on what she did and the value of the gift she brought to Jesus. I think it is meant to be directly contrasted with what we are about to see Judas do in the following verses, which we will come to in a minute.
So this woman anoints Jesus. We do not know her personal motivation, but Jesus tells us that she anointed him for burial. This gift is meant to be an acknowledgement of his immanent death. The moment is so significant that Jesus says that her actions would be included whenever anyone recounted the Gospel, and, in fact, this episode appears in all four Gospels that are in the Scriptures. She has done him a great honor because she has acknowledged and prepared him for his immanent death, and this unnamed woman expresses the pain and heartache that all of Israel should feel at the loss of their true Passover lamb.
Have you ever allowed yourself to meditate on the bitter sorrow that the Passion week should make you feel? Sometimes as we consider Jesus’s death on the cross, we too quickly move to the celebration of the resurrection. Have you allowed yourself to linger on the agony of his death? He was not just the true Passover lamb; he was your true Passover lamb. He was the personal sacrifice that allowed you to escape the angel of death that comes for all men, eventually. That means that he had to die in your place for you as surely as if you yourself nailed him to the tree. It was your sins that made his death necessary. We who have the eyes to see should feel the same gut-wrenching anguish that this unnamed woman felt as she poured the nard upon his head, anointing him for a sacrifice that she deserved. She prepared him to take her punishment and die her death, because he is the one, true Passover lamb and there could be no other.
He was offered up by his own people, for his own people.
I said earlier that I think Mark wants us to contrast this woman we don’t know with the disciple in this episode that we do know. Judas, a disciple that has been with Jesus from the beginning, is ultimately going to be the one that betrays Jesus to his death. In this way, Jesus is seen to be the true Passover lamb, because he is offered up by his own people. All the lambs that were sacrificed in every Passover were put to death by their owners, their own families; just like Jesus is about to be offered up by his own people, the nation of Israel.
This point really rests on this one idea: Judas was not alone in his betrayal. Yes, Judas is the starting point of Christ’s ultimate crucifixion, but he is merely the beginning of a betrayal that finally includes the entire Jewish people as they condemn Jesus to death and release a convicted criminal in his place.
I say that we are to compare Judas with the unnamed woman, because it seems clear that the disciple that really had a problem with the cost of the ointment that the woman poured on Jesus’s head was Judas. We know this, because in verse 10, we see what Judas did about it. He was so upset by the so called extravagance of the offering from this woman that the he went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. There are couple important details to observe about the betrayal.
First, the chief priests had already decided to kill Jesus. They were just waiting for a wise time where they could arrest him and not deal with the fury of the crowd. So, their original plan according to verse 2 was to wait until after the feasts, because the crowd would have gone home. There would not be anyone to riot when they arrested Jesus in the street in broad daylight.
Second, Judas’s betrayal must have been to merely let the chief priests know where Jesus was going to be so that they could arrest him in secret and not risk the anger of the crowds during the day. So the chief priests saw this as an opportunity to expedite the plan that they had already made. This is why Judas leads them to Jesus when he is praying alone in the Garden of Gethsemane in the middle of the night. Jesus was alone and vulnerable.
Third, the amount of money that they paid Judas was so inconsequential that Mark did not even bother to record how much it was. This, by contrast, shows you the difference between the unnamed woman and Judas. Judas did not love Jesus. He was willing to sell him out for such an insubstantial amount of money that it wasn’t even worth writing down. As such, the betrayal of Judas reemphasizes the clear illustration that Jesus is meant to be seen as the true Passover lamb, offered up by those closest to him to be a sacrifice for all.
Some of us know the bitter sting of betrayal. We know what it is like to find out that those you are closest to us or those that we have trusted with something that was precious to us have betrayed that trust. You will never feel more alone and more exposed than when you have been betrayed. Many of you don’t even have the luxury of not seeing these people. They are your family or the parents of your children or perhaps someone that you work with on a daily basis.
For those that know that pain, I want you to know that Jesus felt that same pain and loneliness. He understands what it is like for the people that he considered his family to turn out to be his enemies, and what makes it worse for him is that he knew it all along. He called Judas to be a disciple, shared all the ups and downs of ministry with him, taught him the Gospel, watched him perform miracles, and knew that, eventually, Judas was the one that was going to betray him. And yet, he loved him anyway. He never treated Judas differently. He was never less gracious to Judas or spent less time with him. He loved Judas in spite of all that he knew about Judas.
So how to you endure? How to you persevere after being betrayed? In some ways, the story of Judas reveals all of our hypocrisy. It is easy for us to see Judas as the villain in this story, and he is. He is absolutely the bad guy that is doing evil that justly deserves the kind of punishment that makes Christ say, “It would have been better if he had never been born.” Judas reveals our hypocrisy because we look at Judas and think, “I would never do that.” If I had been one of Jesus’s twelve, I would have been a faithful disciple. The reality is that apart from grace, we would all have done what Judas did. In fact, every time we sin, we return to that old way of living.
How do we find the grace in our lives for those that have betrayed us? By remembering that Judas isn’t special. He is not unique. We all struggle not to be Judas every day. I don’t wake up every morning and say alright God, what good can I do for you today? I wake up every morning thinking, “Oh God, please don’t let me fall back into my sin. Keep me, please keep me from turning against you. Help me to kill that old self so that I can find the grace to forgive those around me.”
There is not one thing that anyone has ever done to you that can possibly compare to the evil we have done against Christ. To the hatred we had in our hearts for him before he graciously saved us. To the rebellious heart of stone that fought everything that looked or even smelled like God before he conquered us and gave us new hearts. As you think of those people that have betrayed you, as you think of the pain and heart ache they have caused in your life, compare that to all that you have been forgiven of in Christ. Can the harm they have caused you compared to the grace that you have received in Christ? If you say yes, you either overestimate the temporary pains of this life that will be like a passing vapor in the next, or you underestimate the evil you have committed against Christ. We find the power to forgive and endure, not in the worthiness of those that we forgive, but in the magnitude of all that has been washed away by the forgiveness of Christ. It was not easy for Christ to live for three years with his betrayer, loving him day in and day out, but it is not easy for him to live with us either. It is those that have been shown grace that can truly be gracious to others.
He is led by the sovereignty of God.
In spite of the betrayal of Judas, the sacrifice of Jesus as the true Passover lamb is not a tragic accident. He is not a victim of circumstances outside of his control, but he is intentionally walking toward his crucifixion fully aware of what it will cost him. In this way, we can see that he is the true Passover lamb, because he is being led by the sovereignty of God.
We see this at three different points in verses 12-21. First, when the disciples ask Jesus where he would like to celebrate the Passover, Jesus gives them very specific instructions that could only be known if he was God and sovereignly in control of the situation. Look at his instructions in 13:
Mark 14:13-15
“Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, 14 and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.”
The sovereignty of God is on display through Christ, even in the little things that must take place to bring about his plan. The man that was carrying the water jar never thought that he was part of some great plan for salvation, but it was God’s sovereign plan for him to lead the disciples to the place that Jesus was supposed to celebrate the Passover meal with his disciples. In this way, we can see that this is all happening according to God’s careful plan.
Secondly, we see the sovereignty of God working through Jesus as he confronts his betrayer in verses 17-20. Jesus prophesies to his disciples as they are gathered to eat the Passover meal that one of them will betray him. This causes great dismay among the majority of the disciples, and they beg Christ not to let it be them. What do you think Judas was feeling in that moment? It seems to me that Jesus exposes him right there. In verse 20, he says
Mark 14:20
20 He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.
Probably, in that moment, Judas was dipping his hand in the bowl with Christ and Jesus used that moment to identify him as the traitor.
Jesus would not have known that it was Judas if it had not been God’s sovereign plan for Judas to betray Jesus. Everything that has taken place in our sermon text and everything that we are about to see in the coming weeks is because of the definite, predetermined plan of God. Luke tells us this explicitly in Acts 4:27-28. He says this in verse 27:
Acts 4:27-28
27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
Every bad actor in this story is following the predetermined script of All Mighty God. The betrayal of Jesus was ultimately ordained by God to bring about the crucifixion of his Son. You want big God theology, there it is. We can see that Jesus is the true Passover lamb because it was God’s sovereign plan to make him the Passover lamb.
Judas couldn’t have stopped it if he wanted to, and yet, Judas is absolutely responsible for his betrayal because Judas didn’t want to stop it. He wanted to betray Christ. He wanted it so bad that he was willing to take pennies on the dollar to make it happen. He hated Christ with every fiber of his being because the world always hates Christ. Judas walked with them, learned with them, taught with them, and performed miracles with them, but he was never one of them. His heart of stone was never converted, so he did exactly what you would expect of any enemy spy; he showed his true loyalties in the end.
So, did God ordain Judas’s actions so that he did exactly what God preordained would take place? Yes. Did Judas freely do exactly what he wanted to do because he hated Jesus with every fiber of his being? Yes. Is God responsible for all the good that came from Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross? Yes. Is Judas responsible for all the evil that came about by betraying the Son of God into the hands of his enemies? Yes. Both God and Judas were active in the betrayal; God was responsible for the good, and Judas was responsible for the evil.
Finally, we can see that Jesus is led by the sovereignty of God as the Passover lamb by the way he pronounces the woe on Judas in verse 21. He says,
Mark 14:21
21 For the Son of Man goes as it is 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.”
At the beginning of verse 21, Jesus says that he is doing everything that is written about him. So not only is God sovereignly ordaining all the little details that led up to the Passover meal with the disciples, not only is he sovereignly ordaining Jesus’s betrayal, but he is also sovereignly ordaining the historical events that have led to this moment.
In that one phrase, Jesus reveals that he is following a script that was written a long time ago by the prophets in the Old Testament. I think, particularly, of Isaiah 53. Listen to what the prophet Isaiah said about the crucifixion of Jesus 600 years before he was born. Isaiah 53, beginning in verse 4:
Isaiah 53:2-12
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
This last point is pretty simple. God, in his sovereignty, revealed that Jesus would be the Passover lamb that would bring an end to all Passovers through the prophets in the Old Testament. Isaiah 53 is just one of many examples. When you read Isaiah 53, it could not be plainer. In fact, it is so plain that today, when Jews do their liturgical readings of the Old Testament, they do not read Isaiah 53. Rabbis decided that is simply causes too many problems and makes people ask too many questions.
For students of Scripture, this should not be surprising. God, in his sovereignty, has been telling one continuous story from the beginning of Creation, through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and on to the end of the age. He is orchestrating all of it. Which is great comfort for the Christian. The sovereignty of God is life giving, because when you see how God has orchestrated all of history to provide the true Passover lamb at the right time to his people the way he provided Jesus Christ, you can be confident that there is nothing in your life that is outside of his control.
In fact, the sovereignty of God allows us to look at every good things, and every evil thing, and every mediocre thing, and every weird thing in our life as a good lesson, given to us by God, to train us to behold his beauty and splendor in Christ. If he is truly sovereign, and he is working all things together for our good, than there is nothing futile in your life. There is nothing that happens to you in your life that does not have a purpose. Your anxiety about your finances, your envy at the possessions of other people, your discontent with circumstances in your life are ultimately a lack of faith in the goodness of God, and Romans 14:23 tells us that anything not done from faith is sin. The sovereignty of God is not something that we should be angered by or turn away from. It is sweet biblical truth that is the reason that we can trust our God that has shown himself to be trustworthy.
He is the true sacrifice.
The final point of our sermon comes from verses 22-25, namely, that Jesus is the true Passover lamb, because Jesus is the true sacrifice for his people. Let’s reread verses 22-25:
Mark 14:22-25
22 And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” 23 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. 24 And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 25 Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
At this point, Mark doesn’t say it, but it is likely that Judas has left. Jesus is with the remaining eleven and as they are celebrating the Passover meal something new takes place. From a Jewish perspective, it is interesting that the traditional elements of the supper are not mentioned. The bitter herbs, the candles, the lamb meat, none of it is mentioned except for the bread and the cup. Both of these elements are put forward by Christ as symbols of his immanent death.
The bread is a little more enigmatic than the cup. Jesus says that the bread represents his body. Two things can be said. First, he breaks it, likely demonstrating the violent abuse that he is about to endure. Second, he gives it to them as their portion and sustenance. They each must partake of him if they are going to receive the benefits of the new covenant his inaugurating.
We get a little more information about the cup. He says three things about the cup. First, this cup is the blood of the covenant. One thing that we could easily miss is that Jesus makes the disciples drink from the cup in 23 before he explains to them that the cup represents his blood in verse 24. This would have been horrifying to the disciples because Jews were not allowed to eat or drink blood. In Leviticus 17, God declares that blood is to be reserved for the altar, because life is in the blood of an animal. So if you are going to eat an animal, you must first drain the animal of its blood. By making his disciples drink his metaphorical blood, Jesus is bringing together the sacrificial atonement of the altar and the life-giving sustenance of the meal in this one sign of the covenant that is the Lord’s Supper. Now, Mark implies what Luke makes explicit, this covenant is the new covenant promised in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36. The blood is essential to inaugurating the New Covenant because covenants are cut in blood. For a covenant to be inaugurated, it must have a sacrifice, and Jesus is saying that he is about to offer himself up to be the sacrifice that inaugurates a new and better covenant for the people of God.
Second, the cup is for the many. This is not just something secret and private for these eleven men, this bread and this cup is something that all followers of Christ will participate in all throughout Church history. It is one of the two ordinances given by Christ celebrated by all expressions of the Church in all places across all times. It is a universal sign of the New Covenant that we all belong to.
Third, the cup is both a reminder of what Christ has done and a guarantee of what he will do in the future. For us, it is backward looking because every Sunday, we partake of the Lord’s Supper to remember what Christ did for us on the cross. But it is also forward looking because Jesus says in verse 25 that he will abstain from this cup until he drinks it new in that future day when the kingdom of God will come in all of its glory. So, we also drink from his cup knowing that there is still more to come. The New Covenant has benefits that already exist in Christ, but there are also benefits that have not yet come to fruition. When we drink from the cup, we should be affectionately remembering what Christ has done for us, but also eagerly looking forward to what he will do for us in the future.
Jesus singles out these two elements of the Passover meal and he recapitulates them to mean something new. That word, recapitulate, might sound really fancy, but all it means is that he gives something old a new meaning. He redefines them. Instead of reminding the Jews of what God did for them in the past in the land of Egypt, they are given a new purpose to help the disciples see that Jesus is the true Passover lamb that has come to be sacrifice on the next day. He has been teaching them since Galilee that he will be rejected by the chief priests, scribes, and elders and now the time has come for him to be offered up the real Passover sacrifice. He has come that his body and his blood, represented by the bread and the wine, might be the true sacrifice that satisfies the true angel of death, the wrath of God.
Instead of Israel being delivered from slavery under the Egyptians, now all men can be delivered from the slavery of sin. Instead of the blood being spread on the doorposts of their home, the blood dripped from the four posts of the cross. Instead of the angel of death passing over the Israelites, the wrath of God passes over all those that put their trust in Jesus. The true Passover was not led by Moses during the Exodus, the true Passover took place in Jerusalem in the first century, when Jesus Christ quietly obeyed the will of his Father and offered himself up as a ransom for many. The true Passover sacrifice was not a lamb, he was a man, the God-man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Conclusion
I want to do something a little different to close our sermon today. As we conclude, I want you to think about something. How many people do you know that need to hear that good news? The good news that while they are absolutely guilty, they do not have to face the consequences for their sin. There was a man named Jesus that stood in their place and sacrificed his own life to rescue them from the wrath of God. If they would just trust him, their debts would be paid for and they would be forever free of the burden of sin.
We have plenty of room in our service guide this week. Let’s each write down two or three people that we know need to hear that good news this week. Then I am going to spend 60 seconds praying for those people.
Let’s pray.