The Passover with the Disci[les

[0:00] We're in Mark chapter 14 this week. It was encouraging after last week to have somebody else come up to me who had, who's been both a minister and preached the Word to say, do you know what, I've read Mark 13 in the same way you did. So it was encouraging because I think to many it was probably a bit of a shock of some of the things that I was putting in the past some people believe are still to happen. But the future, according to God, is optimistic and the kingdom that is to come is always better than the present. But before we get there, we have, of course, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So we're going to pick it up in Mark chapter 14, and we're going to read the first 26 verses together. So now hear God's Word.

[0:58] It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him. For they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people. And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at a table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment, a pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, why was this ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. And they scolded her, but Jesus said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing. For you always have the poor with you. And whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.

[2:12] She has done what she should, what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priest in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money.

[2:42] And he sought an opportunity to betray him. On the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover? And he said to his disciples and said to them, go into the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready. They're prepared for us. And the disciples set out and went into the city and found it just as he had told them. And they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening, he came to the twelve. And as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, truly I say to you, one of you will betray me. One who is eating with me. They began to be sorrowful and say to him, say to him one after another, is it I? He said to them, it is the one of the twelve who, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me. For the son of man goes as it is written of him.

[4:12] 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. And as they were eating, he took bread. And after blessing it, he broke it and gave it to them and said, take this is take, this is my body. And he took the cup. When he had given thanks, he gave it to them and they all drank of it. And he said to them, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day I drink it anew in the kingdom of God. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Have God's word with you. Please again, open them to Mark 14. And as you do, you'll notice how Mark 14 begins. Now, this Sunday is traditionally known as Palm Sunday. You'll notice that many of the hymns that we've sung are Palm Sunday hymns. We're remembering Jesus coming into

[5:24] Jerusalem. But we've already passed that in the Gospel of Mark. We're now dealing with Jesus being in Jerusalem and about to prepare and take the Passover and, in fact, change the Passover into the Lord's Supper. There's a little change in the meaning. We, last week, you'll notice, we didn't do the Passover. We took the Lord's Supper. And what is the difference? Well, we might hint at that in a moment. But given the fact that we've already passed it, it would be good just to quickly remember what happened when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, especially when you consider the first two verses in Mark chapter 14. Because in the first two verses of Mark chapter 14, you have what is about to happen. But then you have the chief priests and the scribes who want an opportunity, or at least are seeking out an opportunity to kill Jesus. Now, just stop and think for a moment why you might want to kill

[6:29] Jesus. If you were to pick the Gospel of Mark up in chapter 14 and you were to read on, surely one of your questions would be, why do they want to kill him? Right? I mean, I don't know if you've ever read a book, you know, my father-in-law has this habit where he sort of picks up a book and just reads a bit and puts it down and picks it up again and reads just a totally different part of the book. Now, for me, this makes no sense.

[7:06] And I think for most people it makes no sense. But he seems to just read a bit here and there. But imagine you did that with the Gospel of Mark and you just picked it up and here you open it up to Mark 14 and you just began to read.

[7:18] And the first thing you read is about a group of people who plot to kill Jesus. And the first question I think you'd want to ask is, why? What has Jesus done that make people want to kill him? There's a wonderful minister, he's a wonderful man in North America, who's written a book called The Blood-Bought World. And of course, it's about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in his book, I haven't got it yet, it's because it takes a long time to come from America. In his book, because you get to read a little section in what people have written about it, he makes the point quite clearly that if only Jesus was presented in the same way today as he was presenting himself back then, you'd have exactly the same result.

[8:15] People would still want to kill Jesus today. So, what is it about Jesus? You know, some of us think we have a bad time when we get a hard time off somebody else. What is it about me that makes these people treat me so horribly? Well, what is it about Jesus that makes people want to kill him? And so, it'd be worth going back and just understand what happened when Jesus rode into Jerusalem and before that.

[8:44] Before that, Jesus has been preaching the gospel, he's been preaching about the kingdom of heaven, he's been healing people, he has been telling people to sin no more. And of course, why would you tell a person to sin no more? Okay, your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more. Why would you want to say that to a person? Well, the reason Jesus is saying that to a person is because there is something worse that can happen to you. Okay, and that is meeting God in the judgment when your sins are not forgiven. And he said that particularly to the woman who was allegedly caught in adultery and just about to be stoned, and that's where you have the example of Jesus riding in the sand. So, he has ruffled a few feathers, has Jesus. And of course, people at this point are wanting to kill him.

[9:35] But Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and everyone expected him to turn left, but instead he turned right. Everyone expected him to go into the Roman garrison and throw out the Romans to throw out the oppressors of Jerusalem and of God's people and just to get rid of them. But Jesus rides into the church.

[9:54] So, now you have to draw a picture of who is it that's wanting to kill Jesus. And believe it or not, it's not the Romans, it's actually church people, which makes this picture even worse.

[10:08] That Jesus rides into the temple and it's the chief priests and the scribes, that religious people, people who follow God, say that they follow God, and they're the ones wanting to kill Jesus. So, now we're building a picture, and you've got to ask yourself the question, why would religious people want to kill Jesus? Well, when Jesus disrupts the temple and overturns the tables and that, Jesus is allowed to behave any way he likes in his own house.

[10:41] The trouble was, is that the way they were behaving in the temple was that they had made it a den of robbers instead of keeping it as a house of prayer. It wasn't that they were robbing people, though they were probably doing that as well, but they were robbing God of what the temple was for.

[11:00] Nobody could pray to God. They were robbing God of what was due to him. And so, these people are the ones who want to kill Jesus. Now, you'll remember the story of Nathan and David. Nathan tells David a story, and David has no idea that the story is about him. And David says, I'm going to tell you, Nathan says, I'm going to tell you a story about a man who had, you know, a hundred sheep or more, had all these sheep. And we read the story thinking that the real sin is the fact that he's taken the one man's sheep, okay, from the other man. That's not the sin. The real conviction of the story there is there's a man with a hundred sheep. Well, where's the conviction? Well, the conviction is they're not sheep, they're women.

[11:48] Okay, there was a man with all these women who then decided to take a man who only had one wife for himself. So, the conviction of sin is doubled up, okay? It's not that it was just one for one, it was more than that. And David's listening to the story, and he's saying, right. And then Nathan says, well, what do you think should be done to this? And David wants the man killed. He wants the man doubt with. And of course, Nathan, through the story, at the end of the story, turns to David and says, you're the man. Jesus rides into Jerusalem, and he rides into the temple, and he says, you're the man.

[12:36] Now, can you begin to understand why the people want to kill him? Religious people who, just like David, who wants to do what, you know, God wants, but nevertheless do their own thing, then get convicted, but unlike David, they can't handle the conviction. And there's only one thing you can do when you're a Christian, and you cannot handle the conviction. You have to remove the person convicting you. If you can't handle conviction, you have to remove either yourself from the one convicting you, or the one convicting you. And so the reason they want to get rid of Jesus is very similar to getting rid of a rule book. I can't follow it, right? It's getting in my way of what I want to do.

[13:28] So that just sort of sets the background to why Jesus is sort of a marked man, why they want to kill him. And remember, these are not irreligious people. They're religious people who go to church, who pray, not as much as they should, according to Jesus, who give, but not as much as they should, or even in the right way. These are the very people who want to get rid of Jesus. So now we get to chapter 14, and we read that these very people are plotting to kill Jesus, but want to do it in a quiet way, lest the whole event turns on its head and people turn against them. But they know that if they're going to get anywhere, they need an inside man.

[14:18] And then along comes Judas. Judas is the inside man. He's the one who will betray Jesus. And I've often thought long and hard about Judas, about what type of person he might have been. We're not even going to address this morning the issue of Satan entering his heart. Tonight, as we look at from the kingdom, from the cross to the kingdom, we're going to be addressing the role of the devil and what role the cross plays in light of the role of the devil, Satan himself. And, you know, it's quite clear that his time is ended, but we'll get to that later. But we're not even going to address that other than to say that Judas is responsible for his own actions as someone who betrays Jesus. The troubling bit, however, is not that we know that it's Judas, but rather the disciples don't know that it couldn't be them. Because they all turn to Jesus and go, is it me? Now, you imagine being with Jesus for three and a half years and Jesus turning and says, you know, one of you sat around with me here is going to betray me. You would think, right, or at least you would have an idea of who it might be.

[15:39] But would you be like these disciples and thinking, what does it mean? Why would a disciple say that? Why would someone who's been with Jesus for three and a half years consider himself to be one possible of betraying Jesus? Well, I think after three and a half years, they've actually got to understand, at least for the first time, the nature of sin in the human heart. I have said time without number in this church, that you should never, ever be surprised at the decisions that people can make while operating under cherished sin. Never, ever be surprised at how sinful another Christian can be, because sin is just so destructive. You know, sin has got a lot to answer for through the person.

[16:31] It is just horrible. But we should never be surprised when someone's committed a horrible sin and you go, I never thought they would have done that. Why not? You're underestimating the power of sin in a person's life. And I think for the first time, these disciples aren't. They're like, do you know what?

[16:51] Well, as much as I wouldn't like to admit it, you know, I could, right? We just don't know, I don't think, what we're capable of sometimes.

[17:08] But before we get to that point, we have Simon, and Simon the leper, and the woman, and Jesus is in the house. And while he's in the house eating there, a woman comes in, and we're told that she pours this pure nard, this alabaster of oil, all over the head of Jesus, which we're also told is considered to be very costly. And then we're told, verse 4, that there are some people in the house who considered this to be a total waste. There's a total waste. So, you know, what kind of, what are we talking about here? Well, just to give you an example of just how much this would have been, this would have been the equivalent of about a year's wages. So imagine something that cost a year's wages, that's oil-based, and then in a moment just pouring it all over the head of Jesus.

[18:04] Imagine how long it would have taken you to save for that, bearing in mind that out of your year's wages, you would have had to have paid for so many more things, bread, housing, whatever it may have been, tithing, given to, right? So imagine just how long it would have taken to accumulate that.

[18:26] And this woman just pours it over the head of Jesus. And I've often wondered, you know, we've perhaps some of us have seen the film The Passion, and you get these horrible pictures. And, you know, as much as you know it's probably exactly the way that it was, as much as you probably know that they've got what happened right, it's really difficult to look at. And so you, we're not, we're not sort of going to make the mistake where we start worshipping through the images, images, and sort of get moved by the image. I think the reason why it's put down on words is because images can move us, but they move us in ways that they're really not meant to. It's the reality behind it all that should move us in the death of Jesus. And so just imagine for a moment that scene, ask yourself the question, what would Jesus have smelled like?

[19:29] And I think he would have been the most beautiful smelling person there. Because here we have this woman pouring this all over him. And he would have went to the cross and went to the grave smelling of this oil.

[19:46] It gives a different kind of picture. And why does she do it? Well, she's preparing him for his burial. You'll notice on the other hand, and you can't help but notice it if you've read Mark chapter 14 with a little bit of care, that this is contrasted completely with Judas, who sells Jesus, and we're told in Matthew, who sells Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, silver, which is about 150 days wages. So Judas betrays Jesus for less than half the amount that the woman spends on anointing Jesus. Almost like a quick gain just to betray Jesus for a day.

[20:36] You know, I don't want to draw too much into that, but there is a psychology there, isn't there? Of, you know, you know, you know, can I, and if I just pretend that I'm not a follower of Jesus for a moment, then I can get away with doing this. Well, it's a betrayal. What can I get for Jesus?

[20:55] Okay? And, and in comparison, it's always going to be far less to what Jesus bestows on us. And so we have this picture of two people, but in contrasting positions, one pouring wealth and oil over Jesus, twice the amount, and then the other person at half the expense is selling Jesus and betraying him into the hands of the people who want to kill him. Someone, if we remember, who's followed Jesus for three and a half years. Are you beginning to get the picture that Jesus turns up to the very people who are his own? And they received him not? In other words, are you beginning to see that it's not the world doing this to Jesus? It's his people. Okay, can you see it? It is shocking that this is happening to Jesus. And so the contrast is easy to see between the woman and Judas. One prepares him for his burial, and the one receives payment to make sure it happens.

[22:16] And that seems to be a fairly good summary of what is happening here. Some people worship Jesus just like this woman. We noticed a woman a few chapters back who gave her last two pennies, and I asked you the question, what do you have when all that you have is God and you've given everything away?

[22:37] What do you have left? And the answer is everything. Okay? Because if you have God plus nothing, it equals what? Everything. But if you don't have God plus everything, what does it equal in the end? What does Jesus say it equals in the end? Nothing.

[23:02] And so here we have a woman, remember, she gave her last two pennies, and Jesus says she gave more than anyone else. Why? Why? She clearly didn't give more than anybody else. But why does Jesus consider to be a person that gave more than anybody else? Because she gave to the point where she had nothing less other than God?

[23:24] That's how she gave more. It's worth pausing then for a moment, now that we've at least got the picture, that everything that is happening here is happening, let's say, within a religious circle.

[23:36] Now that we've got that picture and we've all agreed that what is happening to Jesus is happening within that type of context, that type of community. Let's just pause and ask the question that is being posed here about service and personal gain. Paul, doesn't he warn the church about those who actually preach the gospel for personal gain? You know, they set up their CD ministry, they put little wooden crosses on a piece of rock and then sell it in the Christian bookstore for 19 pounds, 99 pence.

[24:12] Well, that's really naughty. It's really naughty. Okay, I understand that these images mean a lot to Christians, but it's naughty. I understand we need posters and stuff like that, but, you know, a rock and a twig doesn't cost 20 pounds.

[24:31] You're making money off what it means to someone. To put it another way, if you were to stop all your serving in the church, whatever it is, or let's just say for a moment that Jesus will take it away from you. You can no longer sing.

[24:53] You can no longer serve in Sunday school or YP. You can no longer do the stewarding. You can no longer do the hoovering. You can no longer do anything. You can't do anything. Would you still worship?

[25:09] Would you still turn up to worship? Would you still turn up to pray? Would you still turn up to study his word? Listen, I have met countless people whose Christianity has been connected to their serving.

[25:22] The moment they no longer serve, they no longer seem to be living a Christian life. And so there's a real issue here between how people's Christianity can be portrayed only through their serving, but their very un-Christian life can be hidden by their serving.

[25:42] David White, who was the vicar that I trained under, first of all, he's now, unfortunately, left the Church of England. He's had enough. This is one of the big churches in London.

[25:54] If I said the name, you'd all know it, which quite a lot of so-called famous ministers have come from and have gone. Just had enough. Not of ministry, but just of the way things are going.

[26:07] And he used to say this to me all the time. He says, Daniel, remember, God wants to see your face, not just the back of your head.

[26:21] And his point was this, sometimes you can get so wrapped up in serving God, you actually think that it should count for devotion, or worship, or quiet time.

[26:34] In other words, you see it as clocking hours in. You know, I put sort of, you know, three hours in it, YP the other night, that should give me, well, surely I can have Sunday night off.

[26:51] And David White was absolutely right, that people make this mistake in religious circles all the time. We see it here, of mixing what service is and what worship is.

[27:07] Worship is the right response from the creature to the creator. Now, while it may include serving, serving is way down on the list.

[27:19] It includes devotion, it includes prayer, it includes worshiping God in spirit and in truth. So, imagine if everything, all the service was removed from you, would you still worship?

[27:35] worship. We shouldn't be surprised when some people stop serving Jesus in the church that their devotion to Jesus falters very quickly.

[27:50] We shouldn't be surprised to see it because there is a reason for it because service has hidden the real issue and the real issue is that the actual worship was never really there in the first place.

[28:06] Judas. It's sort of a slight example. It's not as great as Judas' betrayal, but it's there. It's there. Now, we move from that, we move to the very preparation of the Passover.

[28:26] Jesus, remember, is smelling of this ointment. He has been anointed for death. Judas, we're told, before it happens, is going to be the one who will betray Jesus.

[28:39] The Pharisees, the scribes, and that, are the ones who want to kill Jesus because, guess what he's going to do? He's going to take away their showtime religion. In other words, it's a bit like Jesus coming in to me this morning and says, Daniel, you're out.

[29:03] You know, if I were to say, I'm just doing my job. That's all that it is. Imagine if I had that attitude. Let's hope and pray that I never do, but let's just imagine that I did.

[29:16] I always said that if ever I got the attitude that one of my, Miss James was one of my favorite teachers. I'll never forget her. I loved her to bits. I probably didn't love her to bits at the time, but I look back on her and think, I'm sure I was a lot kinder to her than the way that I was.

[29:31] But Miss James used to say this to us because in secondary school I was, you know, was in like the lower blocks for kids who didn't pay attention or didn't want to learn or didn't go to school that much.

[29:42] And so you got put into it. It was, it was, you know, the very, it was in a very long, at the end of a very long corridor, believe it or not. I mean, it was talk about being separated from the school. And there we were.

[29:53] We were allowed to do things like sand our desks and all kinds of things like that. And I can remember her saying to the class one day when none of us were listening, listen, you mess around as much as you like, I still get paid the same.

[30:09] And boy, did that annoy us. You know, and I can remember when I came into ministry that whatever, whatever reason for why she said it, she probably just, right, even if it was true.

[30:19] my fear was what happens if I get that attitude in ministry? Yeah. Well, you do whatever you like.

[30:34] You carry on sinning. I still get paid the same. Yeah, the Sunday school needs help, but you carry on. I still get paid the same. You imagine, can you imagine what it's like?

[30:45] Jesus has come to remove those type of people. the showtime religion is gone. Jesus then gets to the Passover, and the way he prepares the Passover is by telling the disciples that they will go into the city and find a man carrying a jar of water.

[31:05] Now, I don't know about you, but when I read this, I think, well, how would you have known? If I said to you, go into Edinburgh, and it will be the woman with the red bag, you see the issue.

[31:20] Well, one of the things that we need to understand is that for a man to carry a jar of water was a very unusual thing. We're told in John 4 that the women at the well, okay, the women go to the well and bring back the water, so we have this picture.

[31:34] And whether this is a prearranged arrangement or not, nevertheless, it's still remarkable. Well, they find the man, and they prepare the Passover in the upper room.

[31:45] While they're in the upper room, it is the mealtime and the Passover, and Jesus reveals, as they are sat around the table, that one of them is going to betray them.

[31:57] Men who have been with Jesus for three and a half years, who follow Jesus, who've seen him do his miracles, who has listened to his teaching, who have seen him speak about everything that's going to be happen in the future, even about his death, that is going to be happening very soon.

[32:15] And he says to them, one of you will betray me. And the disciples, verse 19, not knowing who this will be, not even knowing if it was themselves, said to Jesus, is it I?

[32:31] And I think the reason why they said, is it I, is because at this point, they've really got to understand the nature of the human heart, that actually, it's not beyond us to turn our back on Jesus.

[32:44] It's not beyond us. However hard we may think that it is, the reason we need to keep a close walk with Jesus is because in certain circumstances, it's probably not that difficult for us to turn our back.

[32:58] When the going gets tough, the tough go, because they're not so tough after all, or they're not relying on Christ. Christ, is it I?

[33:10] Could it be me, Jesus? And then Jesus says this, it'll be the one who dips his bread in the same bowl as me.

[33:24] Now, what would you do if you heard that and you were the betrayer? I don't know if this is just how I think, but I would purposely not do it.

[33:40] Right? Because I wouldn't want to give myself away. And yet, I think there is something deeply powerful and underlying here. And that is, you can't reveal what's on the inside.

[33:53] It always gets out. Jesus said, out of the, out of the, out of the, the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Jesus understands that whatever is on the inside will come out.

[34:07] And so, people will always show, even if they don't want to, will always show their true colors eventually. And I think that's exactly what's happening here with Judas.

[34:21] Because he would have heard it with the rest of them. And if you wanted to keep yourself in deep comfort, you wouldn't have done it. But for some reason, he goes ahead and does it and reveals to himself.

[34:31] It doesn't say here that Satan enters his heart. It doesn't say here that Jesus is saying to him, you know, go and do what you must. But we know in the other Gospels we have that bigger picture.

[34:43] But then Jesus does say this, that it would have been better if Judas was never born than to do what he was about to do. It would have been better if Jesus had never born, Judas was never born than do what he was about to do.

[35:02] And the point that Jesus is making here is exactly the same point as I sort of wrap this up, that he makes before Pilate. That religious people really need to understand more than the world does that all sin is not the same.

[35:17] You know, we have this mantra, don't we, in the church, that all sin is the same. But the Bible, the Bible never says that all sin is the same. It says that all sin is punishable by death. All sin will face the judgment of God.

[35:29] But it never actually says that the sin that people commit is the same. And I'll give you an example. Jesus stands before Pilate regarding Judas and says to Pilate, what?

[35:40] He says, greater is the sin in him who brought me to you. Jesus himself is pointing out that some sins are worse than others.

[35:51] Now, in the Old Testament, in the book of Leviticus, we see it really clearly. The reason why there are different offerings for different offences is because there are different offences.

[36:02] There are different levels. We all know that lying is a sin. We all know that murder is a sin. But I think we would all agree that murder is worse than lying. Okay?

[36:14] We're not saying that they're not sins. We're not saying that lying isn't a sin because we're not putting it in the same category as murder. We are saying, however, that murder is worse. What Jesus is saying here, however, is something very different.

[36:28] He's saying that the reason why Judas' sin is so bad is because he knows more. It's not just that he's betrayed Jesus, but it's because he betrays Jesus who he knows.

[36:40] Greater is the sin in him who brought me to you. And who's he saying it to? Pilate. Well, what does Pilate know about Jesus? Nothing. And so, wherever there is more knowledge, there is greater culpability.

[36:56] The more you know, the more you are accountable for. That's how God operates. Once had a conversation with a group of ministers.

[37:09] We get together every now and then. This was down south. And we talk about theological issues. One of the issues was people being in ignorance and whether or not the ignorance should be removed.

[37:22] Because if the ignorance is removed, the person automatically becomes more culpable before God. You can imagine, given the subject, we spoke about it for a very long time.

[37:35] We never really came to the same conclusions other than to say that the truth should always be taught. But what Jesus is saying here is that the reason why it would have been better for Judas if he had never been born is because the sin that he commits, he commits knowing exactly what Jesus has taught, what Jesus has said, what Jesus has done, who Jesus is, what he's about to do and what is about to happen.

[38:02] That's why it's worse. Again, we're brought back to this is all happening within a religious circle. And so to finish, Jesus changes the Passover to what we call the Lord's Supper.

[38:20] Jesus takes the cup and he takes the bread. Now anyone who's ever participated in a Passover meal or anyone who's ever had it taught to them by a Jew, we used to have a Messianic Jew, a Jew that had come to Christ, come into the church every now and then, once a year or something, and sort of do the Passover and Jews knowing exactly what it means.

[38:45] And he would teach this and stuff like that. I did wind him up because he reversed him on into the car park lights and knocked it out and I made the point that he hadn't really seen the light afterwards. But yeah, I know it was pretty bad.

[38:59] But Jesus changes the Passover and how does he change the Passover? Because in the Passover you hand out the bread, you hand out the wine and then you hand out the what? The lamb. But Jesus doesn't do that here and I think the reason why, well he probably does do it, but I think the reason why the writers don't record it is because they want you to get what's happening and that is Jesus is the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

[39:25] It's not a lamb that you sacrifice and then put its blood above the doorpost. This is the lamb of God who will die on the cross to take away the sin of the world. And so what he is instituting here, beginning here, what we participated in last week, is the very first Lord's Supper which we remember it's not an animal that dies for our sin, but it's God the Son who dies to remove our sin.

[39:51] And that's exactly what we see. That God would pass over judgment but he would not pass over sin. He would pass over judging us but he would not pass over our sin.

[40:04] Our sin had to be judged. And so Jesus says when you do this you do it in remembrance of me. And so now we begin to see even though it has taken us 14 chapters we begin to see why the good news really is good news.

[40:22] And the good news is really good news for this one reason that we see here. That Jesus is the substitute who will die on the cross for the sins of people forgiving them there.

[40:40] That's why we even have good news to tell. That the reason we have the life that we do is because Jesus Christ took our place.

[40:54] God never ever passed over our sin. we've got away with it but our sin didn't get away with it. For the first time in human history God was able to judge the sin without judging the sinner.

[41:14] And the reason why God was able to judge the sin without judging the sinner is because Christ took all the sin upon himself. this is why Romans 6 says that when Christ died we died in him.

[41:26] Think about it for a moment. What is hell? How is the place where sin is dealt with? But how is a place full of people? Yeah, because people cannot ever be separated from their sin.

[41:39] The wages of sin is death. It's a non-negotiable. It's one of those things that you can never change. But what Romans 6 points out according to the Lord's Supper which we remember is that yeah, we die but we die in Christ and because we die in Christ we die with the prospect of resurrection.

[41:57] We die knowing that we're going to live again. We die knowing that a sin is going to be dealt with but dealt with in such a way that we don't die along with it. That we don't get judged along with it.

[42:08] Jesus takes it for us. Jesus dies. Jesus lives. And so will we. Father God, we thank you for your word and we ask that you bless it to us now.

[42:23] We ask that we remember your grace and we remember Jesus Christ. Father, we look to you this morning recognizing that we could not do it on our own. In fact, we would not do it on our own.

[42:36] And the only reason we have been made right with you is because you made us right with you through the death of your Son Jesus Christ. And in him we give all the praise and thanks.

[42:47] Amen.