A Powerful Table for Perpetual Blessing

About this sermon

Introduction: It is Thursday night. Christ is sharing the Passover meal with His disciples. This is a night that Christ has greatly desired. ESV Luke 22:15 And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. Literally, “I have desired with desire.” ἐπιθυμίᾳ ἐπεθύμησα His desire, no doubt, relates to several things. On this night Christ will celebrate the final Passover with His disciples. Christ is the Passover lamb who fulfills what the Passover pictured. ESV 1 Corinthians 5:7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. This night represents the final Passover. It is the end of an era. For 1500 years the Passover had been celebrated. Millions of lambs had been sacrificed. And now Christ, THE LAMB OF GOD, fulfills it. What Christ does speaks of the end of the Old Covenant and the inauguration of the New. On this night Christ will institute the Lord’s Supper. From this night forward, it is not the Passover that the people of God will memorialize, but the sacrificial death of the Son of God that brings us the forgiveness of sins. Not a temporal national deliverance by the blood of lambs. But an eternal and personal deliverance by the blood of the Lamb of God, the Son of God. Now we will remember His body, and His blood, that is for us, until He returns. On this night Christ will teach His disciples final lessons, preparatory lessons, that they will carry with them into the church age. From John 13 through chapter 17, we read of the instruction that Jesus gave His disciples on this night, and it is one tremendous lesson after another, lessons that the church has benefited from ever since. In John 13 – Christ teaches humble servanthood as He washes His disciple’s feet. In John 13 – Christ teaches that the preeminent quality that will mark His disciples as His disciples, is the love that they have for each other. In John 13 – Christ predicts Peter’s denial. In John 14 – Christ gives the famous promise that He is going to go away and prepare a place for His people, and if He goes, He will gather them to Himself to be with Him forever. And He announces that He is the way, the truth, and the life, when Thomas wonders out loud about the way to the place where He’s going. In John 14 – Christ announces to Philip’s desire to see the Father that He and the Father are one, and that if you’ve seen Him, you’ve seen the Father. In John 14 – Christ gives the promise that He will send the Holy Spirit. In John 15 – The famous teaching about the vine and the branches. In John 15 – The famous teaching about greater love has no one than this than to lay down one’s life for his friends. In John 15 – A slave is not greater than his master. The disciples can expect to suffer along with Christ. In John 16 – More warnings about persecution, and more promises about the coming Spirit, the promise of the resurrection, and the promise of what life will be like on the other side of the resurrection. In John 17 – Christ’s high priestly prayer.

Topics

• Blessing & Favor