Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Luke 22:7-20
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  April 18, 2019

Sometimes knowing the background makes all the difference. For instance if a young girl were to call her grandmother and ask “How are you doing?” that would be a nice thing to do and they’d probably have a nice conversation. But if she were to call her grandma on the anniversary of her grandfather’s death and ask “How are you doing?” that would be a different conversation and would probably mean a lot more to the grandmother. That’s kind of like what happens when you take the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday. There is so much in the background that adds layer after layer of meaning and significance to this celebration.  Tonight we look at the background of Holy Communion as Luke lets us inside the upper room to see and hear our Savior institute this sacrament. It is my prayer that after hearing his words, and understanding all that lies behind the Blood of the New Covenant, you might have a more meaningful celebration of communion and a better appreciation of how much your Savior’s sacrifice was worth.

Luke chapter 22 opens on the Thursday of the Passover Festival in Jerusalem. We begin reading with verses 8-13: Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.” 9 “Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked. 10 He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters,11 and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 12 He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.”13 They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. The Passover Seder meal was a formal meal and so it needed a proper dining room rather than an informal area outside, which was probably where Jesus and the disciples ate most of their meals. This was special. The careful instructions for the preparations, the precise form of words to be said, including the title “the Teacher” used without explanation, and the fact that the room was available in the overcrowded city and already “furnished” suggest that this room had been reserved in advance with a supporter of Jesus in Jerusalem. This meal was important to our Savior and he had not left it to chance. We see that importance marked in his own words as well: 14When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

During the Passover Festival the Israelites looked back at the Exodus, God’s great act of deliverance from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the ten plagues, etc. Specifically, in the Passover Seder meal, they looked back at the final plague and the Israelites’ departure from Egypt, all centered on the blood of a lamb which was painted over the Israelite doorposts so that the Angel of Death would passover them and their firstborn would live. (Exodus 12) It is this rich story of the Passover that provides the background not only to our celebration of Holy Communion, but it is the background that Jesus purposely chose for his own death. This meal in the Upper Room would allow Jesus’ disciples to understand the significance of his cross. Just as in the Passover, the very next day they would see a spotless male lamb sacrificed; just as in the Passover blood would flow for their salvation and freedom.

This is the part where I believe there is the greatest disconnect between their time and culture and ours today. Namely: the concept of a blood sacrifice. For Israel, blood was an inherently powerful substance, the symbol of life itself, which could be utilized to protect and cleanse, and, if used improperly or treated carelessly, could be the warrant for death. In its correct ritual usage, however, blood was a covering which protected or a symbolic cleansing agent; sometimes being sprinkled on people, or poured on altars, or, like in the Passover, painted on the doorframes of a house to cover over the impurity of the inhabitants. To say the least, in our world today, blood is not used that way. We are wary of bloodborne pathogens and we rarely ever see blood unless its on a TV screen, much less handle it or smell it burning on an altar. We are so removed from the slaughtering process that it the public sacrifice of an animal is completely foreign to us. So much so that some have labelled it primitive, though the truth is that what the Israelites did with those animals gave their lives great significance, certainly more dignity and reverence than what happens in a mass slaughterhouse today. I remember hearing an old pig farmer talk about how hard it was for him as a young man to slaughter the animals he had fed and cared for. When he ate the meat he had such respect for the life which was given. Our meat is packaged up neatly in supermarkets or arrives right on our plates. To say the least, a blood sacrifice is a concept we aren’t used to anymore.

But most of all, I think that, deep down, the reason a blood sacrifice is difficult to relate with as 21st Century people is because of what it says. Blood means something serious is wrong. We still understand that. The phrase from the basketball court comes to mind: “No blood, no foul”. If there is blood someone must be deserving of a penalty. And so without even a word, blood shed in sacrifice screams the greater truth: Sin must deserve a serious punishment. Part of the reason a blood sacrifice bothers us is because we don’t want to believe our sin is that serious. “Yah, we’ve done some bad things, but does blood really need to be shed over it? I mean, let’s not get dramatic.” This is what has been called “the offense of the cross,” the idea that Jesus’ death on the cross can be heard by someone not as comforting, but as extremely offensive.  The sinful nature in each of us at some level wants to believe that our sins do not require this much pain. The thought of blood being shed on our account is difficult to comprehend, much less accept as necessary. And yet, the Bible says that blood is required to make atonement for sinful lives. God told the Israelites: “…the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” (Lev. 17:11) In other words, blood is always necessary to atone for sin. The Israelites had to make these sacrifices day after day for thousands of years so that no one would forget it. As the writer to the Hebrews says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” (Hebrews 9:22)

The reality is, my friends, that while Jesus because of sins of the world, he also died because of you. He died because of me. Blood was required to die to pay for your personal sins. Jesus bled for my sins, and mine alone. Just one sin makes us eternally incompatible with the holiness of God. Both by nature and by commision, we need blood to be shed for our sin. And I know that there is a sinful nature in each one of us that finds this offensive, but let us not dishonor Jesus’ sacrifice as unwarranted, for this would be an insult to our God of Grace. Hebrews 9:29-31 states: 29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. I’ll let those words speak for themselves. Let us not take our sins lightly because we understand what kind of sacrifice was necessary. If there was any other way, Jesus wouldn’t have been crucified. But without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. The words of the old hymn come to mind: If you think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great, here [at Jesus’ cross] we see its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate. Only when we believe in the necessity of a blood sacrifice, as odd as that may sound in 2019, only then can we understand the significance of Jesus’ words on Maundy Thursday.

Luke 22:14-20  When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” 17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”   19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.   This was a monumental statement. Jesus is reorienting a festival meal that is 1,500 years old. This is the foundational narrative of an entire nation and Jesus is telling them that it actually is about him. All the preparation, all the prayers, all the years, all the blood, all the sacrifices…it had all been about him. The disciples didn’t get it at first. They would flee that night in terror when Jesus was arrested. But after Jesus’ resurrection, after his ascension and the Holy Spirit’s coming at Pentecost, they would come to see the truth: Jesus truly was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And through the Holy Spirit’s power we understand this truth as well. The same thought which may offend, through faith, also heals. Jesus shed his blood for your sin. Jesus shed his blood for you because he loved you and nothing would stop him from saving you. Jesus poured out his blood for the whole world, yes. But what did he say? This is my blood which is poured out “for you” and you alone. If no one else existed except you and him, he still would make the sacrifice needed.

And this blood of Christ that was shed for you is so much more precious than the blood of those lambs that were sacrificed on the night of the Passover. In fact it is infinitely more valuable than all the blood of bulls and goats that were ever slain on Israel’s altars. For his is the blood of the New Covenant—the very blood of God which does not just cover our sin, but washes it away. Under the Old Covenant of the Law, sin was covered, or hidden, by the continual offering of animal sacrifices. “You have forgiven the iniquity of your people; you have covered all their sin.” (Ps. 85:2). “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (Ps. 32:1). Just like in the Passover where the blood covered the doorposts to hide sin from God. Hebrews 10:11 tells us, that “…every priest stood daily…offering the same sacrifices, which can never take away sin.”

Nowhere in the Old Testament is it ever claimed that sins were “taken away” (i.e. completely removed) by animal sacrifices. The root of the Hebrew word translated “atonement” in the Old Testament is kafar, which has the idea of “covering,” not total removal. This word is used to refer to how Noah’s ark was to be “covered” with pitch (Gen 6:14). In fact, in Leviticus, the word kafar occurs over 40 times, and yet in Hebrews, its sort of companion volume in the New Testament, the word for covering is not used at all. Rather the words used are, “taken away” or “made holy”, “cleansed” or “perfected”, all words referring to actual forgiveness. Merely covering sin was never God’s ultimate plan for dealing with it. It was only a shadow of better things yet to come in the New Covenant. “For by one offering he [Jesus] has perfected forever those who are sanctified…And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.” (Hebrews 10:12, 14, 18).

As is happens, God had the “complete forgiveness” plan in mind for us all along! Listen to Jeremiah’s beautiful prophecy of the New Covenant: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors…after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people…For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34) When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper in the upper room, he said that his was the blood of this New Covenant. His death would usher in the era where sin would not be covered but forgiven and forgotten.

This distinction is such a blessing. If we have the think of our sins merely being covered, we may still feel condemned over what we have done, even though we have sincerely asked God to forgive us. We think of our sins as still there, just hidden, and we probably will keep peeking under the covering and thinking about them. But if we understand the New Covenant mentality, we realize our sin is erased, gone, nonexistent. There is no covering to peek under and there is nothing to look at anymore.  We experience an intimacy and relationship with God that his Old Testament people could only dream of under the Old Covenant. We can approach him with confidence, having been washed clean in Jesus’ blood. If you struggle to forgive yourself at times or struggle to believe that our Holy God really has forgiven you, understand that once you repent of sin it is completely washed away by Jesus’ blood. From the point of repentance onward, rest assured that “it is finished,” as Jesus proclaimed on the cross. Any guilt you feel from that point on is not coming from God but from yourself. Let it go.

The assurance of complete forgiveness is something Jesus wants to share with us tonight in Holy Communion, the sacrament he instituted that first Maundy Thursday. Jesus eagerly desires to sit down with us as he did with his disciples that night. He desires that we would also consume his true body and blood. Just as those ancient Israelites ate the Passover lamb, so we too, in a miraculous way, actually take part in Jesus’ very body and blood during Holy Communion. 1 Corinthians 10:16 say, “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?”

So as we take Holy Communion together tonight remember the background. Take to heart the rich layers of significance this Sacrament holds. Remember those Israelites who painted lamb’s blood over their doorposts and think of how the blood of a lamb also saves you from death and sets you free. Think about how Jesus’ blood is the New Covenant which ends all sacrifices and gives us the peace of complete cleansing, not just a covering. And think about the impossibly wonderful fact that we need not fear the Almighty God, who is present with us here this very evening. As holy and as powerful as he is, we are invited to commune with him. Go in joy and peace for your sins are forgiven.  Amen.