957. The Three “AMENS” of The Last Supper

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, Dr. Steve Pettit, longtime evangelist and now President of Bob Jones University, will preach a four-part series on Passion Week, the week leading up to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The main events of Christ's suffering are the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Trial of Jesus before Caiaphas, and the Crucifixion. Today, Steve will lead us in a study of the Last Supper.

I'd like you to take your Bibles and turn back with me, if you will, please, to Mark's Gospel. We're calling this Passion Week because this is the week historically that Christ suffered for us on the cross. Without a doubt, this is the most, in my estimation, the most important week of the Christian Year calendar because I think Easter Sunday is the most important day in the calendar year of a believer. Each chapel service, we're going to look at some of the key events that led up to the crucifixion of the Lord, but it's really all for our preparation of our hearts on this coming Sunday. Each message this week, we're going to miss, as I mentioned, look at the main events of Christ's suffering. Today we're going to look at the Last Supper, and then tomorrow the Garden of Gethsemane, and then the Trial of Jesus before Caiaphas, and then finally the Crucifixion of the Lord. So this morning I'd like to begin Passion Week with a dinner, a meal. We call it the Last Supper.

Jesus would have called it Pesach, or Passover. The author of this book, Mark, is writing this book to a very particular audience. It's always important to understand that. He's writing to Christians living in the city of Rome who are undergoing persecution from the Roman government and the emperor named Nero. In the book of Mark, there are basically two primary messages. The first message is the main message, and that is this, that Jesus is the Son of God, and He's the suffering servant of the Lord who was wounded for our transgressions, so Jesus came to give His life a ransom for many. The secondary message of the book of Mark is actually what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a disciple. And Jesus lays it out very clearly in Mark chapter 8, verse 34, where He says, this is what a disciple is like.

He denies himself, he takes up his cross, and he follows Jesus. But the thing that we learn throughout the book of Mark is that the disciples struggled with those requirements of following Jesus. Mark's recording of the Last Supper actually is involving in three parts, and we'll see those parts this morning. In each part, Jesus gives a prediction, a prophecy, and each prophecy begins with the same word.

We read it here in the King James, the word verily, but in the Hebrew language, it's the word amen. So my message this morning is entitled, The Three Amens of the Last Supper. And as we look at this, this passage of Scripture, we're looking at it, as I said, through Mark's eyes, and who he's writing to, but also in the way in which he writes, because Mark has — to me it's just fascinating, it's so cool — that Mark uses these particular kind of styles of writing, this kind of variety of techniques that sort of inspire our desire to want to know more. And this morning, we're going to see one of his key techniques, and that is what is called a Markan sandwich.

It's actually like a sandwich. And Mark uses this some 11 times throughout his Gospel to effectively communicate specific truths of the Gospel. And the way it works is there's the first section and then there's the third section like two pieces of bread, and they're connected, the first and the third. The center section actually is not necessarily connected to the first and third, but it's the main message, it's the meat of the story.

And it's through the center section that we interpret the first and the third, so that's what is called a Markan sandwich. So what are the first and third sections of this passage of Scripture? We read it this morning and that is the first amen of this passage. In it, Jesus predicts the betrayal of Judas. So He says, Verily, I say unto you, one of you which eateth with me shall betray me. The third section actually is another prediction, and that is the denial of Peter.

So you see the two connections. One betrays, the other denies. And in both sections, the first and the third, we come away very disappointed. Disappointed that Jesus' closest friends and followers proved to be unfaithful. But in that middle section, Mark contrasts the unfaithful disciples to the faithful Lord. And we learn that in Jesus, our faithfulness is not really found in us.

It is not our strength, but our faithfulness is found in Him. So let's begin this morning with the first amen that opens in the evening with Jesus and His 12 disciples coming to a prepared meal. They called it Passover, or Pesach. The meal was held in the home of a woman named Mary.

She's the mother of the Gospel writer Mark. That's where the Last Supper was held. In verse 17 it says, They made ready the Passover in the evening.

He comes with the 12, and they sat and they did eat. So they, it brings us into the Passover. So what, what happened at a Passover meal? Perhaps you've done a Passover Seder, a Passover meal. Essentially the Passover was a, a family dinner, a family celebration. And they celebrated the Jewish deliverance from Egypt, where they were living in bondage there as slaves. And if you recall the story on Passover night, the angel of death went to the home of every, of every family and took the life of the firstborn son, or the firstborn animal.

With one exception. And that is if they took a lamb and killed it and shed its blood and put it on the door post, then the angel would pass over. And God said to the Jewish people, 3400 years ago, I want you every year on Pesach, on Passover, to remember, to commemorate this meal.

To remember your redemption. And for 3400 years, the Jewish people have celebrated this meal. So what happened during the meal? Well, the meal was divided up into four parts.

Each part was concluded with the drinking of a cup of wine. In the first part, the meal begins with a blessing pronounced by the family leader, usually the father over the gathering. During the second part, the youngest boy would ask the question, why is this night different from any other nights? And so the story is told.

Usually it's told by the father as he recounts the glorious, marvelous deliverance of the Jewish people from the Egyptians. And then in the third part, the father pronounces a benediction over the food. The food symbolized their bitter captivity in Egypt and the hardships and the blessings of the Exodus. And at this time the family and guests were invited then to eat the meal. And it was a long meal. It wasn't a 15 or 20 minute meal.

It lasted all, all the way into the late hours of the night. And then near midnight, the feast would conclude where they would sing Psalm 116 to Psalm 118 and then they would drink the fourth cup of wine. So Mark's account, as we read this morning, actually begins during the third part of the evening. As they were already several hours into the meal so that when we go back and we read the passage of scripture, we read, and in the evening he comes with the 12 and they sat and they did eat.

So, Mark's account is during this time. And in the middle of the meal, Jesus makes a shocking statement. He said, I say unto you, one of you who is eating with me is going to betray me.

That's a shocking statement. But should it have been? Should the disciples have been surprised that Jesus said one of them would betray Him? I think if you read the book of Mark, it should be no surprise to any of us that the disciples would betray, or at least one of them would betray the Lord.

How do we know that? Because over and over Jesus had announced to His disciples that He was going to Jerusalem to die. Three times, Mark 8, Mark 9, and Mark 10, Jesus said to His disciples over and over He's going to die.

And over and over, do you know what we discover about the disciples? They didn't grasp the reality of His death. It just didn't hit them that hard.

Why? Because they had a misperception. They perceived that Jesus as the Messiah would be a conquering King, not a crucified Savior. Not only that, but they had their own personal self-interest.

They had skin in the game. They were following Jesus because of what they could personally gain from Jesus. And how do we know that? Because after Jesus prophesied His death, those three times, over and over, the disciples expressed their own desire for either to promote themselves or to protect themselves. And so Mark already tell — has already told us that his disciples really weren't getting the message. He tells us in Mark 8, do you not perceive or understand?

Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? The point I want to make to all of us this morning is the disciples really didn't get it.

They were very slow. And the failure is not a mental ability. It's a spiritual issue. Because spirituality has to do with your motives.

It has to do with your desires and intents. And the disciples, as they were following Jesus, were hearing His message, but they were not embracing it. They were not growing.

They were not going forward. And folks in the Christian life, you either go forward or you go backwards. For many of you sitting here as students, you hear the Scriptures all the time, but the greatest burden I have is that many of you, you don't seem to get it. It's not a mental issue. It's a heart issue. It's a spiritual issue. It's your motives. It's your desires.

What's really important to you? And so, what we find in the Gospel of Mark is something had to give. Something had to come to a head. So during the meal, Jesus makes His first prediction. He says, one of you are going to betray me. With Jesus, there is no middle ground. A disciple has to follow Jesus completely. It's all or nothing with Jesus.

You have to follow Him. And Mark has been telling us that all kinds of people committed themselves to follow Jesus and they were unique like the maniac of Gadara. The woman with the issue of blood, blind Bartimaeus. And these were like all outsiders and they met Jesus and they instantly began to follow Him. But what about the disciples, the insiders, Peter, James, and John, those who had access to Jesus 24-7?

What a privilege they had. They got to be with Jesus. They got to watch His life. They got to see His miracles.

They got to hear His messages. And over and over, they saw what Jesus was doing and yet Jesus, when He spoke about His sacrifice on the cross, they were blinded because of their own self-centered perception and perspective. Folks, please understand, you can't follow Jesus if you're not broken over your own self-centered pursuits in life.

And when Jesus told His disciples that His followers had to deny themselves, it didn't connect. And something had to give. Something has to give.

And by the way, let me just say this to all of you. You can't follow Jesus at a distance. If you're not fully committed, something is going to give.

You can't keep going on like you are. There has to be a breaking point. And the reality is the breaking point already came before the Last Supper. You say, when did that take place? It took place in the home of Simon the leper.

Do you remember the story? A woman comes in and anoints Jesus with some very expensive perfume. Do you remember the response of the disciples? They began to criticize this woman's extravagant waste of money on Jesus. And then Jesus made a revealing statement. He says, this woman is anointing my body for my burial. In other words, the woman knew that Jesus was going to die.

And at that moment, I believe the first break came. And that is the woman's actions in Jesus's words opened the eyes of one disciple. Do you know who that disciple was? It was Judas. And Judas realized he saw it, that Jesus was going to die. The lights came on and Judas turned to the dark side. At that moment, he stopped trusting in Jesus.

He turned away. He became an apostate. And Judas decided that if Jesus was going to die, Judas was not going to die with him. And at that moment, Judas reveals to the world why he was in the Jesus game. He was in the game for what he could get.

He was greedy for money. So he betrays Jesus for what he really wanted, 30 pieces of silver. So how do the disciples respond when they hear that one of them was a betrayer? We read it this morning, they began to be sorrowful and say unto him, one by one, is it I? This phrase, is it I?

You can look at it in your Bible, there are italics there. It's not a question, it's actually a statement, it's a protest. They were saying, surely not me. Each one of them said that. James said, you can't be talking about me. John said the same thing.

Andrew and Bartholomew. And in the face of their own self-confidence, they could not see the perilous state of their own weakness. Folks, our strength in Jesus is not found in our self-confidence. That's where our weakness is.

Because pride always tells you that you are stronger than you really think you are. So who is the betrayer? Jesus identifies him. He tells us in verse 20, it is one of the twelve that dipeth with me in the dish. The one who dips the bread in the cup with me.

Wait a minute. The irony of that statement is everybody dipped their bread. It's like having a bowl of hummus. And you take the hummus and you put it on your bread.

Everybody takes it out of the same bowl and the reality is becoming clear. Any disciple could be one, it could be the one who betrays Jesus. Do you realize that any one of us, all of us sitting here, always live on the edge, if you want to say it that way, of faithfulness or unfaithfulness. We are all responsible for our faith. It's a choice of your will and therefore we can all betray the Lord. And so in verse 21, we stand between what seems to be two opposing truths, the sovereignty of God in fulfilling His ordained purpose through Christ's betrayal and the responsibility of every man for his choice. God's gonna fulfill His purpose. God is gonna do what He intends to do but you are still personally responsible.

I sat down with all of my children as they were growing up and saying that no matter what you are all responsible. And so what does Jesus say concerning the one who betrays Him? He says it was good for this man if he had never been born. You ever thought about that?

Be honest with you, it's kind of a confusing statement. Good word for that man if he had never been born? Well how could he not have been born? What did you have to do with your birth?

Nobody here had a choice in being born. But you do have a choice in what you do with Jesus. And so Judas truly betrayed the Lord. And that leads us to the second part of this meal. And the second part that, that Mark brings out. The second amen. And these are the words of Jesus to His disciples before He concludes it.

And this is, it's the whole heartbeat of the, of the meal. And here we read beginning in verse 22 that they were eating and they took bread and after it, blessing it, broke it and gave it to them. He said take this as my body and He took a cup and when He had given thanks He gave it to them and said, and they all drank of it and He said to them this is the blood of, this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many. Here Jesus gives His final prediction. It's not His first prediction, it's His final prediction. He had already predicted three times as I mentioned in chapter eight, nine, and ten that He's gonna die. But the difference there and the difference here is in those three chapters He talked about the facts of His death but here He talks about the meaning of His death.

What's His death all about? And He identifies it in bread and in wine. He says the bread represents my body, the wine represents my blood, together they represent my death. That God is bringing into force a covenant that He had promised in Ezekiel and Jeremiah. And in that covenant He would forgive us of our sins, He would give us a relationship with God, we would have access to God and He would change our hearts. That's the new covenant. And He said I'm going to bring into reality, into force my new covenant and it's going to be through my death on the cross. And so, Jesus becomes the fulfillment of the Passover. What's the Passover all about? It's about redemption, it's about deliverance, it's about freedom from bondage. It's about, it's about being set free and I'm free through the blood of the Lamb. And so as the disciples sat there and they heard that message, what does the Bible say they did?

It says they all drank of it. That is they all embraced the body and the blood of Jesus. However, right after this Jesus says you're going to deny me. They would soon come to learn a lesson that all disciples have to learn. It's not an easy one to learn and that is our faithfulness is not, faithfulness is not found in them, faithfulness is found in Him. Folks, you're not faithful because you hold on, you are faithful because Jesus holds on to you.

That's the lesson they had to learn. So at the heart of the Gospel of Mark are these two main messages. The message of Jesus' suffering for our redemption, He came to be broken and die for us. And then the secondary message, how a, how a disciple follows Jesus. Like the Lord, we have to die to ourselves and follow Him. However, the disciples had to learn the lesson and it didn't come until they miserably failed. In all of my experience in working with people, especially those that are in ministry, it has been my observation that you never really become a faithful Christian until you miserably fail.

And we find that our support and our failures is found in our unfailing Lord. And that leads me to the third and the final amen. The disciples had finished their meal. They began their walk out of the upper room to the Mount of Olives.

It's not that far, it's, it's, it's maybe a half a mile walk, maybe, maybe up to a mile, not that very far. And they made their way out of the upper room. And at this time, Jesus makes a third prediction, a third amen. And here, Jesus predicts that all His disciples will fall away. We read in verse 26, and when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said unto them, all ye shall be offended because of me this night, for it is written, I will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. But after that, I am risen. I will go before you into Galilee. The model of disciples it, as I mentioned, Jesus had taught, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Jesus.

But they're about to abandon that model. They're soon going to stumble and fall and they're going to run away. Peter insists that he will not only not fall, he will never deny Jesus, he will die for Jesus. But we know that what Jesus predicts comes true. And it did because Peter did not deny the Lord one time. How many times did he deny Him?

Three times. The disciples ran away as Jesus predicted. And we discover that after the arrest of Jesus, you never hear from the disciples again in the rest of the book of Mark because they miserably failed. But instead of looking at the failure of the disciples, I want to finish this morning by focusing on the prediction of Jesus. He said in the midst of their failures in denial, their denials, Jesus sounds a note of hope. Because everything Jesus is saying, all this, this arrest, this trial, all of this is within the framework of God's design.

It's God's plan. He said, you shall be offended because of me this night for it is written. I will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. This is a quotation from Zechariah 13 seven.

Smite the shepherd and the sheep scatter. And here's what I want you to understand. The disciples failure was God's design.

Does that make sense to you? Their failure was his plan. That is so contrary to the way we actually think. We actually think God's plan is for me to succeed.

But actually, it's not. God's plan for you and I is actually to fail in ourselves. Paul said it over and over. When I'm weak, he is what? Strong. He said, there's no sufficiency in myself. Without him, I can do what? Nothing. But do you think you learned that? Let me ask you a question. You've been here.

So those of you that are seniors, you've been here four years. Have you learned that? Or have you learned in four years that it's all up to you and all up to your strength and all up to your power and actually you can't really do it so you have to kind of fake it.

Wear a mask like you got it all together. God doesn't use people that have it all together. God uses people that are broken. God uses broken things. And every single disciple had to come to this.

They had to miserably fail. But what do we know about Jesus when He sees scattered sheep? You remember what He said? The Bible says He saw people as sheep scattered and He had compassion on them. You see, your failures doesn't cause the Lord to reject you, it actually calls Him to exude compassion on you. Because He wants to be your shepherd. He's not going to abandon you. He will gather His scattered sheep and He will lead them.

He will take them to Galilee and so the disciples are headed for a God designed failure and Jesus will see to it that they are restored. They fail and it's in our failures that we see the Lord's compassion for us. He loves us. And when we see His compassion it doesn't harden our heart.

It breaks our heart over His love and it leads us to a greater point of dependence. I have seen this happen in the lives of hundreds of people broken over their own failures but finally to understand God loves them and God is compassionate and they come and they depend upon His faithfulness. And the hope of the disciples is seen in the reality that Jesus in His unfailing presence will always be with the ever failing disciples. In 1975 I was a sophomore in college.

I attended a conference in Atlanta, Georgia and there were about 2,500 college students that were there. A man got up and he spoke a message, he said, the name of the message was entitled, many aspire, few attain. And he said this, he said, within a couple of years many of you sitting in this room will not be walking faithfully with the Lord. You're here and you have a desire to follow the Lord but you're not.

So he gave a message basically on, in a sense, what you need to do, what you need to do to follow the Lord. I wish I could say, I wish I didn't have to say this but I'm going to say this because I really need to say this and it's a prediction. And the prediction is this, that many of you seniors graduating in two weeks will very soon after you graduate fall away from the Lord.

It's going to happen. And the reason why it's going to happen is because you haven't learned the most essential lesson of being a follower of Jesus, that you have to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him. But I want to say to all of you who are going to fail, because you're going to fail, that the Lord is compassionate. Because He wants you to come to Him and recognize that without Him you can do nothing.

And so I think this is what Mark is trying to teach us. Because we see the betrayal and the denial and we see the faithfulness of the Lord and the Lord loves us. It's a matter of your will.

You can choose to be broken or you can go through the process and learn to be dependent upon the Lord. And I hope that you will learn because the cross is really the coronation service of the King. He died, therefore we must die with Him.

Would you bow your head with me please as we pray? Lord we thank you that your words are true. What you predicted in Judas happened. What you predicted in the disciples came to pass. What you predicted Lord in your resurrection. One day that we will in the kingdom sit down and drink with you as the disciples did in the upper room.

You are coming back and we believe in this oh Lord. Help us to know in the core of our soul that we are truly a follower of Jesus. Not because we're strong.

Not because we have might and power. Not because we're faithful but because you're faithful oh Lord. Because of your compassion as a shepherd towards His sheep. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Steve Pettit from Bob Jones University from the Gospel of Mark which is part of the study called Passion Week. Thanks again for listening. Join us again tomorrow as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.