Passover and the Lord’s Supper

To stay on course, remember the Lamb as you look forward to His return. 

1. Refocus on the Deliverer in Passover.
2. Re-orient the direction to Christ’s kingdom.
3. Revisit the death of Christ. 
4. Reset the destination to His return.

• Automated Transcription

• 0:13
  Well, good morning, church family, it is really good to see you this morning. We're going to be taking a break from Genesis for a couple of weeks, and we're going to focus on Holy Week. That's the week that starts today and continues on until the resurrection week next Sunday. So we're going to be looking at the last Passover, first Lord's supper and Luke chapter 22 so turn to Luke 22 stand with me for the reading of God's Word. You'll notice there's going to be ties, and we'll make the ties in the sermon between the covenant that we're talking about with Abram back in Genesis and this, as well as the Passover meal, I'm going to read verses seven through 23 then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it. They said to Him, where will you have us prepare it? He said to them, Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you, follow him into the house that he enters, and tell the master of the house. The teacher says to you, where is my guest room? Where I may eat the Passover with my disciples, and He will show you a large upper room furnished, prepare it there. And they went and found it, just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he reclined a table and the apostles with him, and he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took a cup. When he had given thanks, He said, Take this and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and he gave it to them, saying, This is My body which is given for you do this in remembrance of me. And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined. But woe to that man, whom, by whom He is betrayed. And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this. This is the word of the Lord our God and Father. We thank you for the great work of Your Son, the Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus. What we find out in First Corinthians five is that you are our Passover lamb. You are the spotless lamb sacrificed on our behalf so that you would pass over us, and instead of us facing the father's wrath, we face his welcome, and we are welcomed in Thank You, Lord Jesus, for your work. We pray that You would help us as we work through this passage to bring the past to the present. Help us remember what you have done and who you've made us to be. We pray that, as we approach Holy Week, that you would give us time to reflect, give thanks, to direct our hearts and lives. And then those that we run into, lots and lots of people, love Easter Week, even resurrection week, without yet a faith in you, and I pray that You would help us be faithful to proclaim it, whether it's family or friends or co workers. I pray for our city at large. I pray for the various churches I think of South Side Christian and right across the street from them, Haven Bible Church, where they are faithfully proclaiming your gospel truths. I pray that they would that the people there, just like we pray for other churches all over the city, would be faithful in giving testimony to the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, and may you awaken many, many hearts this week to hear these truths. We pray that you would be at work in us giving comfort to those who need it, giving restoration and health and healing to those who need it, giving us all, whether it's joys and triumphs or tragedies and sorrows, give us all a fixed eye on Jesus Christ, to please Him and glorify Him. It's in Christ's name. We pray amen. You may be seated.
  
  4:47
  When was the last time you got off course, even with your map app on your phone, you know you would think that the map fee. Sure on your new vehicle or your device would keep you from ever getting lost. I mean, it's really easy. You can plug in the wrong address. That's the easiest way to get off. Course, of course, sometimes the app has outdated information. I remember way back, way back in the 90s, way back in the 90s, when Garmin came out, and it didn't have the world's best maps, and you would be driving, and then it would start telling you recalculating, recalculating, which I think was code, you idiot, you idiot, follow my directions, at least that's how I took it. Wasn't defensive ever. No, no, I know where I'm going. You could take a wrong turn too early. There's all kinds of ways to get off course, even with a nice new modern app, God has given Christians something to keep them on course. Keep them from getting lost, if you've strayed, it helps get you back. If you've gone in a ditch. It gets you out of a ditch. It tells Christians where they have come from. It tells Christians where they're going. It tells Christians who they belong to, and the destination is a place where the GPS does not take you. It's the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is God's gracious. Means a sign of the new covenant in which we remember Christ, the Passover Lamb, who gave his life for his sheep. And it's a meal to rekindle your relationship with God, as well as a way to redirect you to the future, to his kingdom. It's better than a date night for parents with three kids under six. I remember our date nights with three kids under seven. Part one, wow, we're alone. Part Two, fight for a while. Part three, figure stuff out. Part Four, back at home with the kids like you know you need that, right? This is better than that. This is better than that. It's better than an anniversary. It's better than a Thanksgiving meal, surrounded by family and friends, although there's a weird uncle or a hysteric aunt somewhere down your row somewhere, she's here, he's here. I'm here. It's part of the body of Christ. We're all in progress. We're all different. But it's better than that. It's a meal presided over by King Jesus, surrounded by his subjects, who are also co heirs, princes, princesses, part of the royal family, and its design, like Passover, is to remind US of where we came from, who brought us here, and where we're going. That's its purpose. If I were to summarize a big idea for it this morning, and we're gonna look at Passover as it's the last Passover that Jesus celebrated, and we're gonna look at the new meal, the Lord's Supper. It's got the same purpose, and I would say this to stay on course. Remember the lamb as you look forward to his coming to looking back, looking forward. It's really easy to get off course. What gets you off course? What gets you off course? Doing your taxes, submitting insurance forms, the pleasant music on a phone tree, meeting an assignment deadline, an argument, a prolonged feud with your spouse, loneliness infertility, pending work, layoffs, the hard of life. Does that get you off course? Good things, gaming, hobbies, cooking, working, volunteering, any number of media interests that can get us off course. It almost goes without saying that every sin or sinful pursuit will do it so understanding and using the Lord's Supper as Jesus designed, it keeps you on course. I want to say this before we get going. Some of you are not even on the path, and as you see the elements of the gospel here, I would urge you at any moment, if you are convicted that you're a sinner and you see what Jesus has done for you, just cry out to Him in your heart, right where you are. We're going to unpack the gospel while we do this. Get on course for those of us who are. The path. It helps you deal effectively with the relationships in your life. There's a strong relational component. It has a connection to what we've been looking at in Genesis. Last week, we were in Genesis 15 with the initiation of the Abrahamic covenant. There was the picture. We're going to get back to it. But Abram was to take some animal sacrifice, then put the animals on two sides, creating a path, and there was a mutual, strong commitment to be made between Abram and Yahweh, and only Yahweh passes through, making a commitment to the future. There, God predicted that Abrams offspring would be enslaved and released 400 years later. Passover is the celebration of the fulfillment of that promise, and Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham and the Passover, he feels fulfills both. This meal fulfills both. Now Jesus is looking back, and he is about to fulfill both the Passover and the Abrahamic covenant. It has enormous practical application. This refocus, as easy as it is to get off course, how might you be coming here today, distracted off course or in a ditch? Let this. Let this encourage you, challenge you, help you. As Jesus has given us a very beautiful, practical way for us to keep our focus as we follow him. First, there's a refocus element. We're refocusing on the deliverer in Passover. Refocusing on the deliverer in Passover, demands from outside, choices from inside compete for our focus. I mean, the illustration for me is I'm going to be teaching at Discovery, not teaching. I'm going to do a Q and A with kids in discovery. You ask any of our grade school kids, I have a question. Every kid is going to put his hand up, everyone sixth grade on down to kindergartners, whether they know the answer or not not. You don't even have to ask the question. You just say, I have a question, and somebody wants to answer it they don't know. But say, Do any of you have a question? Guarantee everybody's gonna put their hand up, and I gotta figure out which one you know. Your life is like a room full of students who are all raising their hand, demanding your attention. Your life's like that. It's just filled with things demanding your attention, all kinds of people. The Lord's supper helps you refocus your attention, not on all the concerns, but on the deliverer. Luke 2214 says, When the hour came, Jesus reclined at table and the apostles with him, and he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. The language is intense. In Greek, it doesn't translate to English, but it's desiring. I have desired, and he wants to eat this Passover. Jesus has been orchestrating this event. We don't have time to go into it, but those previous verses that I read, Jesus is ready to celebrate this last Passover because he is on a mission toward his death. And he wants to be arrested at the right time. He wants to finish at the right time, and so he organizes a special plan. We don't know if it's supernatural. We don't know if he's had a previous encounter, but we know Jesus is orchestrating this. He tells Peter and John, go prepare the Passover. Passover is prepared, and have earnestly desire to eat it. And he says, before I suffer, now circle that, because that little phrase would be really unusual for a person celebrating Passover, be really unusual. But Jesus, serious and somber desire, marching deliberately to death is to prepare them for what he's fulfilling and for what he is setting forward the meal pronounced the meaning of what would unfold the next morning,
  
  14:43
  Passover was instituted by Yahweh in Exodus 12. We don't have time to go back to Exodus 12 before Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. The Jews, the Israelites, were in slavery, just as God had promised to Abraham that they would be they had been slave. For 400 years, and God raised up Moses to be their leader, their delivery. He ordered him to Pharaoh, told Pharaoh to let him go. And nine massive plagues struck the land, and Pharaoh still wouldn't let them go. And finally, the 10th had come. God instituted that every first born son of an Egyptian would die by the hand of the angel of the Lord God's wrath would be poured out on Egypt as retribution for their slaughter of all those innocent babies at Moses time, and it would be judgment on stubborn Pharaoh's hearts. Since Israelites were in Pharaoh's kingdom, they needed provision to be protected from the angel of the Lord, therefore, Passover, Passover, Passover had two parts. The first was the sacrifice of a lamb. Every family, every group, was to pick a spotless lamb, representing purity, perfection. They were to pick a spotless lamb. They were to sacrifice it. They were to catch its blood in a bowl, and they were to take this blood and they were to paint it, to take hyssop, natural weed around Israel, all over the place, take it like a paint brush, and paint it up the door post across the top. And when the angel of the Lord came in dead of night and saw the blood he would pass over a sacrifice had been given so that the Israelites would not face the fury and wrath of God. The first part was sacrifice, the second part was a meal. It was called the Feast of the Unleavened of Unleavened Bread. Normal bread has yeast leaven that requires hours to develop the loaf, and then it was just what we would call sourdough starter, or yeast, and they were to remove all the starter from their home. I'm a sourdough bread maker, so I know what that means. You have to take all the bread out, all the starter out. I don't know if that meant they needed to restart later, like that'd be a hassle, but okay, they took all the starter out at the home. And here's what it was to symbolize. It was to symbolize the fact that when the angel of death came and killed all the firstborn Pharaoh and all the Egyptians were going to say to them, get out of here. And in getting out, it was also to say, but don't trust them, because Pharaoh's changed his mind nine times. You better go. So the meal was designed to show they were in a hurry. Unleavened Bread, just flour, just salt, just water. Does not make a beautiful loaf. It's a little hunk of a rock or a little cracker. They baked the crackers or this hard little loaf. They had a meal of bitter herbs and vegetables. They took the lamb that they had just sacrificed, they skinned it, they seasoned it. That was all so if you're not a farm kid, this is going to be gross. They left all the guts inside. They were in a hurry. That's the whole point. We're in a hurry. We're eating in a hurry. The food's prepared in a hurry. They also wore their traveling clothes, their sandals, because they were ready to get on the move. I They
  
  19:05
  are going to need to leave in haste. The sacrifice and blood were important. Their freedom must come through sacrifice. The food was important to remember that travel would be hurried and bitter. Bitter herbs. It's going to be bitter travel. It's going to be a bitter time in the wilderness. The clothes reminded them, we have a better destination, Passover. Then, once it was instituted, always looked back at what God had done to deliver them. It was to look back at their deliverer. It was to remind them who they were now as God's people, and it caused them to look forward to better times. This is exactly what the Lord's Supper does. Calls us to look back at Christ, the Passover lamb, to answer, who are we now? And it calls us to look forward. Word.
  
  20:07
  Pharaoh did relent that night, and the Egyptians gave them great wealth, just as God promised to Abram. They're going to come out after 400 years. They're going to be freed from their slavery, and they are going to come out with many possessions. They celebrated it. They were to celebrate it yearly. Write these questions down. This is what every Israelite was to do. This is what we are to do as we approach the Lord's Supper. Question one, who were we? Who were we? Now, some of you can't answer that question because you're still in the slave grave guilt section, but those of you who have trusted Christ, you answer the question, who were we? What did God do for us? Where are we going? Who were we slaves? Slaves to sin, slaves to guilt. We were slaves, slaves to the demonic powers. We faith. What did God do for us? For the Israelite, they could say he delivered us out of the strong hand of Pharaoh. For the Christian, we can say God has delivered us out of the strong hand of sin and guilt and Satan. We are now free.
  
  21:48
  Where are we going? A place with eternal peace, unity and joy. Only Jesus can get us there, only Jesus could get us there. What happened for the Israelites, they were set free, and the angel of God, God in the presence of fire and cloud, walked with them, moved with them for 40 years in the wilderness, he went with them. Who goes with us today? Jesus goes with us today, by the power of His Spirit.
  
  22:36
  We have to reorient. We have to redirect ourselves to Christ. I got this great picture from Libby Cowger of this world. She does this week. She does open water swimming. I do no water swimming. I float. I enjoy floating. She does open water swimming. There's days where she's she's done triathlon, so you have to train in a lake, and she, she learned something about open water swimming. She takes 10 strokes and has to lift her head up to look at the buoy, because it it takes 10 strokes to get a little bit off. The Lord's Supper is your constant reminder. If you start drifting, it brings you back. If you've gotten in the ditch, it gets you the right direction. And we look to Christ, the anchor that that final destination. We look to Him. We look to our deliverer. He is the goal. He is the help.
  
  23:54
  Second, we reorient the direction to Christ's kingdom. So we're looking to our deliverer. Second, we're looking to his kingdom, the Lord suffers a regular means to get our direction. That picture is really vivid in our mind. Look what he says in verse 16, if I tell you, I will not eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God, I will not eat the Passover Jesus was not going to eat a Passover meal again until all his prophecies were fulfilled, and he was on the throne of David in his kingdom. That's what we just read about. Being on the throne of David. That was the prediction John included that in our scripture readings this morning. What we know after the fact is that Jesus had to die, had to rise. He had to rise from the dead. He had to ascend to heaven. He had to send his spirit gather people for Himself, from every tribe and tongue and wisdom and nation. And we're still in the gathering phase of Jesus. We're still in the gathering phase. I see Jarrett's here. Check. Hey. DREW. Right? He's in the gathering phase of the kingdom. I can't wait to give him a hug now. I want to be able to because you all know he's here. We keep sending the millicans because we're in the gathering phase. But one day, we'll be in the kingdom. Jesus will be in the kingdom. At the Passover meal, Jesus was preparing for this verse 17, he took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He said, Take this divide. It among yourselves. There are four cups in the Passover meal. This is the first one, the Thanksgiving cup. And they thanked God for His bounty, his grace, and the fruit of the vine. This is a cup of blessing. The leader had numerous blessings to give, and it was one large cup. Everybody had their personal cup, and they put a little bit in their cups until it was delivered to all the people. Verse 18, For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. Jesus was focused on the time after he had gathered all of his elect from the four winds of the world, all of his people, he was focused to the future kingdom that he described as the banqueting table, where Abraham would sit and men and women would come from east and west and gather at the table.
  
  26:31
  Jesus is focusing our attention on the future kingdom. We're to focus on The King, the deliverer, and we're supposed to focus on his kingdom, the New Testament particularly tells us that we are like Hebrews and Peter, for instance, tell us that we are like Israel, still wandering. We're still in the wilderness. This isn't our home. This isn't the kingdom. Yet, we are on our way. We're on our way to our Promised Land.
  
  27:09
  Israel was in the wilderness seeking the promised land. We're in the wilderness seeking the promised land. So whatever you are in the middle of in life, your choices, your direction, you should be asking, Where am I going with this? Where am I going with this? You're plugging your way through grade school. You're engaged and getting ready to get married. You're married. You're looking for your first kids. You're single. Marriage, taking a long time. What am where am I going with this? Every stage you're in, you are thinking about bringing this stage of your life with you into the kingdom to be fruitful now to bring it into the kingdom. Are you in the right direction?
  
  28:10
  Christ was looking forward to the kingdom. We come to the Lord's Supper to be redirected. So first we refocus on the deliverer. Then we get our direction, our alignment, right. Number three, we revisit the death of Christ. We revisit the death of Christ. What was I? What did God do? Where am I going? And as we look at revisiting the death of Christ, we could say, In other terms, we need to revisit the New Covenant. What is this new covenant? A covenant is a solemn, serious commitment between two parties, God and His people, or a husband and a wife, or two families making an arrangement. This is called the new covenant in my blood Jesus, death is a life giving relationship, sealing death. Do death. It's it's a death given so we can live. It's a death to give us a relationship with God and His people. It is a ceiling so that we are ensured he will carry us all the way to the finish. It says this. He took bread when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you that that little biscuit. Not a lot of times on Good Friday, I like to make sourdough bread. And I can include some help to make sourdough bread so you can get really big pieces. Of bread, but at Passover, they were little pieces of hard bread or cracker, which we get to enjoy this week at our Seder. If you want a more authentic thing, you get a little matzah wafer. The picture is unmistakable, though it's a body given Jesus instills, instills new meaning. The bread represents his body, his life and his person. Bread is a fundamental staple of life. Jesus used many metaphors in his teaching about it, I'm the bread of life is one of them that he said, I am the vine. I am the light of the world. Jesus is used to using metaphors. And he takes this bread that's part of the Passover celebration, and he turns it into a new metaphor when he breaks that he is counting on his life being given and we taking in his death now live.
  
  31:10
  What we have to understand about this, this covenant idea. When we talked last week about that chair illustration, and we we look at the facts, the agreement and the rest, where we finally rest in the chair, we have to understand facts, certain facts. God is the Creator, King of heaven and earth and all creatures, and he has the right to demand obedience. He is a law giver, so his kingdom can be peaceful and righteous. All humanity has been disobedient and broken His laws, and we are rightly awaiting judgment and wrath for being law breakers. But Christ, the same Christ who announced a judgment for sin has come in person. He lived obediently righteously, and he gave his perfectly obedient righteous life so that we might be given his obedience in the place of our disobedience he's imputed his obedience and his righteousness, planted it on us, stamped it in us, characterized by it his life and obedience in place of our unrighteous disobedience. This is my body given for you, little words matter. For you matters. It's the language of substitutionary atonement. He is going to be the sacrifice in our place. This meal is packed with pictures. The lamb prefigured Jesus death, the bread prefigured Jesus death. The wine prefigured Jesus' death, and we only live with God if Christ's obedience and righteousness are credited to us. He says, Do this in remembrance of me. Do this in remembrance of me now to remember something in the Bible, to be ordered to remember is not to take a history lesson. Oh, there's an interesting thing, a bunch of things happened that's really cool to remember. This is that stage of true saving faith, where we go from facts to agreement to resting, is to bring something that's happened in the past and bring it into our present and consider the implications and the realities. Do this in remembrance of me. Bring the past to the present, live in light of it. What were you? Lost, enslaved, guilty. What are you church, family, found, freed, forgiven. How did all this come about? How? How did it happen to be that you were found, that you were freed, that you were forgiven. How did that happen? How did you come to be found, freed, forgiven? Christ became the sinner. He became the slave. He became the sacrifice, and his spirit opened your eyes. You were dead in the mud, and he opened your eyes so you could see the glory of Christ, and by the glory of His gospel, he breathed life into you and brought you up and cleaned you off and gave you new life. Do. This in remembrance of Me, He takes the second part of this. Likewise, the cup. Commentators debate whether this is the third cup or the fourth, fourth cup. There's four cups and a Seder meal. Likewise, he took the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. There's that covenant language. But first, don't miss the pouring out. He's got a cup that he is going to fill all of their other cups with. They're going to pass it around and fill that but in sacrificial terms, in the temple, when they would have a drink offering, it was a picture of a total outpouring, a total giving, when you dump the wine onto the burning coals of the altar, and the smoke goes into the air. It's a total giving. Jesus pours his life out. He pours all of his life, the last drop of it, and this seals the New Covenant. You remember, a covenant is a solemn commitment between two parties. There's obligations in a covenant on both sides. God's was, I will be your God, and you will be my people. And there were consequences for failure that each agreed to in the covenant with Abram. After the animals were cut, God put Abram in a deep sleep, and God himself walked across the bloody ground. Here, Jesus doesn't even cut up the animals. He says, I'm making a new covenant. I will be your God. You will be my people, and I will seal it by my own life. In a way to say it before you were even born, Christ had already paid the full price. His life had been completely poured out, the wrath had been completely taken. This is the new covenant, the new covenants promised in the Old Testament, law the prophets, from Deuteronomy to the prophets. And what did this New Covenant look like? The old covenant, the one that Moses established, required a holy people. The Abrahamic Covenant was one sided. The Mosaic Covenant was two sided. And if Israelites disobey, they would incur judgment and wrath from God disciplining. And they did and they did and they did for century after century after century, they endured judgment because they were constantly sinful. So the promise of a new covenant brought hope, where there would be a new heart, there would be a new law written within them, there would be a full granting of forgiveness from sin. There would be a restoration of God's people, a saving of nations, of Gentiles, their inclusion into the kingdom with Christ forever. The death of Christ provides forgiveness. It seals, it secures and it secures a future for all of his people. Who are you? Servants of High King Jesus freed to serve Him, children of the Father, sealed secured together by his death and the power of His Holy Spirit, Jesus is the unsinkable boat who brings you to the shores of God's eternal promised kingdom and land. It's better than Abram's covenant, because the very next day, Jesus secured it by his death, celebration of Lord's suppers to do for us what Passover did for Israel. We recognize where we were, our deliverer, who got us here, and where we are going. There's one more significant thing. It's a reset on the destination. You get your direction right. Point two, you get your direction right. Point four, now we have this destination to his return. So think of, think of Jesus telling us that he's going to set in his kingdom as like, I'm off. Okay, this is the direction. Here's now Action. Action reset the des reset the destination to his return. We are looking forward to his coming in glory and feasting with his saints in the kingdom of God. We need to think about that day too. Turn with me to First Corinthians, 1126, the apostle Paul takes the same text from Luke, and then he makes an. Mission that I think is really helpful for us first, Corinthians, 1126, after he repeats Luke's comments. He says, For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes, just circle that last little line until he comes, it's not a throw away statement. This is what we're all waiting for. This. This is the promise of promises. This is the second coming of the Lord Jesus, where he is going to come and rescue his own and pour wrath out on his enemies.
  
  40:35
  This is where he will return, and if your body's in the ground. He will call it the dust out of the ground and reunite it with your soul. If your body is here like we are now, it will be changed incorruptible. There will be resurrection of the body to live incorruptably in God's presence. He will return as conquering king with sword in his hand and staff in his other, and he will reign over his enemies, bringing judgment and bringing righteousness and peace. And he will then, in due time, bring a restoration of all of creation. That little phrase until he comes is a loaded phrase. We remember that we are secured to make it to that day, as we remember his death. Life is just filled with goals and longings and milestones. It's filled with them. I remember Corbin telling us a story of a Bible study that they hosted and led while he was in the Air Force, and it was kind of classic of young adults. So young adults Bible study growth group, and there were some singles who were in their early 20s, and they have a natural longing to be married, natural longing to be married, and it's hard to not be married. So in the group, it's sharing prayer request time. And I really want to be married. The guys really want to be married. The gals really want to be I want to be married. I married. And then the married gal newly married because I want to be married. Finally, I will have arrived. The married gal goes, I thought I would have arrived. I have a husband. And it's, it's not as great as I thought. There's more laughter first hour. So apparently, these husbands are better. So so it's like, I gotta have kids. I want to have kids. And that's a natural God giving longing. I want kids. Some of them are not able to have kids. And so now you've got singles who are not finding husbands. You've got gals who are not getting pregnant. And then there's the mom with the three under seven. She's really busy, and she's waiting, I can't wait till the last one gets potty trained, like finally, my life will be better when we've got all the potty training done. And then there was a fourth woman who was a refugee from one of the war torn African countries who's got the three kids and they're all out of diapers. And in her country that she fled, she was brutally assaulted and her arm was cut off, and she lived a mom with three kids in tow, with one arm. Kind of the group goes like, we all should shush right now, because that's actually really hard. Now, it's all hard. It's all hard you live in your life with your hard here's what that teaches us. We tend to look at life with these goals and milestones, and we treat them as as a rival points we get to this arrival point. But here's what Jesus is telling us, it's, it's gardening seasons, planting season. So you've, you've gone to a nursery, you might have looked for your colors, your plants that you want, or at least you've driven by lows and you see that they have them, and they all look beautiful. But here's what you're doing with your life. So if you're a kid in junior high and you're waiting finally for freedom of adulthood, here's what Jesus wants you to do. He wants you to be faithful and growing and preparing for whatever he is calling you and building you to prepare when you hit that graduation milestone that is a pot to put in the nursery. You're going to have other milestones. Then it might be, you might be single a very long time. We have some, some gals and guys have been single a very long time, and they don't know if they're ever going to. Married, but they are filling their pot to honor Christ by their life, and they are seeking to be faithful with it. Now, you might pass your milestone. You might get married, and you're when you get married, and hit that milestone, you have just planted all of your singleness and faithfulness to God. And then it might be kids. It might not be kids, then it might be aging. Well, you've got your career milestones. I want to go here with my career. I want to go there with my career. I want to be this as a mom, or I want to do this with my kids as a mom and you plant, get out of the idea that you will have arrived. What you're doing is you're filling the nursery at each step, each new season, you're filling the nursery. Sometimes it's a big tree that flowers. But here's what's going to happen when Jesus returns, especially when he establishes the new heavens and the new earth. You're going to take everything that you did in life, that you potted up, that you set in the nursery, and he's going to plant it in the garden forever, and it will grow to His glory. That's where we're going. We're not living for the next milestone. We're potting up a plant. We're watering it and feeding it, and if it's to the honor of Jesus, it will bloom in eternity. How do I know what that looks like? It always looks like this, seeking to serve in humility, seeking to cause others to grow and know Jesus, it is a pursuit of faithfulness in the successes and the suffering. It is walking by the spirit in trust and obedience, knowing that the finish of this milestone is not the finish of anything, but it is the setting of it in the nursery to grow in the new garden.
  
  47:07
  The Lord's Supper is the weekly watering of wherever you are, to redirect you, to help you focus. Who are you? Freed, forgiven. Secure. How did you get that way? By the death of Christ, only by the death of Christ, by the Spirit of God who empowers you. Only way you got Where are you going? To the new garden of Eden, where whatever you have invested here for His glory will grow to His glory there. Let's let the Lord supper do this for us. Let's pray, Father, thank You for this, this powerful and grim picture, this, this Lord's suppers as a reminder of a death. And we use a meal, bread and wine, which seem nourishing to us, but we are reminded that it is something far more. And now, as we look at it, I pray that it would refresh us and and help us week after week. We celebrate it every week. And so I fear for myself, and I fear for us that we take it for granted, are not very prepared for it. Don't let it sink in but, but let it sink into us as we think about what you have done, Jesus, we love you, for you and your gospel, Christ's name, we pray amen. We're going to celebrate that now, who's the Lord's supper for it's for those who have trusted Christ, who followed him. Ideally, you get baptized first, and you do this, take the Lord's Supper. It's for those who are in relational harmony with others. It's part of the Covenant community. Hold those elements. We're going to take them all together and celebrate this. And this. Pour your heart out in prayer and thanksgiving right now for any issues that the Lord convicts you with or encourages you with.
  
  49:22
  So we have these elements for us. We look back remembering what Jesus has done. We look forward with our eyes on the prize of Christ's likeness and flame devotion to relate to him. Help us love each other. Does all of those things. The night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it says, This is my body given for you.
  
  49:47
  Likewise, he took the cup, passed it around. He gave thanks. This is the cup of the New Covenant poured out in my blood, or Jesus. We. Thank you that we are secure in you by your death. We never get tired of singing your love for us, Your faithfulness to us. We never get tired of singing your power toward us. We marvel at it now make us people who walk away from the Lord's Supper knowing about forgiveness and saying we want to obey and be righteous, all the more that's what you saved us too, and we are motivated by your love for us to do that help us be faithful, to proclaim this glorious message, Christ's name. Amen.

Dan Jarms

Dr. Dan Jarms is teaching pastor and team leader at Faith Bible Church in Spokane Washington, as well as associate dean at The Master's Seminary in Spokane. He has been married for over 30 years to Linda, and has three adult children. He earned his B.A. in English at the Master’s College, B.Ed. at Eastern Washington University, M.Div and D.Min in Expository Preaching at The Master’s Seminary. His other interests include NCAA basketball, woodworking, and art.

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