186 - The Cup Poured Out For Many

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, and you were going to sit down for your very last dinner with the people you loved most in the whole world, what would you talk about?

Well, I guess I'd tell them how much I love them, but there would be so much more I'd want to say. There is more, and let's find out today from Jesus' own words on More Than Ink. Well, here we are again.

It's Saturday morning. We've got our Bibles open. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we are going to look at God's Word together here on More Than Ink, where we are just delighted to be able to sit down at a leisurely pace and read God's Word and talk with each other. Do you talk with anyone when you study the Word, or do you just do it by yourself? Oh, I talk with people all the time, because that's what I do.

Yeah, it's just a delightful process. So we're glad you're with us, and we hope you have your Bibles. We read out of the ESV, the English Standard Bible, which I recommend if you're going to follow this in an open page, use the same translation so you don't trip over the trivial grammar differences between the English translations. But sometimes when I'm turning in my Bible to check a cross-referencer to introduce another parallel passage, I'm reading from The New American, which is the one I have been using for 50 years, and I am loath to stop.

So anyway, gather around and we're going to take a look. We are in Matthew's Gospel. We're nearing the end of Matthew's Gospel. In fact, we're coming up on the edge of the crucifixion of Jesus. We're in chapter 26, and we're in the upper room as we come to just a really touching sort of scene. And just prior to this, and excuse me, we talked about it last week, was Judas had actually already gone to the high priests and arranged to betray Jesus, asked, what will you give me if I tell you where he is?

And he's already been paid. So that sets this conversation in a very interesting light. Yeah.

Yeah. So let's just dive into it and see where we are. This will be very familiar to you. And as we always say in these very familiar passages, if there's a way you can kind of forget what you've read, or at least put in the back of your mind, we need to read it fresh, I guess is the point. So just lean back for a second and just listen with new ears.

Why don't you take it for us. We're at verse 17 in chapter 26 of Matthew's Gospel. 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'll keep the Passover at your house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover.

Okay, we need to stop there for a minute. Because if you read the parallel accounts, you find it wasn't just a random group of disciples, it was actually Peter and John, who went to do this, and they were Jesus' closest friends. So they were the ones he entrusted to go and set up the Passover. And he told them in recorded in two of the other Gospels, go into the town and look for a man carrying a jug of water. Yeah, and go where he goes and then say, this is where the master expects to have the Passover and the room would be all prepared.

It'd be all ready for you. So either whether Jesus had supernaturally set that up, or whether he had simply privately arranged that during the week, we don't know. But the disciples didn't know. Yeah, so they asked him, where should we go? And he said, go do here and do that.

And it all it all worked out. Yeah, the other Gospels, which we are always enthusiastic about you taking a look at give you more information. It's not conflicting information. It's just additional details, additional details that another eyewitness would see that maybe another wouldn't.

So they wrote it down. Okay, it's also interesting that even though Matthew just says now on the first day of unleavened bread, Mark and Luke tell us that was the day when the Passover lambs had to be sacrificed. Now, probably because Matthew was writing with a Jewish audience in mind, he didn't have to tell them that they would know, right. But a Gentile audience maybe wouldn't know that that first day of unleavened bread was the very day that the lambs were being sacrificed for the Passover. And if you're not that familiar with it, the celebration of Passover, which came in the first month of the calendar year for them, was a celebration of the exodus of leaving Egypt. And the last the 10th plague on Egypt was the death of the firstborn. And God told Moses, if you mark the doorposts of your house with the blood of this lamb, then the wrath of God in that in that terrible tragedy will pass over your house. And that's where we get the word Passover from.

I think I was probably an adult had been in the Lord quite some time before I realized that that judgment would have fallen on everyone. The only families who were spared the death of their firstborn were the ones who believed God that the blood of that sacrificed lamb would protect them and put it on the doorpost. And so it's helpful to me if I remember that they went in through that doorway through the blood. They'd see the blood pass inside. For protection from the wrath and the judgment of God.

And then the next day, they went out to freedom through the same blood soaked doorway. And so that actually is a really helpful picture for me personally, right, right, of the meaning of coming through the Passover of God's wrath through the blood of the lamb. Yeah, and it's a picture of the larger judgment of mankind. God's wrath will pour out on all mankind, all mankind, but the ones who are marked with the blood of Christ, that wrath will pass over us.

So it's a perfect reflection. Indeed, Jesus said in John 5, I think it's 21 or 24, that we have already passed out of judgment into life. So the wrath has already bypassed us when we have come in under the blood of Jesus.

Yeah. So this is the context of getting ready to do the yearly celebration of Passover or called Pesach in Hebrew. And they're going to celebrate God's miraculous freeing them out of Egypt and the enslavement that's there. So they're gathering together and this will be the last time that the apostles get to do this with Jesus. But they don't know it yet.

But they don't know that. So let's pick up the story in verse 20. And when it was evening, he reclined at the 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 and 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. Judas who would betray him answered, Is it I, Rabbi? He said to him, You have said so. Wow. Okay, there's a lot there to talk about. They reclined at the table because, you know, they don't have chairs.

They reclined at the table. The 12 were there. And then Jesus in the middle of this wonderful celebration blurts out a kind of an ugly thing.

One of you is going to betray me tonight. Oh, wow. In fact, I've always wondered why he even announced this.

And you can debate that for a long time. There's good reasons why he needs to announce this, but he does. He just blurts us out in the middle of this very standard celebration of Passover. And of course, their response in 22 is to be sorrowful and shocked and say to him one after another, each one saying, Is it I?

Is it I? And they didn't have a clue who it was. Right.

In fact, they didn't have so much. Now, one of them said, Is it Judas? Isn't that amazing? I know. Even though we had just read about Judas, that he was a pilferer, that they knew he had the money box and he liked to take change out of it for his own purposes. Yeah, yeah.

So is it? In fact, the very famous Leonardo da Vinci fresco of the Lord's Supper has this moment frozen in time where they're all saying basically simultaneously in the picture, Is it I? And that's why if you study the faces from left to right on that, it's all this self-doubt pictures with them. And the picture of the painting that has Judas's face on it, Judas's face is different from all the others.

The rest of them have this sense of confusion and guilt. It's in shadow, as I recall. Yeah, yeah. So it's a snapshot right there. Is it I?

Click. And that's when da Vinci does his painting. You know, the ESV says, Is it I? But in the New American Standard, it says, Surely it's not I, Rabbi. So there may be something in the translation there that is slightly different, depending on which Gospel you're reading or which translation you're reading. But you know what strikes me here is that it's, Jesus seems sad in verse 23, when he says, He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me, right? Somebody who's been nearby, we've shared meals, we've literally broken one another's bread.

It's one of you, the closest ones. Yeah, yeah. You know, and in reading this again, for I don't know the umpteenth time, as we got ready to record this, I looked in my little column references in my Bible, and there was a funny reference to Psalm 41. Yes. Have you seen that? I did.

I think this is the first time I've ever noticed it. Because yeah, I've got it here. Psalm 41 nine, even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. Wow. Yeah.

This is the material. That's not in capital letters in our New Testament, like it's a literal quotation, but it's clearly in Jesus's mind. He's thinking like David, among my closest friends.

Among my closest friends. So then Jesus gives him a clue. He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. And we do again in the other Gospels get a little clearer narrative about what happens in this moment in the dipping. Yeah, because in John 13, it's very interesting when they ask him, who is it? And Peter and John are right next to Jesus.

Yes. Peter leans over to John and says, you know, you ask him, the closer you ask him. And Jesus actually says, it's the one for whom I dip the morsel. And so john 13 recounts that and when he had dipped the morsel, he took it and gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. And then john says, in verse 27 of chapter 13, and after the morsel, Satan then entered into him, Jesus therefore said to him, what you do, do quickly.

Yeah. So in a sense, in front of all of their eyes, Jesus identified Judas and then dismissed him, sent him out to do. Which comes in John's Gospel, it comes after the foot washing, after the, you know, a servant is not greater than his master, all of that comes before Judas leaves. So it's almost as if Jesus had given Judas every opportunity.

It seems to not follow through extra chances, extra chances. Yeah. And you mentioned John's Gospel, John's Gospel is an important one to read in parallel with this. Like you mentioned, the whole episode of washing the Apostles feet is not here, but it's there in john 13, in the beginning of it, and then that happens. And then around verse 30, Judas leaves and then around verse 31 starts this extraordinary discourse from Jesus that goes for two, three chapters, four chapters. Which he didn't start in two until Judas was gone. Until Judas was gone, yeah. So John's Gospel is super important and it makes sense because John's the one who was leaning closest to Jesus in the picture here, so we know that. But it's just important to read all the Gospel accounts on different things and especially something like this because John includes chapters, chapters of extra information.

Well of conversation, of what Jesus actually said and not just the events. Yeah, yeah. So should we move on?

I think probably we have to because we were, well we're coming up to something hugely important. Yeah, okay, go ahead. Okay, so now verse 26, 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 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 this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. Wow, wow. Okay, again, the parallel accounts are very important.

They are. Because Luke adds, not just this is my body, but this is my body given for you. Given for you, yeah.

Do this in remembrance of me. And that's the part that we have really focused on in the following years, that the whole symbolism of the bread is the broken body of Jesus. Yeah, yeah. And also, in verse 28 here, it says, This is my blood of the covenant. Right. Luke says the new covenant. The new covenant in my blood.

And it's very clear. And then the new covenant is a very special phrase that comes out of the Old Testament in Jeremiah 31. And it means a radically new kind of arrangement with God. Right.

Yeah. So Jesus is saying, My blood is what's making that possible. So if you, in fact, if you're a Bible scholar, especially if you have some Bible software, type in new covenant and see where it takes you, because it really is a fascinating thing. You'll end up in Corinthians, you'll end up in Hebrews and a lot of places, but you'll start in Jeremiah, this new arrangement. So I think we need to pause here and actually read that passage if we have a minute.

Which one? Jeremiah 31. Oh yeah, okay. Because the contrast of the old covenant is what they were celebrating with the Passover, right?

Yes, yes. The lamb's blood was slaughtered, God freed them from slavery in Egypt. And when they came out from Egypt in Exodus, that's Exodus 24, that records the actual covenant ceremony where Moses took the blood and he sprinkled it on the people and he read them the word of God and they said, Yep, yep, everything God says we will do.

We will do. So that's in Exodus 24. And that is really the old covenant ceremony. God said it and will do it. Right.

And so it's kept entirely by human effort and human will. But the new covenant, let me read you this. This is Jeremiah 31.

This is remarkable. I'm going to read from verse 31. Behold, days are coming declares the Lord when I will make, here it comes, a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declared the Lord. I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.

Wow. So that actually is a huge distinction between the old covenant and the new one under the old covenant. The blood of the Lamb covered their sin, but it didn't take it away.

Right. God says under the new covenant the one sacrifice, the once for all sacrifice that Jesus my son will make will allow the possibility of total cleansing and forgiveness of your sin, no more remembered. So there no longer has to be a yearly commemoration of the Passover and that's what the book of Hebrews unpacks that for us.

Yeah Hebrews does a lot on that. In fact he just comes right out and says about those repeated sacrifices at the temple. Right they never did anything. They never took away sin. They never did. But the blood of the Lamb Jesus does and that's what he's getting at right here.

It's really really straight forward and by the way it's a little trivia item. The Old Testament and New Testament those two names Old Testament and New Testament mean old covenant and new covenant. That's exactly what they mean. The old agreement, the new agreement, the arrangement, the way we will do life. Yeah the new arrangement in the New Testament in the new covenant is because of what Christ has done for us as a sacrifice. However he is the Passover Lamb. That's the connection to the Old Testament. So you can figure out in your head what role Jesus sacrifice plays. So those are they're tied together and it's just much more than we have time to talk about right here.

Well okay well we got a couple minutes to talk about it some more because I love this. You know in the beginning of John's Gospel chapter 1 we have John the Baptist pointing to Jesus first right out of the box and saying there's the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world right. So he had a clear bead on it from the very beginning. But you know the blood of the Lamb is central to this celebration and so it's helpful if we compare. For even the Passover celebration.

Yeah for the Passover celebration. What happened to the blood under the old covenant? Well it was sprinkled on the people right.

It was an external application. Under the new covenant Jesus says now drink it. Take it in to ourselves right. Where was the law? Under the old covenant the law was written on stone, cold, inflexible, do it or die. Under the new covenant God's law is written on the living hearts of believers. Paul unpacks that beautifully in 2 Corinthians 3 so I would encourage you to go there and read those first 6 or 7 verses of 2 Corinthians 3. Yeah 2 Corinthians 3 is great for that.

And so it is a remarkable change. You have to understand the fact that when Moses came down from the mountain with the 10 commandments on the two stones that's the contrast he's drawing right here in Jeremiah 31. There was the one time when God wrote those laws standards of righteousness on a stone but now he's going to write it on your heart. It will actually be incorporated into who you are, into your desires and your wants and your focus in life.

It will actually be part of who you are. And that's going to come about through the ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit who will become a resident inside of you. And that actually is what Jesus goes on to talk about with the remaining 11 disciples after Judas had left.

Yeah. So you know if you're reading the Gospel of John picking up after Judas leaves in chapter 13 starting in 14 and onward Jesus talks so much about the significance of I'm going away but I'm sending you a helper. He will be in you. He'll not just be with you. He'll be in you. And that is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit that God's law becomes written on our hearts.

Yeah. So when you finish listening to this section in Matthew take some time afterwards to read the, start at the 13th chapter of John and read for about four chapters. Read all the way through chapter 17 through Jesus' high priestly prayer. Because he explained, he explains in wonderful detail what he means in verse 28 here that this is my blood of the covenant, this new covenant. He explains what he's talking about. And you know I'm sure at this point even in the ceremony when he says this the apostles are probably scratching their head and their eyes are rolling up. But then he does explain it in John and so he's much more verbose about what that's all about. But there's some great takeaways just in this very condensed version of what goes on in there.

Notice in verse 26 they have to take and eat. Right. You can't just you know appreciate that exists. You have to incorporate it into your life. Internalize it. It's not just you know saying yep okay I understand this is not understanding.

This is internalizing it yeah. And you also have to understand that this is, this is actually a bold innovation in the Passover ceremony. What Jesus is doing here.

It's not a standard part. He's using standard elements in the Passover. And if you don't know it, a Passover Seder which is the time we have the meal together. You actually go through a prescribed format in terms of reliving the narrative of the Exodus and you deal with items to eat on the table and stuff like that. And presumably that's what they were doing here. The foods are all symbolic because that form I believe was in place pretty much by the first century.

Yeah I mean they would have a little bowl of salt water which showed the tears. So there's a lot of things there. So what Jesus is doing here is he's not co-opting this but he is innovating in a fascinating way. He's mingling together the idea of the new covenant through his blood and being released from the captivity of slavery in Egypt. And the Passover lamb is the one common theme and he is it here and there's a Passover lamb back in the other case too. Well okay so it's important that we understand that he's not superimposing a new made up meaning on these elements. No, no, no. He is unfolding the meaning that was always planted there.

Always meant to point to him. Exactly. So he's actually fulfilling the story as they're celebrating it. But you have to understand that for the apostles this is kind of a bold innovative move that they've never heard in a Passover before.

So it was really memorable to them. And you notice too that the blood of the covenant in verse 28 is poured out for many. Not just the apostles sitting on the table but it's for many. So this is something Jesus is talking about that has benefit to all mankind. To anyone who will love him with their hearts and repent and come to him and give their lives to him.

Yeah they're included. So just as we're talking about this. There's so much more I want to say. I'm thinking about a friend who just in the last 24 hours has given her heart to Jesus and we've already talked about how the first time she experiences the time that we share the Lord's table as a church body will be very special for her because the meanings that have all been muddled up to this point will become much clearer.

And I'm excited about that for her. Yep exactly. So I don't want to broach any bigger topics now because we don't have much time left. So I'm a little frustrated. So let me just pick a couple of last comments. Oh okay go ahead.

Well go ahead you go first if you have something. Well I was just going to circle back to this comparison of the old covenant and the new covenant. Just to remember that the old covenant that was established in the Old Testament was kept by human will and effort. Right? Yeah exactly. God said it. You just yank up your bootstraps and do it or you die because that's the way you live. But the new covenant is completely founded upon God's will and his power.

Yeah. It's not our power to accomplish it. It is his gift of the righteousness of Christ that comes to us because he himself became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Yeah and I might add that righteousness is important for us to be able to come near to God. And so that's why the emphasis in Jeremiah 31 is about knowing God. I mean that's really the goal in being saved to. You're saved to a relationship with God and that's just core in everything.

That's everything. But at this point right here Jesus is trying to make the point to them very clearly and symbolically that he is the Passover lamb. In fact the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 in admonishing them you know to keep clean from sin.

To live holy. He says you know don't live as being unleavened that is dirty. And now he's pointing to Passover. Leavened.

Leavened. Right. Yeah. But he says you really are unleavened now that you've come to Christ. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. So we have just straight up entered that age of the unleavened bread. Exactly. Right freed from the pervasive influence of sin. Yeah. And if you still don't know what we're talking about when we talk about unleavened bread you might want to go back and look at the Passover account that's in Exodus 12.

And you can see more about that. But Jesus is clearly tying these two very closely together with his impending sacrifice. And will the Apostles put two and two together when they see Jesus sacrificed? Even at that moment will they realize that he actually is the Divine Lamb of God who is sent to the world?

Will they understand even during the crucifixion? I don't know. We think for them they probably didn't get it until later. But for us we can get it right away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can. Our time is up. Well our time is up.

Yeah. There's just so much we could unpack. I might just add that just these few verses this connection between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is actually the central topic of the entire book of Hebrews. And on this broadcast we went through Hebrews some time ago and you see the bridge between the two. But you can make it as simple as understanding that the Lamb was slain to protect the Israelites from the wrath of God and Jesus is slain on our behalf so that his blood can protect us from the wrath of God.

Because he died on our behalf and in our place. So that's the big and simple interpretation of these few verses right here so I'm Jim and I'm Dorian and we're so glad you're with us. We hope this has spurred a lot of curiosity on your part because we're going fast on a gigantic topic here. So we hope you join us so we can unwind this next time on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website morethanink.org. And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note. Remember, the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself and you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. You're going to do the welcome? Yep, I will. There we go then.